Another Country - Chryse - Sherlock (TV) [Archive of Our Own] (2024)

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

Sherlock worked the handle of the door open with some difficulty—the handle did not seem to be located where his eyes insisted that it was—and stumbled into the back seat. He had a slightly nauseated sense of deja vu. This was how this whole mess had started, hadn’t it? Him in this very back seat, stumbling, high. Well, not so high anymore. He swallowed against the foreign taste in the back of his throat, feeling raw and irritable, thinking of the heroin floating uselessly in his bloodstream while his starving opioid receptors shrieked from behind naloxone molecules blocking their gates. Bloody Mycroft.

The front doors opened: John and Mary getting in. Sherlock snapped his eyes closed and pressed his fingertips together under his chin, hoping to convey the message that he was busy solving the Moriarty mess right now, genius at work, silence please. Which was what he should be doing anyway, why wasn’t he in his mind palace already? He wanted back there, back to the half dream of a time long before he was even born, of always two of us, of the—no. He’d been there already, solved that. Time to move on. He tried to force himself into it, squeezing his eyes tighter to visualize the corridor that led to the Moriarty Network Wing, but he was distracted by the muttering in the front seat and frayed edges of his nerves. Who. Who. He needed more data, needed his computers, needed caffeine, a smoke, a fix.

A door slammed again and Sherlock was startled into opening his eyes. “Why aren’t we moving? We haven’t gone anywhere!”

Mary turned to look at him, her eyes unreadable. “Change of plans. John’s going back to Baker Street with you. There’s a car on the way.”

“Oh,” Sherlock said, taken aback. He closed his eyes again. Good news? Bad news? John, John in Baker Street, good, very good, in his chair, his pipe—no, that was his dream again, and that was the bad news, because Sherlock needed a hit and he needed it soon. He’d planned this day’s chemical schedule in exacting detail: lorazepam to get him through the farewells, heroin for the takeoff, a nap, then cocaine and methamphetamine to get him started. But Mycroft, the stupid interfering git, had given him intranasal naloxone, and now the heroin was effectively and abruptly gone. Sherlock felt its absence in his teeth-grinding irritation and now the lorazepam was just slowing him down. He needed the cocaine, needed it, needed it to smooth away the roughness and hatefulness of the world and let him concentrate on this fascinating problem. But John would not, not--his shocked eyes, his anger, morphine or cocaine?

The door opened again and John’s voice said “Five minutes,” as he slid back inside.

“It’s fine, I don’t mind waiting. You’re sure…”

Sherlock tuned them out again. The video. A message. Not for him, he was meant to be gone. For whom. Not the public; most of them didn’t know who Moriarty was, he’d wanted it that way. But a big message, not to be missed. Attention. Publicity. Who wants publicity? Celebrities. Who else? People with something to sell.

“That’ll be it,” John said and Sherlock opened his eyes and moved swiftly to get out, because the faster they got on with it the faster he could be home. He slammed his own door shut, watching with narrowed eyes as Mycroft strolled unhurriedly to greet a dark-haired woman who had just got out of the new car.

“Oh, hello again,” John said, coming up behind him.

“Sorry,” the woman said, politely indifferent, “have we met?”

Sherlock snorted rudely and moved toward where the driver had just opened the back door, shoving his way past him into the seat. “Don’t feel bad, John, Mycroft has them cloned.”

“Sorry, I’m terribly sorry, I see now of course you’re not—what happened to Anthea?”

“Promoted,” Mycroft said blandly. Sherlock reached out and yanked the door from the driver’s hand to slam it closed.

John got in a moment later and Sherlock immediately said peremptorily, “Don’t talk,” and closed his eyes again. He heard John’s faint huff—a quieter, politer version of Sherlock’s snort—and hid his smile behind his fingertips. John being at his side would always be good news, even though he would have to plan carefully to manage things when they reached Baker Street.

The ride back home was interminable. Sherlock itched to be back at his computers, or at least to scan the news on his phone, but he did not dare pull it out for fear of John seeing his hands shake. “Has anything happened?” he asked abruptly, opening his eyes.

“Hmm?” John glanced over at him.

“In the news. I’ve been out of communication, remember? Have I missed anything? Any crimes?”

“Oh.” John considered. “Well, there was that bloke who ran the media empire, rather controversial figure, got shot…”

“What?”

“But you probably heard about that, it happened Christmas Day.”

Sherlock opened his mouth, caught John’s got you grin, and snapped it shut. “Very funny,” he said curtly, closing his eyes again. Damn it. He was too slow, too bloody slow, his carefully calculated co*cktail disarrayed and leaving him dulled and floundering. He didn’t dare risk John noticing further. “Check the news anyway, just to be sure,” he said without opening his eyes.

“Sherlock, it’s New Year’s Day. There’s not going to be anything on. What are you looking for anyway?”

Well, at least he was that much faster than John Watson still. “What do you think Moriarty put that video up for? Wish us happy New Year?”

“Announcing he’s back, I suppose,” John said slowly. “But…you said he was dead…”

“Yes, that’s irrelevant,” Sherlock said impatiently. “He’s back. Exactly. Not coming soon, back, but he’s got to back that up, hasn’t he, can’t just say ‘hi!’, he’s got to prove it—“

“My God,” John said, clearly catching on. Sherlock could hear him fumbling out his phone. Silence for a few moments as the car hummed along, and then John said in a tone of mingled relief and disappointment, “Nothing. There’s stories about tonight’s telly front and center, can’t be any real news out there. So I suppose that means…something coming up, isn’t it? A warning?”

“Mmmm,” Sherlock said, who truthfully had no idea what Moriarty might be planning to do, but was sure if he could just get to his computers and his cocaine he could certainly work it out.

They lapsed back into silence, John still tapping slowly away at his phone and Sherlock with his fingers pressed tightly together, plotting his strategy. When he sensed from the outside noise and the car’s velocity that they were getting close, he opened his eyes and leaned forward. “Have you got any water?”

Anthea 2.0 looked around. “Not in the car, sorry. Is it urgent?”

“No. Just go straight there,” Sherlock said shortly, leaning back. John looked at him curiously and Sherlock said in explanation, “That utterly superfluous naloxone’s left a horrid taste in my mouth.”

“Superfluous?” John said. He was no longer smiling. “Sherlock, you weren’t breathing.”

Sherlock did not deign to reply to this. Of course he’d been breathing; he’d specified exactly the quantity of heroin he wanted in the smuggled syringe, and Wiggins had never miscalculated before. He swallowed ostentatiously, nose wrinkling, and settled back in his seat as though unaware they were only minutes away. John opened his mouth as though to say something else, then closed it and turned away, looking out his own window.

When they finally pulled up to the kerb Sherlock was out of the car like a shot, hoping this would be taken as part and parcel of his usual rudeness combined with the urgency of the matter at hand. He let the front door bang behind him, knowing that would bring Mrs. Hudson out, and took the stairs two at a time, shedding his coat and scarf and flinging himself into the bathroom. Door locked, taps on, into the hidden pocket in his jacket, oh thank God finally. His fingers were shaking with urgency.

Generally speaking Sherlock vastly preferred to inject—far greater precision that way—but time was short, and fortunately he’d prepared for every eventuality. He gauged the amount of cocaine with a careful eye, sniffed it up, and licked the smooth surface for good measure. Then he swigged mouthwash to bolster his story of rinsing his mouth, washed his hands, and turned off the taps. Excellent, he’d been upstairs less than a minute. Pleased with himself, Sherlock opened the door and stepped out directly into John’s fist.

Thanks to the cocaine zinging through his bloodstream the blow did not hurt as much as it should have, but it still knocked Sherlock backward—into the wall, fortunately, or he’d probably have split his skull on the tile floor. He staggered, righting himself, and John grabbed him by the jacket and punched him again. Starbursts exploded across Sherlock’s vision.

“Do you really think I’m that stupid?” John hissed. He shook Sherlock by his lapels, making his teeth rattle. He tried to bat John’s hands away but John was having none of it; he shoved Sherlock into the wall. “Bad taste in your mouth? How does this taste?” He struck out again, catching Sherlock hard in the jaw so that the coppery taste of blood exploded across his tongue.

“What are you—stop it!” Sherlock flailed wildly, connecting with something that was probably John’s upper arm without enough force to do any real damage. The John from his mind palace flashed through his head—you would be forcibly reminded which of us is a soldier and which is a drug addict—and he laughed before he could stop himself, a laugh which stopped abruptly when John grabbed him by the front of the jacket again and slammed him into the wall.

“Answer me, Sherlock,” John said. He was all cold, steady rage, his fists unshaking as they pinned Sherlock in place. “Were you using when we lived together?”

“No,” Sherlock said immediately. It was the truth. He had been using only infrequently when John had come into his life anyway, and by the time he’d gotten properly bored again he’d feared John’s disapproval enough to stay clear. “You know I wasn’t.”

“I know I never caught you,” John said cuttingly. “Why not?”

“I didn’t need it.” John’s eyebrows went up, disbelievingly. “You—there was your blog, there were plenty of cases, I—“

“You stopped before, you can stop again.”

“I don’t need to stop,” Sherlock said, annoyed. “I’m not addicted—“

“—you just use drugs when you’re bored, or to heighten your thought processes,” John said sarcastically. “Yeah, I’ve heard it before. Well, you’re not bored now, are you? And you managed Moriarty just fine last time without any drugs, so you can bloody well do it again.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do right now if you’d get out of my way and—“

The punch caught Sherlock off guard—rolling his eyes was clearly a mistake—and it knocked the back of his head squarely into the wall. The room went glittery again.

“How many times, Sherlock?” John bellowed. He was in a full-blown fury now, shaking Sherlock so hard Sherlock lost his balance and staggered. “How many times am I going to have to watch you die? Because I’m done with it. I don’t care if you’re got nine lives like a cat, I’ve had to watch you go through three and I am not. Doing it. Again.” He shook Sherlock like a rag doll, banging him against the wall as Sherlock struggled to get free. “You listen to me.” He pinned Sherlock in place, their faces only inches apart, so Sherlock with his heightened awareness saw every angry line and wrinkle. “I am done. As of now. You stop the drugs right now, today, or I walk out. You will never see me again.”

Sherlock laughed, high and manic and arrogant, because that was ridiculous. “You’ll never stay away. You tried that once before, remember? About died of boredom and that was before—“

He saw the punch coming this time but didn’t bother trying to dodge it; he was just high enough to feel invincible. He laughed again, swallowing blood and mouthwash, and John looked him straight in the eye.

“I know addiction,” John said in a calm, cold voice. “I know what it does. I saw what it did to my family. I will not watch it kill you. Last chance, Sherlock.”

Sherlock bared his teeth in a sneer, seeing John’s fist come up for the coup de grace as he opened his mouth, but to his surprise he heard his own voice say, “Don’t leave.”

BAM.

He’d been a split second too late. John’s punch knocked him flying, feet skittering on the ground and the room whirling up around him as he went down, only to be arrested in mid-crash inches from the floor.

Sherlock blinked, blinked again, tried to force his eyes to focus. He was half-kneeling, half-sprawled, with John knelt in front of him, holding him up with one hand gripping his jacket and the other fisted in his hair.

“What did you say,” John whispered.

Sherlock closed his eyes in defeat. “You heard me.”

“Why.” When Sherlock did not answer, John gripped his hair harder and shook him by it, which hurt enough to register through the cocaine. “Tell me why.”

“You know why.”

“I need to hear you say it.”

Sherlock kept his eyes closed. If he didn’t see his humiliation reflected in John’s eyes, maybe it wasn’t happening. I didn’t need the drugs because you were here. He couldn’t say that, he could never say that. He made his voice as aloof as he could. “I gave up three of my nine lives for you, what more do you want? Sentiment?”

“I don’t want you to die for me!” John shouted. He was so close Sherlock could feel the heat of his breath. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you! I want you to f*cking live for me!”

“You’re the only thing I live for!” Sherlock shouted back, now furious himself.

There was a sudden silence, the two of them staring at each other, both breathing hard. John’s hand was clenched in Sherlock’s hair so hard he felt as though he were being scalped.

“Am I hurting you?” John said suddenly.

“Yes!”

“Good,” John said, and he kissed him.

Sherlock was so shocked that for a moment he could only sit frozen, stunned into immobility. Then John leaned back and said in a worried voice, “Sherlock…” and Sherlock came to his senses, said “Yes,” and grabbed for him. It was a hard, bruising kiss, John’s mouth taking his with no softness, all brute strength and tongue, invading, possessing, laying claim. Sherlock gave himself up to it, opening his lips and letting himself be bent backward as John released his death grip on Sherlock’s hair to cup the back of his head possessively. Sherlock clutched his fingers in John’s jacket. John was holding him up with one arm around his back and one under his head; if he let go, Sherlock would shatter.

John broke away again, his breathing harsh and ragged, but Sherlock pulled him back, unable to stop the desperate noise he made. He had a brief flash of what he must look like, swooning in John’s arms, and he struggled to get upright. Closer, he had to get closer. John’s tongue against his, their teeth clashing, the heat of John’s body under his hands, every unfamiliar touch lighting up his overexcited nerve endings until Sherlock felt he would explode from sheer sensation.

John’s hands moved to cradle his head, his thumbs brushing across Sherlock’s bruised and bleeding cheekbones. His hands were soft now, and his kisses were gentling. Sherlock did not want gentle. He gripped John’s arms, tried to pull him back, but John was far stronger. He always had been. He held Sherlock’s head still with his hands and rested their foreheads together. Sherlock squeezed his eyes shut tightly. He could not look at John, not knowing what he would see in his face: anger, pity, regret, good-bye.

“You want me to stay?” John said, barely a whisper.

Sherlock nodded. He did not trust his voice.

John nodded back. “Then you know what you have to do.”

John let go. Sherlock’s eye flew open, but John was already getting to his feet, straightening his jacket as he turned. Sherlock caught a glimpse of his own blood smeared across John’s mouth. Sherlock wanted to say something, something that would bring John back, but without looking at Sherlock John walked out the door and was gone.

Sherlock could only stare after him, stunned. His blood had been on John’s lips. He lifted a hand and touched his own lips carefully; they were puffy and slightly numb. His lips had touched John’s. His mouth had been on John’s mouth, John’s tongue had touched his. A kiss. John had kissed him. The thought was so enormous he could not even think past it to the ramifications; it was a giant asteroid that had crashed into his mind palace.

Sherlock pushed himself abruptly to his feet. He had to move. The cocaine was still thrumming though his nerves, making him restless and desperate: he had to keep moving or he would explode. He needed to work, and, thank God, he had work. Sherlock ran his hands through his hair, deliberately shoving the memory of everything that had transpired in the last hour to the back of his mind, and strode over to his desk.

Chapter 2

Chapter Text

Mrs. Hudson did not turn up until evening, a small mercy Sherlock had been too busy to appreciate until she appeared. “Would you like some dinner, dear?” she asked solicitously. “Or at least some tea. Oh my.” She had caught sight of his face.

“Coffee,” Sherlock said shortly. The cocaine had worn off hours ago but he’d managed to keep himself distracted; now he was simultaneously irritable and weary, and his head hurt. “And some paracetemol. Or ibuprofen, whatever you can find.”

Sherlock drank three cups of black sweet coffee and the top of a piece of Christmas cake that was mostly icing, tossing back the Nurofen Mrs. Hudson brought him with the coffee, and felt revived. He had plenty of cocaine left, of course, and opioids that would have helped the pain far more efficiently. But John’s ultimatum was still hanging in his mind like a banner, and Sherlock believed that he meant it. At some point Sherlock was going to have to make a decision: pick up the drugs or put them down forever; give up John or face the rest of his life naked, without the protection and comfort of the drugs. He could not face that decision yet. Never mind, he could put if off for a bit. He had work to do, and for the time being he could get by with the second-rate high of caffeine and sugar.

Morning found Sherlock in the kitchen brewing yet another pot of coffee and eating a Mars bar he’d found in his sweets drawer. His phone rang, and he had to shove down a flash of hope before looking at the screen to see the name he’d known it would be: Mycroft. He’d called twice already. Sherlock let the call go to voice mail, and a minute later a text arrived with a peremptory chirp: Phone me by 9, brother dear, or we will be forced to return to you to prison.

Sherlock would have ignored this too, but he actually wanted something from Mycroft, so he rang back. “I need all the files on Moriarty’s old network in London,” he said when Mycroft picked up. He’d combed through everything that had happened since his arrest and come up with nothing that would constitute a crime worth advertising by Moriarty standards. That included his own. He’d shot a man in front of a dozen witnesses and a security camera: hardly the crime of the century.

“Certainly,” Mycroft said blandly. “Everything that can be sent electronically will come by e-mail. I will messenger over the classified material.”

Sherlock was going to insist on this arrangement anyway, but he was a little taken aback that Mycroft was not demanding Sherlock dance attendance on him in his office. “Have you arranged my pardon yet?”

“Well, that was the reason for my calls,” Mycroft said. “An interim decision has been reached. It has been determined that you are to confine yourself to the environs of 221 Baker Street until such time as this matter can be resolved. If you violate this arrangement, you will return to prison.”

“What?” Sherlock was outraged. “How am I supposed to track down Moriarty if I’m on house arrest?”

“Oh, I have no worries whatsoever on that score,” Mycroft said. “But be advised that I have expended considerable political capital on this arrangement. This is the best deal you are going to get, little brother. Make the most of it.”

Sherlock stabbed the disconnect button so hard his finger throbbed. He was down to his last frayed nerve anyway, and Mycroft had just got on it with all his considerable weight. He threw the phone furiously at the sofa, where it bounced annoyingly off a cushion. House arrest!

Sherlock stood for a moment breathing hard, then collected his coffee and crossed over to retrieve his phone; his hands were shaking annoyingly, so that he fumbled returning the phone to his pocket and dropped it again. It was tempting to throw it out the window just to make Mycroft get him another, but there was always the chance John might text. Then he stomped over to the desk, where he discovered he already had an email from Mycroft with the files attached—clearly he’d already had an underling collect them and had been waiting to fire it off until Sherlock asked, just to show he was one step ahead. He almost threw the computer, but thankfully he wasn’t quite that far gone. At least Mrs. Hudson had enough sense to stay downstairs—she must have heard the shouting.

When Mrs. Hudson finally ventured up that afternoon she found Sherlock hanging out the back window smoking furiously. “Oh, Sherlock, I do wish you wouldn’t.”

“I’m on house arrest, Mrs. Hudson,” Sherlock said without looking around. “I can hardly take a stroll to the park.”

“House arrest!” Mrs. Hudson’s hand flew to her heart. “Well. I’d better be getting combat pay for that.”

Sherlock couldn’t help crooking her a half smile, even though it hurt his face. The fact that Mycroft paid Mrs. Hudson to keep an eye on Sherlock was no secret between them; she deducted it from his rent.

Mrs. Hudson touched a tentative hand to his shoulder. “Sherlock, dear. What do you need?”

Sherlock drew in a lungful of smoke and closed his eyes. He felt terrible: shivery and feverish, stomach churning with coffee and ibuprofen, his whole body aching from the beating yesterday, every nerve raw and burning with craving. Two minutes in his bedroom and it would all be gone, but he wasn’t ready to face that decision yet. He exhaled, sending a cloud of smoke into the cold January air. “Caffeine,” he said. “Sugar. Nicotine, any form, I don’t care. A lot of everything.” Even the tiny kindness of the offer, her gentle touch, was almost too much. He couldn’t look round.

“All right, dear.” The hand fell away. “Now mind you keep the window open. And don’t get ash on the floor!”

Sherlock knew she’d already done her shopping that morning, but a little while later he heard the sound of the front door closing. He sighed, stubbed out his cigarette, and got back to work.

Sherlock forged on, hour after hour, fueled by a rotating progression of coffee, chocolate, nicotine gum, and the “energy boost’ Mrs Hudson had bought. These were a brand purportedly favored by long-distance lorry drivers and contained, according to the label, real pomegranate juice. Was the target audience concerned with anti-oxidants? Sherlock certainly wasn’t.

The leads got slimmer, and Sherlock grew more and more exhausted. After the third time his nodding head nearly struck the keyboard he jerked upright, ran his fingers through his greasy hair in frustration, and shoved back his chair. It squealed angrily at him. Sherlock looked at his watch: a few minutes after eight, in the evening? Morning? Daylight outside: morning. He had worked through the night again and still had nothing to show for it.

Sherlock closed his eyes, feeling the heavy grittiness of the lids. He had arrived at the moment he’d been putting off for two days: the point where he had to decide whether to take the drugs, or crash.

“Oh, but it’s not the crash,” came a familiar singsong voice. “It’s not that fall that kills you, remember? It’s the landing.”

Sherlock opened his eyes, and there was Moriarty sitting in his chair, whittling away at an apple.

Sherlock’s burning stomach gave a sick lurch. It wasn’t fair, he thought he’d vanquished Moriarty in his mind palace—no, John had vanquished Moriarty in his mind palace. And John wasn’t here. But neither, Sherlock reminded himself firmly, was Moriarty.

“Well, you’d know,” he said, pushing himself upright. “You’re the one who’s dead.”

Moriarty’s smile slipped a little. “My decision.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Sherlock said. Get the last word and get out. “Two of us walked onto that roof, and I’m the only one who walked off.” And then he turned on his heel and strode to the bathroom. Shower first, then decide. He could barely stand himself at this point; his teeth felt furry and the itch of his stubble was grating on his hypersensititve nerves.

Showered and shaved, Sherlock stood naked in the bathroom and considered his reflection in the mirror. He looked terrible. Two days of a coffee-and-Flake-bar diet following a week of uneaten prison food had left him gaunt and hollow, and his misshapen face was bruised every shade of blue and purple. He supposed there were bruises on his upper back as well; it certainly felt that way. The crook of his left elbow was bruised too, smaller and fainter, shading to green around the needle marks.

Sherlock looked at himself. He deliberately pushed all the voices in his head—John, Mycroft, Moriatry—outside and locked the door. If he decided to do this, it had to be for himself and no one else; he knew that somehow with a bedrock certainty. He looked at his bruises and the needle marks and his desperate hollow eyes. He took a deep breath and said out loud, very clearly, “I am better than this.”

And then he closed his eyes tight against the tears because he was afraid, so desperately afraid, that it wasn’t true.

Sherlock came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel and went straight to the desk to check his phone and computer. No messages, no breaking news. He stood for a moment with his head down, irresolute. He was exhausted enough by now he could probably fall asleep unaided—though waking up would be hell—but the need to keep chipping away at the question of the Moriarty video was strong, and with just a tiny little bump of cocaine…

It was Mrs. Hudson who saved him. As Sherlock stood paralyzed by indecision, the smell of frying bacon drifted into his swollen nose and his stomach gave a loud, inelegant rumble. He was abruptly ravenous. The fine edge of hunger had been underpinning his caffeine-nicotine buzz for the past day and a half; if he ate now, he’d pass out.

Sherlock strode to the landing and leaned over. “I wouldn’t mind some breakfast, if it’s not too much trouble,” he shouted.

Mrs. Hudson appeared in her doorway. “There’s no need to shout, young man, you’re perfectly capable of walking down these stairs. And I can see right up that towel. Put your clothes on.”

The plate was so full Mrs Hudson could barely carry it, piled high with bacon and tomato and fried bread and eggs. Sherlock managed about half of it, washing it down with mug after mug of hot sweet tea—he hadn’t realized how thirsty he was. It suddenly occurred to him that he was meant to be in Eastern Europe now, likely never to return, and he felt an abrupt rush of gratitude: to be home, for the simple comforts of familiar surroundings and food.

“Sherlock, dear,” Mrs. Hudson’s voice said, and he realized he’d been nodding off over his plate.

“Sorry,” Sherlock said, blinking. Now that his belly was full he could happily have laid his head down on the table and gone to sleep right there. “Think I’ll close my eyes for a bit. Don’t let anyone up, especially not my brother.” John was the exception, of course, but Mrs. Hudson knew that.

Sherlock decided on his bedroom as being quieter. He shucked his dressing gown, pulled the blinds against the pale winter sunlight, and slid wearily into bed. He felt that wave of gratitude again. After a sleepless week on a thin prison cot, the soft familiarity of his own sheets and pillows seemed blissful. Maybe this could be enough: puzzles, tea, his safe cozy flat.

In that unguarded moment of happiness the memory finally slipped past the barriers he’d erected. John. John’s hands holding his face, John’s lips stopping his heart. The longing that swept over him was nothing like the craving for drugs: the intensity of it drowned him, he could not breathe under its weight.

But Sherlock’s exhaustion was so profound it overwhelmed even heartache. Before the tears that slid from under his clenched lids had reached the pillow, he was asleep.

Sherlock woke into a dreary twilight feeling terrible. What had he been thinking? He couldn’t do this. How had he ever imagined he’d be able to wake up every day and face the rest of his life without drugs? He might as well throw himself off the roof right now and save everyone the intervening misery.

I am better than this.

Sherlock frowned. For a moment he’d thought it was John’s voice, but it wasn’t, and it certainly wasn’t Moriarty’s. It was his.

“I’m really not,” he said aloud.

Look at the time.

Sherlock brought his wrist up and peered at his watch in the gloom. A bit after five. With a small shock of surprise he realized that, allowing for the time it took that last hit of cocaine to wear off, he’d now been clean over forty-eight hours.

Well. That was…maybe not a lot, but it was definitely not nothing. Sherlock rolled onto his back to take stock. His back and head were still sore, but the achy, flu-like feeling was receding; his nose was still runny—he swiped at it with his sleeve—but the nausea was much better. Past the worst of the physical withdrawal then. The tiredness and irritability and the longing to claw off his own skin would take quite a while longer, but those symptoms were psychological: he could handle that. He could do this. Filled with renewed determination, Sherlock pushed back the covers and got to his feet. Time to go all in.

“Mrs. Hudson!” he bellowed, leaning out over the landing again. “Need a box.”

“Did you get the one behind the brick in the fireplace? It still looks dusty.”

“Of course I—wait. You know about the brick in the fireplace?”

“Well, it is my house, dear,” Mrs. Hudson said with considerable patience.

“Double check the kitchen then, I’m going to do the bath.”

At least Mrs. Hudson wouldn’t have found this one, Sherlock comforted himself as he lay on the floor unscrewing the trap under the basin. Nobody would: it never would have occurred to them that Sherlock Holmes knew the first thing about plumbing. He emerged from the bathroom to hear the sound of hammering coming from the stairs.

“What are you doing? I never had a hiding place in the stairs.”

Mrs. Hudson took a nail out of her mouth and set it in place. “No, this one was John’s. I thought you could use those, considering.” She nodded at a heap of dusty cigarette packs.

“Oh God yes,” Sherlock said, gathering them up. He was almost out, and Mrs. Hudson certainly wouldn’t buy him cigarettes. “Did he have any others?”

When they were both satisfied that the flat was clean, Mrs. Hudson took herself back downstairs for her tea and telly and Sherlock rang Lestrade.

“I need you to come to Baker Street.”

“Happy New Year to you too,” Lestrade said. “And welcome back. What is it this time? Did you drop another burglar?”

“No, someone’s planted drugs in my flat whilst I was away. I need you to come and fetch them.”

There was a pause. “I was on my way home, you realize.”

“Then I’m not interrupting any police work,” Sherlock said. “I would bring them round myself but—“

“You’re on house arrest, yeah, I know,” Lestrade finished. He sighed. “All right. Don’t go anywhere—“ Sherlock rolled his eyes—“and I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Sherlock rang off and then went to change. At the last minute he remembered the little packet in the hidden pocket of his jacket and dashed back to add it to the box.

Lestrade came stumping up the stairs followed, to Sherlock’s annoyance, by Sally Donovan.

“What’s she doing here?” Sherlock demanded.

Lestrade raised his eyebrows. “Witness,” he said. “You think I’m just going to take a box of contraband and drive off on my own? My career’s taken enough hits thanks to you.”

“Not my idea, believe me,” Donovan said. “I worked the weekend.”

“How terribly tiring,” Sherlock said acidly. “I’d take you to dinner to show my gratitude, but…”

“Thank God for small favors,” Donovan muttered. “Who did that to your face? I’d like to buy him dinner.”

“All right, that’s enough.” Lestrade hefted the box with a sigh. “Come on, Sergeant, the sooner we get this back the sooner we can go home.”

“Wait, I need your phone,” Sherlock said.

“My phone? What for?”

“To take a picture.”

Lestrade handed over the phone and picked up the box again, joined by Donovan, and Sherlock snapped the picture: Lestrade looking bemused, Donovan thoroughly put out. “Could you text that to John?” he asked as quietly as he could, handing it over, although he knew Donovan would certainly overhear him.

The flat seemed very quiet after they left. Sherlock, standing at the door, felt the dark edges of despair nibbling at his heels, so he turned swiftly and went to the kitchen to make coffee. Keep moving, that was the key; that had always been the key. He checked his mobile, which showed no messages, and carried his coffee over to the computer. He thought he might as well check the news before getting back to the files, though he felt no great optimism about either task. Then he pulled up the Guardian and almost spat coffee all over the desk.

“Where’s Lestrade?” Sherlock demanded when Donovan answered the phone.

“He’s driving the car. Obviously.” Donovan sounded gleeful at getting this dig in. “Here, I’ll put you on speaker.”

“Don’t tell me you found some more,” Lestrade said wearily.

“No, I didn’t find any more. Why didn’t you tell me about Tyler Austin? Why didn’t you ring me earlier?”

“Who?” Lestrade said blankly.

“That kid, the American film star, the one found this morning,” Donovan said on the speaker.

“I thought they thought that was a suicide.”

“Of course it’s not a suicide, how can you possibly—“ shouted Sherlock at the same time Donovan, overlapping him, answered, “Not sure yet.”

Lestrade’s voice became louder again, evidently talking toward the phone. ”I didn’t ring you because it’s not our case, if it even is a case, and besides, you’re on house arrest! What were you going to do?”

Damn it. Sherlock had temporarily forgotten that obstacle. “This has Moriarty’s fingerprints all over it, especially if you lot are already thinking it’s a suicide. Can’t you take it over for that?”

“Yeah, you want to explain that to me, by the way? I thought Moriarty was supposed to be dead.”

“He is dead. Or rather, Jim is dead. This will be his successor, announcing his coronation. Moriarty 2.0, you might say.”

“Like the Dread Pirate Roberts?” Donovan.

“Look, Sherlock, I don’t think your take on this is going to be enough to get me on this case.”

Sherlock looked longingly at his cigarettes—why was everyone so abysmally stupid--but chewed at this thumbnail instead. “Can you at least get me the crime scene photos?” he asked, hating the pleading note in his voice.

There was some indistinct muttering—Donovan putting her hand over the phone or dropping it to her lap, possibly—and then Lestrade’s voice came again: “Listen, we’re almost back to the Yard. Let me get this checked in and then I’ll see what’s going on, okay?”

“Fine,” Sherlock said ungraciously, ringing off. He looked at his cigarettes again but the urge to read everything he could about Tyler Austin’s death was stronger, so he carried on irritably gnawing at his nails. Tyler Austin, Tyler Austin. Tyler Austin was an American actor who had been living in London whilst he filmed a supporting role in an action film. He’d been a relative unknown when he’d been signed, but a recently-released “three-hankie weepie” in which he’d played the hunky but doomed love interest had made him a breakout star. When he hadn’t arrived on set that morning a production assistant had been dispatched to his flat, where she found the young heartthrob dead in the Jacuzzi in his master suite. No word on whether alcohol or…his phone rang.

“So here’s the situation,” Lestrade said. Sherlock could tell from the pitch of his voice and the relative quiet that he was in his office, tipped back in his chair with his feet on the table. “The Detective Inspector in charge of the case is called MacDougall. She’s new, just made DI about six months ago, and this is her first high-profile case. I doubt she’s going to be keen on a consultant swooping in trying to tell her what to do. But as it happens Donovan knows her from before—they worked together a while back—and so she’s gone to have a word. Donovan thinks she’ll be more likely to listen to her than a more senior inspector and a man—she didn’t say that bit, but I could tell she was thinking it.”

“This should have been your case all along,” Sherlock said impatiently. “I’ll just call my brother and—“

“Oh no you won’t. Things don’t work that way, Sherlock, and if you try that I’ll refuse to take it. Can you just shut up and listen for once? Sally likes MacDougall. She says she’s clever, and cares more about justice than getting credit. She thinks she can talk MacDougall into letting you in on this, especially since with you being on house arrest you can’t show up and start bossing her around.”

Sherlock chewed on his thumbnail, irritated. He desperately wanted someone he could boss around, but he could tell by the finality in Lestrade’s voice that this was the best he was likely to get. “Fine,” he said a little sulkily.

“Good. Now have you got any more orders or can I go home now?”

“I suppose so,” Sherlock said, still churlish, and then added reluctantly, “thank you.”

Now he really needed a cigarette. Sherlock refilled his mug and took coffee and cigarette to the back window, but to his surprise he had smoked only half of it before his phone rang with an unfamiliar number. “Sherlock Holmes.”

“It’s me,” Donovan said. She sounded clipped, but not particularly hostile. “I’ve talked to DI MacDougall. She’s willing to let you have a look at what they’ve got, on the condition—“

“No, no, and yes,” Sherlock said, stubbing out his cigarette and almost cracking his head on the window in his eagerness. “How soon can you get me the photos?”

“You don’t know what I was going to say,” Donovan protested.

“No I won’t interfere, no I won’t leak anything to the press, and of course I’ll pass anything I find along to her. How long?”

“I suppose you did know,” Donovan said. “About an hour. Will you shut up a minute? MacDougall’s willing to let you see the whole file, photos and witness lists and all, but they’re still wrapping things up here for tonight. I’ve got some paperwork to do anyway so I’ll wait around til they’re done and then send you the whole lot in a zip file.”

Sherlock paused. He could not fail to recognize that Donovan was doing him an enormous favor, and he had an uncomfortable feeling he knew why. He very much did not wish to encourage any expression of pity, but even he could not be so rude as to be ungrateful. “Thank you,” he managed finally in a very stiff voice.

“Yeah…listen.” Oh God, here it came. Why hadn’t he just rung off? “I know you need to keep busy right now. Some of the others, er, even…they don’t understand. They think, you know, that you deserve it. And, er. I know better.”

Well, that could have gone worse. Time to cut it off before they both died of embarrassment. “Yes, well. As I said.” He tried to keep his voice from sounding too curt. “Thank you, Detective Sergeant.”

“I’ll email you as soon as I have the file,” Donovan said, sounding relieved, and then thank God she rang off.

Sherlock shoved the conversation immediately to his brain’s rubbish bin and returned to his laptop with alacrity. Tyler Austin had been in a relationship with a young American singer-actress but the terms of that were rather flexible, at least according to the tabloids; he had been linked with numerous other women in both London and at home. There were well-publicized accounts of quarrels about this and—ah, this was interesting: Austin had returned yesterday from a holiday trip home, going straight to the studio from the airport, and by at least one account had been unceremoniously dumped whilst in America. Sherlock doubted this had broken the young man’s heart, which seemed to be a singularly shallow organ, but supposed a limited imagination could see this as grounds for suicide.

Sherlock was deep in a breathlessly racy tabloid tale involving a Caribbean bacchanal when his text alert sounded. He groped for this phone, not really looking at it, and then dropped it on his lap when he realized the text was from John.

Bart’s tomorrow, 12:00. Molly’s expecting you.

On house arrest, Sherlock typed and then paused, suddenly uncertain. Did that sound as though he were trying to get out of going? Should he perhaps have Mycroft ring John? The alert sounded again.

I’ve cleared it with Mycroft. You’re allowed to leave for medical reasons.

So he already knew. Did everyone know? Sherlock felt a wave of renewed irritation, picturing Mycroft, John, Lestrade, possibly his bloody parents all sitting around Mycroft’s study sipping tea and discussing him in sanctimoniously worried tones. Sod this, he had work to do. Sherlock almost tossed the phone aside without answering, but at the last minute he went back and slowly typed Fine. Then he sent the text and went back to his tabloids, not even noticing he had gnawed his thumbnail down to the quick.

Donovan’s email arrived an hour or so later and Sherlock pounced on it, filled with a gnawing worry that it would only tell him that the unknown DI MacDougall had changed her mind after all. But the file was there, big and fat and enticing, and when he opened it there were the crime scene photos and the witness lists and the notes, all spread out on the screen like a crime buffet. Sherlock felt a real smile spread across his face for the first time in what seemed like months. This was what he really craved: the fizzy delight of a problem to solve, better than any drug in the world, better than anything.

Not better than John—

Sherlock shoved that thought firmly behind heavy bolted doors. He had work to do.

Chapter 3

Chapter Text

Sherlock worked happily through the night, going through first the witness statements and then the crime scene photos. Tyler Austin had returned from the film’s holiday break the day before, going straight to the studio from the airport. According to multiple witnesses he had been in good spirits, acknowledging the breakup with what appeared to be rueful good humor, which had been verified by the ex-girlfriend in America (amicable, she claimed). A studio car had then taken him to his rented house. Security cameras outside verified him entering the house, the alarm panel had then blinked back on—indicating it had been set—and no one had entered until the PA arrived next morning. From the time the PA entered until she rang emergency services had been about two minutes, consistent with her report of calling through the small house until she reluctantly peered into the master suite.

The crime scene reports were more interesting. The house sounded barely more lived in than a hotel—minimal personal effects, kitchen almost bare save for some protein bars and a several bottles of alcohol, carefully detailed, most unopened and many still bearing Christmas ribbons. Gifts then. No pharmaceuticals whatsoever were found in the medicine cabinet; a bottle of sleeping pills was in the still mostly packed carry-on suitcase, almost full. Austin had been found in the Jacuzzi, a highball glass floating in the water and a half-full bottle of whisky sitting on the end. Austin’s Jacuzzi habit had also been verified: he had apparently suffered a mild back injury on a previous film and had specified a large whirlpool tub be provided in his accommodations as part of his contract. No one knew whether the whisky was a usual part of his routine, but Sherlock had already unearthed a profile in GQ where he waxed rhapsodic about his favorite drink, something called Bulleit Bourbon. Sherlock pulled up the crime scene photo showing the bottle. Sure enough: Bulleit Frontier Bourbon Whiskey. Whisky? Whiskey? Bourbon Whiskey? Sherlock’s knowledge of alcohol was limited to John’s favorite brand; this might bear further research. At the moment he was more interested in the fact that the bottle had been dusted and shown no fingerprints, which a note from forensics theorized was due to Austin’s fingers being wet when he had lifted it to pour.

Well, that was easy enough to verify. Sherlock got up and went into the kitchen, where he found the bottle of whisky John had left in the cupboard. A bit dusty, but not too bad. Sherlock ran his hand under the tap, picked it up and mimed pouring, then set it back down and snapped a picture with his phone so he could be sure where he had touched it when the water had dried. Then he put on a fresh pot of coffee and chain-smoked a few cigarettes out the window, waiting.

When Sherlock dusted the bottle with his own fingerprint powder, the places where his fingers had touched did show only indistinct smears. But the rest of the bottle was covered in fingerprints. Sherlock sat quietly for a moment, looking at it, wondering if he dusted the flat how many other places would show those ghostly imprints of John’s fingers. He realized he was touching his cheek, brushing the spot where John’s thumb had rested with his own fingers. He did not need dusting powder for that; the feel of John’s fingers was seared into his skin like a brand.

If John never came back, how long would it take for all traces of him to fade?

Sherlock shook himself and stood up. The bottle in Tyler Austin’s house should have been a mess of fingerprints: his own, the clerk’s at the duty-free, whoever had shelved the bottle there, packed it into a crate where it was made, taken it off the line back in America. Instead it was entirely clean. Sherlock printed off the picture, taped it onto his wall, and looked at it.

Hmmm.

When he had finished dissecting the crime scene data Sherlock moved on to researching witnesses. As many of these turned out to be rather famous, there was a lot of data to plough through. Sherlock got so caught up that he didn’t realize how far into the next morning he’d gotten until he glanced at his phone for his usual text-from-John check and realized he would be late for his meeting with Molly. For a minute he considered simply not going, but then he imagined how John would react to this and dashed into the shower so fast he knocked his chair over.

Mrs. Hudson heard the water running and brought up a fresh tea tray—Sherlock had waved off the last one—and Sherlock gobbled down the tea and biscuits as he scrambled around the flat, looking for his shoes and explaining with his mouth full that his house arrest hadn’t been lifted; he was just going for a drugs test.

“Oh, I’ll put on some more tea,” Mrs. Hudson said. “You’ll want to be well hydrated, dilutes the—“

“No time,” Sherlock said, grabbing another biscuit and his coat. “Phone a cab for me, please?”

Mrs. Hudson scurried off and met him at the front door with a bottle of water, and Sherlock dove into the waiting taxi and ended up sliding into the lab bang on the nose of twelve.

Molly looked up with a rather stony expression, which melted into shock when she saw his face.

“Well,” she said, “I suppose slapping you this time would be…”

“Adding insult to injury?” Sherlock suggested.

“Superfluous,” Molly said, not smiling. She handed him a plastic container of a type with which Sherlock was intimately familiar.

Sherlock handed it back. “I want you to do a blood test.”

“Why?” Molly said, taken aback.

“I want there to be no doubt whatsoever about the sample,” Sherlock said, unbuttoning his right cuff. “And as I’m sure you’ve no interest in watching me urinate…”

“No, you’re right there,” Molly agreed. She collected supplies and said, “All right, put your arm on the bench—are these your best veins then?”

“They must be. I’m not coordinated enough to shoot up with my left hand, not that I haven’t tried.”

For some reason this admission seemed to melt the last of Molly’s frosty reserve. She tied the tourniquet and prodded gently at his inner arm. “Make a fist.” Sherlock squeezed his hand shut, and Molly slid the needle in, frowning a little. “Sorry. I’m a bit out of practice with live…oh, there we are.”

Sherlock exhaled as his blood flashed into the tube and reached to snap off the tourniquet. Good thing he’d drunk Mrs. Hudson’s water, he thought, taking the gauze pad Molly handed him and pressing it to the crook of his elbow as she prepped the sample. He felt a bit light-headed and nauseated all the same.

“Here’s a plaster if it’s stopped bleeding,” Molly said, coming back over. “So where’s John then?”

He’d expected the question, even braced for it, but it stung all the same. “Work. Home. How should I know?”

“No, I mean…” she made a little gesture at their surroundings with her hand. “Why isn’t he here?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Job? Wife? Baby on the way?”

“Sherlock.”

Sherlock sighed. “I’ve been sent to Coventry. Or the doghouse, I don’t know. John’s cut me off until I clean up. Last straw, won’t watch me destroy myself, never again, probably a lot more I didn’t bother listening to but the point is I’m on my own until John’s satisfied I’ve given it up for good.”

“Oh,” Molly said, sounding surprised. “That’s…”

“…rather harsh?”

“I was going to say, not a terrible idea,” Molly said a little tartly. “Stop finishing my sentences. That’ll be about fifteen minutes, want anything? I’m going to run for a sandwich.”

“No, I’m—a cup of tea, if you don’t mind,” Sherlock said. It was Molly’s lunch break, but she might not go if he didn’t want anything. “And a pastry if they’re fresh.”

When she’d gone Sherlock checked the small puncture, stuck the plaster on it, and rolled his sleeve back down. Then he made himself comfortable at the desk computer. There was a rumor that one of Tyler Austin’s dalliances had been with a former girlfriend of one of his current costars; might be something there…

“TMZ?” Molly said, making him jump. He’d been so engrossed he hadn’t heard her come in.

“Case,” Sherlock said dismissively, accepting the tea and packet of custard creams Molly handed him.

“How’ve you got a case? I thought you were on house arrest.”

“Which is certainly making it challenging,” Sherlock said drily. “But I think it’s to do with Moriarty, so I’ve been able to—“

Molly choked on her sandwich. “But he’s dead! You promised me he was dead!”

“Jim is dead,” Sherlock said. “There’s no doubt whatsoever about that. But Moriarty was never his real name, we knew that all along. I realized…I’ve done a great deal of research into the history of crime in London, and I was looking into a, er, a similar crime and I realized there was a pattern; there’s always been a Moriarty here, a spider at the center of the web. I believe someone’s stepped into his shoes, if you will.”

“So Moriarty is like the Dread Pirate Roberts?”

“Why do people keep saying that? Who’s Dread Pirate Roberts?”

“It’s from a film—wait, you saw it! The Princess Bride! I remember ages ago, John saying he’d made you watch it, you were awful—“

Sherlock frowned, eyes flicking as he searched his mental file for Stupid things which should not be allowed to take up valuable brain space but cannot be completely deleted because they have to do with John. “There was a ridiculous love story,” he said. “And a Sicilian. He was the only worthwhile character and he died early on.”

“I suppose that’s the way you’d see it, yes.”

Sherlock remembered now. “Exactly like Dread Pirate Roberts.”

“Oh, well, that’s all right then. I mean, as long as this one doesn’t have any personal interest in me.” Molly took another bite and chewed meditatively. “So what’s the case then?”

“Tyler Austin, the American film star who was found in his—“ Molly’s eyes went wide and for a moment he thought she was going to choke on her sandwich again. “You didn’t do his post-mortem, did you? Did you?”

Molly shook her head, holding out a hand to forestall him as she swallowed and took a swig of water. “No, but Roohi did. We were in line at the café just now and she was telling me. She didn’t find anything on the post.”

“What do you mean, she didn’t find anything? He died of something.”

“He drowned. That’s what Roohi said, anyway, his lungs were full of water. But she doesn’t know why. No signs of trauma or struggle, his brain looked fine—no bleeds—no pulmonary embolus, nothing. She’s thinking maybe a conduction anomaly, because that wouldn’t show anything on the post--some kind of arrhythmia that made him lose consciousness. She’s sending for genetic markers.”

“What about the tox screen?”

“Negative. Blood alcohol level was…I forget what it was, but not high enough to make him pass out, and there was nothing on the routine screen. The detective inspector was there for the post and she said the police lab had already checked and there was nothing at the scene.”

“I think somebody cleaned the scene,” Sherlock said. He had forgotten all about his tea and biscuits and now he leaned forward, intent on his thought. “I think there was something in the whisky that wouldn’t show on a routine tox screen. Something that would make him slip under the water and drown without a struggle.”

Molly was no idiot. “GHB,” she said, catching his excitement. “Or ketamine. I should tell Roohi—“

“No, let me do it,” Sherlock said quickly. “I need to get on the Detective Inspector’s good side. But I need to know I’m right first.”

Molly stared at him as his meaning sank in. “Oh no,” she said. “No. Absolutely not.”

“Molly, you know there’s plenty of blood already taken, you lot always get more than enough. It would just take a tiny bit—you needn’t take any extra time, just get the sample for me and I’ll do it. If I’m right, then I’m right about someone removing evidence from the scene and I know what to do. But if I’m wrong…I can’t waste this inspector’s time, she’ll never work with me again.” It was killing Sherlock to not be able to just ring up Lestrade and demand what he wanted.

“Ohhh,” Molly groaned. She stood up and carried her empty wrappers to the bin, tossing them in rather more vehemently than necessary. Then her attention was caught by a strip of paper hanging out of the machine next to her. She tore it off and scanned it, then handed it to Sherlock. “Congratulations,” she said. “You’re clean.”

He’d known he would be, but could not help the little spike of pride that went through him at the sight of it. He gave her his most ingratiating smile. “Deserves a reward, don’t you think?”

Mycroft texted him whilst Sherlock was crowding Molly at the lab bench. Allow me to remind you, brother mine, that you are to return directly to Baker Street after testing. Violation of these terms

Sherlock didn’t bother reading the whole thing. Molly’s running another sample. SH, he typed, feeling pleased with himself. Why lie when you could just shade the truth?

There was a pause which Sherlock enjoyed, knowing Mycroft hated having to ask a question he didn’t already know the answer to. Finally Mycroft responded I will expect both results and Sherlock pocketed his phone. “Tell my brother you ran the test twice,” he said to Molly.

“Wha—oh, right,” she said, understanding. “Not John though?”

“John’s not the one keeping tabs on how long I’m away.”

“Right.”

They both stood staring at the machine as though willing it to work faster. Sherlock sensed Molly carefully not looking at him. He had the unpleasant feeling he sometimes got that she could see right through him: his presence there, undragged, unaccompanied, spoke of a vulnerability he didn’t want her to mention. Sherlock picked up his tea, found it cold, and dipped a custard cream in anyway. “Biscuit?”

“We really shouldn’t have this in here,” Molly said, taking a custard cream anyway. The machine gave a satisfied beep and she shoved the whole thing in her mouth, giving a muffled shriek as she pulled out the result.

“Ketamine,” Sherlock breathed. “Well well well.” He and Molly grinned at each other and he felt that bright fizzy sparkle again, the glorious high of making a connection and being proved right.

“Now what?”

“Now I get the autopsy and labs reports from the police and after a decent interval of time tell them I think they should test for ketamine and gamma hydroxybutyrate. Thank you for that, by the way, I might not have thought of that one.”

“And meanwhile you follow your own lead.”

“As best I can,” Sherlock said, sighing. He glanced at his watch. “I have to go. You’ll give the results to John and Mycroft?”

“John said you’d be back next week, if…”

“I’ll be back next week,” Sherlock said.

“Sherlock…”

He looked back over his shoulder at her, eyebrows raised.

“Well done.”

In the cab going home Sherlock texted Sally Donovan with a polite request for the forensics reports, but he heard nothing back. This set him to chewing his fingernails again. He needed the reports. Needed them for the case, but more importantly so that he could keep going, keep working, not wondering--no, he was not thinking about that. The taste of blood in his mouth brought a bright flash of memory and Sherlock jerked his bleeding finger away and balled his hands into fists, willing himself to think about the ketamine, about the case.

His phone finally chirped as he was hanging up his coat.

Sorry in court today no phones. I’ve called Mags and she’ll get you the reports.

Sherlock texted back his thanks, knowing she’d get them later. Mags was the departmental secretary, a shrewd battle-axe type who knew everything that went on—if the reports weren’t already in his inbox, they would be by the time he had the coffee ready.

The forensics were there. Sherlock skimmed the lab reports—something with the whisky bottle niggled at him, but nothing really leapt out—and then read the post-mortem carefully, but there was nothing beyond what he had already heard second-hand from Molly. Cause of death was listed as drowning, but why a healthy twenty-five year old man should slip under the water apparently without a struggle remained unknown. Roohi had indeed ordered genetic analysis for Brugada syndrome, which would take weeks.

Tyler Austin didn’t die of Brugada syndrome, Sherlock thought with smug satisfaction. He rubbed a finger over his lips, considering his options. He’d never been given a way to contact DI MacDougall directly, which was probably a deliberate precaution on her part, but worked to his advantage here. He needed to stay a few steps ahead. In the end he sent an email to Sergeant Donovan, saying rather cryptically that the forensics didn’t add up and asking her to pass on his advice to have the pathologist do a date rape panel. If MacDougall was as good as Donovan seemed to think, she’d do it from a sense of thoroughness if nothing else. Of course, Donovan wouldn’t even get the email until she got out of court, so that left him a comfortable head start. Back to the lab report.

It didn’t take Sherlock long to find what had caught his attention earlier. It wasn’t one something, it was two. According to witness statements, Austin had come directly to work from the airport, bringing the bottle of Bulleit Bourbon Whiskey 10 Year with him--he’d bought it in America--and opening it for the first time later that day in the presence of his costar Matthew Girondin, with whom he’d shared a drink to mark the end of his relationship with the American starlet. Both Girondin and Austin’s PA said they’d each had only one drink, but according to the lab report, the 750 ml bottle was less than half full. Theoretically Austin could have drunk down half the bottle whilst relaxing alone in his Jacuzzi, but that didn’t add up; Austin’s blood alcohol level was consistent with three drinks at most, not ten. Had MacDougall noticed? Sherlock was more interested in the chemistry analysis of the bottle contents, which was the other thing that nagged at him: grain derived alcohol with trace elements consistent with whisky; what elements, what were the elements? He tapped around the screen until he found the analysis appended to the end of the report. Highly soluble carbon particles. Smoke. Not wood smoke, peat smoke. Yes. This was what had caught his attention: the contents of the bottle were not whiskey but whisky! God, he needed more coffee.

Sherlock smoked out the window whilst his coffee brewed. It would have been nice to be able to verify his findings in the lab, but he didn’t dare risk it--he knew Mycroft well enough to know he wasn’t bluffing about the house arrest. Never mind. He was fairly sure of his conclusion. The killer hadn’t known the difference between Scotch whisky and bourbon whiskey, but Tyler Austin would have, and that meant the switch had been made after he’d drunk it, and that pointed directly to one person. And that left the big question, the overtime goal shot, the raise and call, the one for all the marbles: had that person known how to contact the latest incarnation of James Moriarty?

Back to work.

Hours later, Sherlock pushed back his chair and stretched his stiff neck, grinning from ear to ear. He had his quarry in his sights, the buzz of the chase still singing in his veins and nothing left but the endgame now. God, he loved this feeling; it was better than any drug. Sherlock checked his watch and saw with mild surprise that it was after two in the morning; he’d been focused so intently that he hadn’t even thought to check his phone.

The screen was empty, which was not, absolutely not, disappointing, but there was an email from Donovan. MacDougall had ordered the lab panel and appreciated his suggestion, and Donovan was passing along the rest of that day’s notes. Sherlock noted with a flicker of discomfort that the email had been sent after eight in the evening; she’d stayed late to get him the information again. Reluctant as he was to admit it, Sherlock was unquestionably in Donovan’s debt, a position that made him extremely uncomfortable.

Well...he would deal with that later. Sherlock pulled up the case notes, but it seemed the team had spent most of the day working on Austin’s family and friends back in America. Barking up the wrong tree, Sherlock thought with satisfaction. There was nothing else he could do until morning. Sleep would be impossible without a needle or a handful of pills and that was out of the question; he had to be in top form in a few hours in any case. Keep moving, he had to keep moving, stopping meant thinking and he couldn't risk that. Maybe some music. He hadn’t played in weeks, and if he played something hard and vigorous enough he might wear himself out to the point that he could catch a catnap. Best to put some plasters on first, he thought, looking ruefully at the crescents of dried blood where the ends of his nails should be.

But playing his violin had always been Sherlock’s best access to his emotions--for years, it had been his only access--and he came out of the frenzy of Sarasate’s Carmen Fantasia into slower, sadder music that grew slower and sadder still until he stopped abruptly in the middle of John and Mary’s wedding waltz. He put the violin carefully in its case and then stood for a long time with his head bowed and his hands fisted in his hair: don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t.

Chapter 4

Chapter Text

At seven AM precisely, Sherlock stood by the window--showered, shaved, dressed to the nines and as impeccable in appearance as it was possible for someone who had recently been at the receiving end of John Watson’s fists to be--and dialed a number from the witness list. If the police ever found out about this he would be bloody well buggered, to use Lestrade’s term, but it was his best shot at getting the information he needed.

The phone rang several times. The film shoot was in limbo until the studio could decide whether it could be salvaged, but Sherlock had no idea what this meant for the rank and file: did they still come into work or stay at home covertly searching out new jobs? Best to call early just in case. This particular employee seemed to be taking advantage of the opportunity to have a lie-in.

“Hello?”

The voice was groggy and half asleep. “Aimee Lister?”

“Yeah?”

“This is Sherlock Holmes. Are you familiar with that name?” Sherlock had finally reconciled with the fact that most people seemed to have a vague awareness of who he was, which could on occasion be useful.

“The detective with the blog?”

“That’s not--never mind. The detective, yes. So you know I’m not affiliated with the police.”

“But you work with the police,” Aimee Lister said, apparently waking up.

“When our interests coincide. In this case I am pursuing rather a different agenda. Tyler Austin’s death does not seem to have left the world a notably poorer place, and my priority is information which I believe you to possess. If I’m correct, I would be able to provide you with substantial assistance, which you are likely to need very soon. How soon can you come to Baker Street?”

There was a brief silence. Sherlock hoped he had not left the woman too thoroughly rattled to speak, but blindsiding her was part of his strategy: she’d be more likely to follow his lead that way. “Er...where’d you say again?”

Sherlock told her, and Aimee said, “Eight? I could be there in an hour, I think.”

“I’ll be expecting you at eight,” Sherlock said with a hint of threat in his voice, and rang off. If she decided to do a runner he was bloody well double buggered, but she hadn’t sounded that stupid on the phone.

Sherlock spent the time composing an email laying out his case--he’d have to persuade Aimee Lister to turn herself in, obviously, but no reason he couldn't get credit for working it out--and pacing around the flat chewing his nails. The bell rang at a few minutes before eight. “Coffee?” Sherlock offered, going for disarming and flashing his best fake smile.

“That’d be brilliant, thanks, I’ve drunk all this,” Aimee said, holding out her travel mug. Aimee Lister was tall, with arty glasses and a mass of dark hair twisted into a careless knot. She was wearing a man’s cashmere jumper that Sherlock briefly found himself coveting.

“All right,” he said, taking a seat opposite her after handing over the coffee. She was beginning to relax a little; time to knock her back off balance. “I know Tyler Austin was murdered and I know how you did it. After he and Matthew Girondin shared a drink, you put ketamine into the bottle and stowed it back in his bags. You knew he’d have a drink that night in his Jacuzzi and you knew what was likely to happen. I don’t think you planned the cover-up because it was sloppy and you’re not a sloppy person; I think you hadn’t counted on the possibility of being sent to his house when he didn’t appear at work next morning. You rang emergency services just as you told the police and then you thought you’d seize the opportunity to cover your tracks, and that’s where you slipped up. One.” Sherlock held up one finger. “Knocking the glass in the tub was clever, diluted out any remaining ketamine so it couldn’t be detected, but pouring out the bourbon and replacing it? Mistake. You put in too little. You should have marked the level and filled it to precisely the same point. Two. You refilled it with whisky from the kitchen, probably Laphroaig, there was a bottle still with a Christmas ribbon on it that looked only half-full in the crime scene photos. Bourbon and whisky are not the same. If you’d planned ahead you could have bought a similar type, brought it with you--a travel mug like that would have been perfect, nobody would have thought to notice. Three. You wiped off the bottle. That was your big mistake--the police could and did overlook the first two, though I didn’t, but you should have let it be; your fingerprints wouldn’t have drawn attention on the bottle; they could have gotten there the night before. You panicked, and here we are. So, as I said, I know how and I know who, but what I don’t know is why.” Sherlock leaned forward and fixed Aimee with his most intense stare.

Aimee stared back at him, looking utterly shocked. “Why, Miss Lister,” Sherlock said, wondering if he had begun to look a little deranged. “I need to know.” He really didn’t. Truthfully, he didn’t even care, but Aimee Lister cared, and he needed her to think he sympathized.

“He was going to be Scythius!” Aimee blurted.

Sherlock blinked. “What?”

“Scythius! From Undrowned! They were keeping it a secret because they hadn’t cast Ander yet. They signed Tyler Austin to be Scythius, Tyler, with his calling everybody ‘bro’ and his stupid gay jokes and he can’t even do a proper English accent! Oh my God, you should have heard him, he’s so awful!” She seemed ready to cry.

“I haven’t understood a word you just said,” Sherlock said blankly.

“You’ve seriously never heard of Undrowned?”

Undrowned turned out to be a book. Or more than one. (“A trilogy.”) It had a devoted following, a fairly large contingent of which was convinced that, despite the putative hero’s heterosexual relationships, the core of the story was an unspoken romance between him and the dark, brooding, semi-immortal anti-hero, Scythius.

“I love those books. I mean, they’re everything to me,” Aimee said. She really was crying now. “I’d heard they were going to make a movie, and I was so excited and then to put Tyler Austin in it! My God, he’s so...do you even know why I was working as his assistant? I didn’t want to, I was a production assistant. He shagged his assistant whilst he was still with Kylie Martinez and then next morning told her to sneak out the back in case there were any press around and to be sure and send Kylie flowers from him in case she caught word of it! So she quit on the spot and I got stuck with him until I could hire someone new. It was right before the holidays too. I would have hired the first person who showed up only he comes back from lunch with his agent one day all proud of himself and drops these books on the table and says ‘Hey babe, you ever read these?’ Babe. And that’s how I found out he’d got signed.” She blew her nose furiously into her sodden handkerchief and Sherlock wordlessly handed her his own.

“So then you…”

“Decided he had to go, yeah,” she said, sniffling. “Not just for me, I did it for all the Underlings.”

Sherlock had already decided they need to move on from the baffling subject of her motive and onto what he was really after. “So what did you do?”

“Oh, you know.” She shrugged and sniffed again, wiping her eyes. “You know how I did it, you already said.”

“Yes, but you didn’t think that up yourself,” Sherlock said. He pinned her with a hard stare. “And you aren’t the type of woman who befriends men in the habit of carrying ketamine, are you?”

“No, course not,” Aimee answered before she saw the trap. “I mean--I just asked around, got it in a club.”

“No you didn’t.” Sherlock leaned back, surveying Aimee over the tips of his fingers. “Shall I tell you something else I know? I know that your brother committed industrial espionage four years ago. Oh, he was never charged with anything--not enough evidence--but he was let go quietly and he’s kept his nose clean ever since. I think he told you about it, and he told you who had contacted him in the first place and offered him a big payoff for just lifting a few little drawings. Didn’t he.”

Aimee Lister had gone chalk white. “How…” she whispered.

“Are you aware of the New Year’s Day broadcast of the message from the man who called himself Moriarty? That’s who was involved in your brother’s crime, and that’s who you contacted, and that is who I am working with the government right now to bring down. If you tell me what I need to know I can help you and I can distract the police from that connection. If you don’t…” Sherlock shrugged. “You’ll be on your own. The police are going to catch up in a day or so, and if Moriarty’s organization thinks you talked, you may not be safe even in custody.”

“Oh my God,” Aimee said hoarsely, clutching Sherlock’s handkerchief to her mouth. “I didn’t know, I swear, I…”

For heaven’s sake, Sherlock thought with some irritation, whom had she thought she was contacting, the Girl Guides? “I can help you,” he said, trying to widen his eyes in order to look less threatening. Now his eyes were watering. “Tell me what you did, and I’ll help you.”

Aimee took a deep breath. “It’s a florist,” she said finally. “Regal Florist. You phone the number and ask if they carry black orchids.”

Sherlock was already looking it up on his phone. “That’s it? You just ring them up”

“Yeah, well, they say it’s a special order, and somebody has to ring you back. You leave your number and they call. The guy--I think it was a guy but I’m not sure, he had one of those voice-changer things--he asked me a lot of questions about what I wanted, made me tell him all about Tyler’s habits and that. He came up with the plan, you’re right. He sent me the ketamine in the post.”

“How did you pay him? I assume you did have to pay him.”

She shrugged. “PayPal. It wasn’t that much.”

It wouldn’t have been; offing a celebrity like Tyler Austin was such an excellent opportunity they’d likely have done it for free. Sherlock glanced over to see what John was making of this, caught the empty chair, and felt a flash of vicious self-loathing.

There was nothing interesting about the listing for Regal Florist, whose website promised same day delivery and “Roses to make her swoon!” “I’ll need the account name if you still have it, just in case,” Sherlock said. Criminals had been tripped up by less.

The next few hours were a bit chaotic; Sherlock rang Mycroft, who rang back about ten minutes later to inform Sherlock that a highly regarded defense barrister with absolutely no official connection to the government was on his way, with specific instructions to keep Aimee Lister from mentioning Regal Florist. “Just stick with the club story, the police don’t have enough imagination to doubt it,” Sherlock told her.

Aimee had gone through another of Sherlock’s handkerchiefs by this point, but now seemed resigned and even a bit relieved. “I’m glad you phoned,” she said. “I don’t think I’d have had the nerve to turn myself in on my own and I wouldn’t have thought of a barrister, but I’ve been petrified ever since it happened. I don’t think I could have carried on just waiting for the police to find me.”

Sherlock refrained from pointing out that this would have been unlikely had he not gotten involved. “You always wanted to be a screenwriter. If you can’t spin this into a decent script you may as well stick to being a PA.”

AImee wiped her nose, suddenly hopeful. “That’s a good idea. I could write a British Orange is the New--wait, how did you know I--”

The eminent barrister arrived at this juncture and whisked Aimee away in his car. Relieved, Sherlock turned immediately to his computer--he was not checking his phone, which had nothing to do with the fact that it was sitting in plain sight right next to him and he would have seen the screen light up if he’d had a text--and discovered he had an email from DI MacDougall herself. McDougall was very grateful for his tip, which had proven quite useful: Tyler Austin had indeed tested positive for ketamine. Since Detective Sergeant Donovan was away on a case of her own today, would Sherlock mind contacting the DI directly with any further insights that might occur to him?

Sherlock grinned widely. This was excellent; he’d been resigned to the possibility that his email to Donovan might reach its quarry too late, arriving anticlimactically after Aimee Lister had already turned herself in. He copied the email he’d had ready into his reply and sent it off. Then he pulled up Regal Florist.

Mrs. Hudson came in bearing a loaded tea tray. “Sherlock, dear, I’ve brought some elevenses--it sounded ever so busy up here this morning.”

“Mrs. Hudson, excellent. I need you to ring a florist.”

Mrs. Hudson set down the tea tray. “I don’t recall that being on house arrest keeps you from using the phone.”

“Of course it doesn’t, but someone might recognize my voice or even the number,” Sherlock said impatiently. “I don’t need you to actually buy flowers, I just want to make sure the shop is on the up-and-up. Just ring and ask if they deliver to Whipps Cross; say you’ve a friend in hospital there but don’t know if she can have flowers yet.”

Mrs. Hudson squeaked a little when Regal Florist picked up, but once she got into the part she was a natural: Sherlock and the clerk were treated to a long description of her imaginary friend’s ailments, and then she and the clerk had an animated discussion of the most appropriate hospital flowers, followed by Mrs. Hudson asking about funeral home deliveries “just in case”.

“Well?” Sherlock asked impatiently when she finally rang off.

“Oh, he was lovely. Knew ever so much about flowers. Nothing off at all that I could see. I might ring again if I ever need a bouquet sent.”

Sherlock turned moodily back to his computer. The website was just as unrevealing as the phone call, so he went digging as he munched his way through the tray. Nothing, nothing and more nothing. Regal Florist was to all appearances a legitimate, law-abiding, tax-paying business, albeit in a rather shabby street; its delivery van showed signs of being driven by an Eastern European who liked to strip the gears, although it was hard to be certain of that in a Google Earth photo.

Sherlock sighed, scratching irritably at the inside of his right elbow where the plaster had been. The end of the Tyler Austin case was catching up to him, and he didn’t see any way forward with the florist yet. He felt tired and heavy. Sherlock knew, in the same way he knew his drug use had not yet spiraled into true addiction, that he’d spent most of his life skittering along the edge of depression; he’d kept himself aloft through a combination of work, drugs and forward momentum. Now he couldn’t go out, couldn’t shoot up, couldn’t bear to be alone with his own head, couldn’t--no, he was not thinking about that. He could not think about any of that. He would lie on the sofa for a bit and go through his mind palace, see if he could find anything connected to Regal Florist.

Sherlock jerked awake, disoriented. What happened? He wasn’t meant to have fallen asleep. He blinked, feeling groggy and confused, and heard his phone give the peremptory ring that indicated a voicemail--that was what must have woken him, the phone ringing. Sherlock scrubbed his hand through his hair, already thinking about what he needed to get going again: cocaine, a little methamphetamine so smooth out the high...he remembered everything then, and despair tugged at him like an undertow.

Keep moving. Waking up was the worst part; if he lay still, it could catch him.The painkillers in the loo; "These aren't dangerous, you can have custody of them," John said dryly; would they be enough if he took them all?Sherlock jerked himself upright, moved on autopilot into the kitchen, and put the kettle on. Keep moving. He checked his phone and saw that he had one voicemail and one text, both from Sally Donovan: the text said simply Call me. He waited until he had taken the first sweet gulp of tea before he rang.

“Hey,” Donovan said. Her voice sounded bright, and for the first time he did not hear the unspoken “freak” hanging off the end of the greeting. “Heard you solved the Tyler Austin thing.”

“Of course. I’d have solved it yesterday if I weren’t on house arrest.”

“Yeah, funny thing.” Afternoon traffic sounds: riding in a car again, presumably on the way back from their case. “What we heard, MacDougall got your email spelling it all out and went straightaway to pick that girl up. Seems they got as far as the car park and then got a call that she’d just walked in the front door with a barrister to turn herself in. Good timing that, yeah?” There was a snort, presumably from Lestrade.

“How fortuitous, what with the price of petrol and all,” Sherlock said, straight faced. It was a strange sensation, to hear the suppressed laughter in her voice and know that for once it was not directed, maliciously, at him. This reminded him and before he could lose his nerve he said in an awkward rush, “As soon as I’m no longer confined I will buy you both that dinner I owe you.”

Donovan laughed outright and said, “I think we’d all be a lot happier if you didn’t.” There was a muffled “What? What’s he saying?” from Lestrade, and Donovan turned her face away from the phone to say, “He’s offering to buy us that dinner,” and Lestrade shouted “Oh hell no,” toward the phone. There was a bit more Sherlock couldn’t catch.

“The boss says next time make our guy turn himself too and save us the trouble and we’ll call it even.”

Sherlock was so relieved at not having to endure dinner that he found himself saying magnanimously. “Well, I owe you a favor, Detective Sergeant. I won’t forget.”

“Ah, don’t worry about it. Boss says congratulations on your drugs test.”

For God’s sake. “How do you lot even know about that? Maybe Molly could just set up a Facebook page, post the results, Lestrade can run a pool on—“

There was a scuffling noise and Lestrade said into the receiver: “I heard it from John, so stop being a prat. And my money’s on you sticking it out. You know that.”

Sherlock swallowed. Lestrade had talked to John. John had talked to Lestrade about Sherlock. What did he say? Will he ever come back? Why did he kiss me? What did it mean? How long will he stay away? Does he think about me? Does he hate me? Stop it. “You shouldn’t talk on your mobile whilst you’re driving.”

“I’m not driving, I’m stuck in the bloody traffic. Listen, our victim had a bunch of pictures on her phone and we can’t make out what they were for. When we get back Donovan’s going to email them to you, okay? Let us know if you can work it out.”

Sherlock rang off, took stock, and decided he felt considerably lighter. Not because of anything Lestrade had said. Now that he was past the initial fogginess he felt refreshed from his nap and ready to tackle Regal Florist again: who knew what he would come up with once he started digging into its employees’ pasts? Time to put on the coffee and get to work. He resolutely set his phone on the desk face down. Four days clean, ninety-six hours, he was doing well, he was doing bloody brilliantly, Lestrade would put money on him, he could ignore the cramping and the itching and the headaches and the fog because he was brilliant and amazing and he could do this, he was Sherlock Holmes, he didn’t need anyone to take notice and praise him like a dog.

When he came back with his coffee he turned the phone back over. Just in case.

Chapter 5

Chapter Text

"What on earth is this?" I cried, for at that moment came the pattering of many steps on the hall and on the stairs, accompanied by audible expressions of disgust on the part of our landlady.

"It's the Baker Street division of the detective police force," said my companion gravely.

---"A Study In Scarlet", Arthur Conan Doyle

Sherlock decided now that he had some new information it would be a good idea to recanvass his contacts to see if anyone knew anything about Regal Florist. This was likely to be frustrating, given that he was unable to make the rounds in person and many of his less savory acquaintances tended to be unreliable about returning calls and texts, but then again he had plenty of time. He had not gotten very far before Donovan’s email arrived with the phone pictures.

Sherlock started scanning through without much interest, but then he sat upright and went through them again, more slowly, then blew them up to full screen and went through them yet again. He rang Lestrade. “Had your victim complained of a stalker?”

“What?” Lestrade said, sounding startled. “No, not that we know of, but her best mate’s on holiday and we haven’t been able to reach her yet. The victim hadn’t been here long, moved up from the country and her parents were against her coming, so she might not have told them.”

“The pictures are all of the same locations--home, work, tube stations. She had a stalker but didn’t know what he looked like, so she took a picture every time before she stepped onto the street, hoping to work out who he was. The same man is in four of the pictures plus the very last one taken and he’s tried to disguise his appearance--he’s got a goatee in one that’s clearly a fake. I’m sending you back the five pictures; let me know if you can’t work out who the man is but I assume you lot are up to that much, so it’s just a matter of showing the pictures round.”

“Thanks,” Lestrade said, sounding dazed, and Sherlock rang off. Three texts had come in whilst he was on the phone, but none with any information. Back to work.

I heard you phone and order black flowers but thats all I know sorry

Heard a bloke used them once to get out of the country, but I don’t know where he is now, cause he’s out of the country.

“I heard that lot was connected to the Russians,” a quiet man said softly on the phone. “I don’t know more than that. I try to stay clear of the Russians.”

I might have heard something, but rather talk in person.

That last was Bill Wiggins. Sherlock snorted. Dropping by Wiggins’ establishment was the last thing he wanted to do right now, even if he could.

What else, what else. Sherlock put a map on the wall and began adding colored pushpins, tracking where people had heard of the florist not by literal geography but by crime territory, a cartography only he could see. Whom had the florist potentially edged out? He had a good buzz going now, caffeine nicotine chocolate, and was so caught up that he did not even hear the footsteps on the stairs until they were right outside. “I don’t want dinner, go away,” he shouted.

“Good, because I didn’t bring any,” John said.

Sherlock startled so hard he dropped the pin he was holding. He picked it up quickly, furious with himself, and then couldn’t remember where he was going to put it, so he took it back to the desk and then jammed his hands in his pockets to hide their trembling. “Why are you here then?”

John strolled in, settling himself casually on the edge of the sofa as though just dropping by. “I thought I’d stop round on my way home, see how you were doing.”

Baker Street was in no sense on John’s way home. “My drugs screen was clean. Didn’t Molly tell you?”

“Yes.” Sherlock raised his eyebrows: Obviously; so? and John went on, “She said you insisted on a serum sample.”

“Yes. I wanted there to be no doubt about the source.”

“And what about the source of the needle mark? Did you want there to be doubt about that?”

Sherlock, who had spent half his life lying about his drug use, flushed with the outrage of one accused of lying when he is for once telling the truth. “Take a look.” He pulled off his jacket and unbuttoned his right cuff quickly, no longer caring if his fingers shook--too much coffee, that was all. He remembered, too late, that he’d scratched the skin raw on that arm but it didn’t matter. “One stick, there you see, a bit bruised because she couldn’t find the vein but what’s one more bruise at this point?” He’d thought John might flinch at that but he didn’t, and that made Sherlock truly angry. He fumbled at his other cuff but the sleeve wouldn’t stay up and in a sudden fury he reached for the buttons of his shirt, unfastening them with the icy precision that came only when he was white-hot with rage. He dropped the shirt to the floor and stuck out both arms. “Happy? Even you should be able to tell those are old. Wrists? Hands? Can you see my neck well enough, do you think I’d be that bold? Here.” He toed his shoes off, stripped off his socks, unfastened his trousers. If John had ordered him to strip he’d be dying of shame, but doing it himself--making John watch--this was power, and he did not feel shamed and small but towering in his fury. “Can you see between my toes? Need a brighter light?” Sherlock kicked his trousers off and stood there in his pants, chin up and arms flung wide, every usable vein in his body exposed.

John did not seem shocked, though his jaw had tightened in a way Sherlock knew all too well. He stood up and walked forward, glancing clinically over Sherlock’s body as though checking for dangerous moles, circling all the way around to inspect the backs of his knees. He stopped a few inches away and Sherlock, suddenly feeling cold and exposed, swallowed hard.

“What about the femoral veins?” John asked.

Sherlock stared. Surely John wasn’t suggesting he drop his pants? He felt a rush of heat in spite of the gooseflesh rising on his arms.

“It would be risky, the artery and nerve right there,” John said. He reached out and took Sherlock by the hips, brushing his thumbs over the crease between thigh and groin to demonstrate. Sherlock swallowed again and then again, loud in the silent room. He could feel his outstretched arms begin to tremble. The tips of John’s fingers were touching the exposed skin of his bare flanks. Sherlock could feel the touch as though it burned: there would be fingerprints now, on this part of his body where John had never touched before.

To his intense mortification, he felt himself thickening between John’s thumbs.

“But that’s what it’s all about for you, isn’t it? Risk.” John let go and stepped back, glancing up.

Sherlock was caught. John’s eyes met his and he knew everything he was feeling was right there on his face: longing, terror, arousal so intense it was almost pain. John went still, eyes holding Sherlock’s for a single frozen moment. Sherlock desperately wanted to say something, but if he opened his mouth he had no idea what was going to come out.

John’s face had settled into an expression Sherlock couldn’t read: regret? Shame? Disapproval? Don’t go, he thought desperately, stay, talk to me, touch me again, please, but John gave him a single nod and cleared his throat. “All right,” he said, voice oddly hoarse. “See Molly again, same time next week,” and then he turned rather stiffly and walked out the door.

Sherlock was left rooted to the spot, listening to his retreating footsteps. John kissing him had been overwhelming, shattering; he’d been left with a longing so intense and beyond his comprehension he could not even look at it directly. This was different. The desire he felt now was highly specific and despicably simple: he wanted John’s hands on him again, not just on his hips but everywhere, on all the skin as yet unmarked by his fingerprints, on his--God. Sherlock was trembling all over now. His arms and legs were cold but his erection was hot and throbbing. It was as though John’s touch had flipped a switch that released the pent-up lust of years and now he could think of nothing else. He had to--he had to push it back, he had to make it stop, go back to work, but--he was so hard, so desperate, so wanting. Sherlock put a hand to the desk to steady himself and tentatively touched his other hand to his groin. Sparks exploded across his vision and his knees buckled. Oh God oh God oh God--

Distantly Sherlock heard the sound of Mrs. Hudson’s door opening below and terror jerked him upright. He had just enough presence of mind to snatch up his shirt and trousers before he bolted for the bathroom, locking the door with relief and yanking on the shower: there, he was safe, he just needed a cold shower--though even as he thought it he knew it wouldn’t happen. He jerked his pants off roughly, hating himself for his weakness even as the scrape of fabric across his hard co*ck made him pant fiercely and clutch at the washbasin. He closed his hand around himself and bent over, burying his teeth in his forearm as he tugged once, twice, and then he was coming in an explosive burst of shameful pleasure as his knees folded and he muffled his cry in his own arm.

Sherlock stood shaking under the shower until the hot water ran out and then scrubbed himself raw, savagely relishing the sting on his torn skin. Stupid, stupid, stupid; John didn’t want him that way, never had done, the kiss had just been meant to shock him, nothing else, don’t think about it, don’t think about it.

There was a certain comfort in being clean and dry in his softest pyjamas and dressing gown. When he came back out in the sitting room Mrs. Hudson had left the fire going and bowl of soup with a plate over to keep it warm. Sherlock was grateful for the fire. He didn’t let himself think about the times when it was John who warmed him, fed him, covered him with a blanket if he fell asleep. Don’t think about it.

He ignored the soup and went back to work.

By next afternoon Sherlock had sniped at Mrs. Hudson so viciously that even her patience snapped and she flounced out of the building entirely, slamming the front door for good measure. It was at this point, of course, that he realized he was down to his last chocolate bar and out of coffee. Sherlock snarled, clenching his fists in his hair. He was filled with a visceral loathing for his own life; the thought of enduring even the next five minutes--let alone hours, months, days--was so unbearable that he had a sudden urge to smash his own head into the hard surface of the refrigerator until it all just stopped. He flung the chocolate bar at the window, where he knew it would bounce harmlessly off, but then it slid under the sofa. Sherlock took a deep breath and looked around for something to kick.

The doorbell rang.

Thank God, Sherlock thought as he skittered down the stairs; if he was really lucky there’d be a client, but at this point even the opportunity to point out the fallaciousness of their beliefs to a Jehovah’s Witness sounded good. Anything.

It wasn’t a client or a Jehovah's Witness; it was a parcel. The courier was too boring to bother with, so Sherlock took his package and returned to his flat, pausing to pick Mrs. Hudson’s lock on his way and filch some coffee. He’d replace it eventually. He spent a few minutes back in his flat inspecting the parcel for clues just to prolong the fun of not knowing what was inside it, but the parcel was unrevealing: plain wrapping, addressed from NSY. Some sort of evidence? He hadn’t received any sort of communication from the police. It was heavy, didn’t rattle...oh, this was boring. Sherlock ripped the paper off and discovered he had been sent a book. Undrowned. Really?

Sherlock opened the front cover and found an inscription (left-handed, Catholic school, good manicure, tenacious) in a woman’s neat writing. Thank you so much for all of your assistance. I look forward to working with you again and hope this will help to pass the time until then. With gratitude, Cait MacDougall.

Sherlock considered the inscription as he might a potentially dangerous crime scene. Was Detective Inspector MacDougall being sincere? Teasing? Telling him she knew he’d talked to Aimee Lister and to watch his step in the future? Sherlock glanced up to ask John, remembered, bit his lip until he tasted blood. Stupid. Sherlock flipped through the pages--it was a long book--and checked the inside back cover, but there was nothing else. Hmmm. He finally decided that it didn’t matter. Maybe they were all true, but if not, he could work with any of them.

He didn’t kick anything, after all.

“Hey,” Sally Donovan said. Sherlock wondered whether this was her usual phone salutation, or whether she had not been able to settle on a form of address since their recent cessation of hostilities. “So you were right about those photos. When we asked the victim’s boss straight out, he remembered she’d complained about getting some weird notes a few weeks back, but he thought she was just trying to get out of working the late shifts. We blew up the guy’s face and showed him around and sure enough someone remembered him and better yet, he’d paid with a credit card.”

“Well done,” Sherlock said, leaning against the window to light another cigarette. There was a miserable sleet falling outside and he was trying to balance as far inside as possible. At least with a cigarette in one hand and his mobile in the other he couldn’t savage the skin of his arms, or what was left of it after today.

“Yeah. You too. So, listen, about what you said yesterday...I was wanting to ask you something.”

Sherlock felt his eyebrows go up, as much as at her tentative tone as at the words themselves. Oh God, what had he gotten himself into? “Yes,” he said in as discouraging a tone as he could muster.

“It’s...I’ve got a niece, my brother’s kid. He was in Afghanistan and, well, he died, and her mum and I don’t get on; she took up with another guy whilst he was still over there and...anyway, she’s taken up with a few more since then, had a couple more kids so, yeah. We don’t get on. But my niece is clever, really clever, not like I’m clever but like you’re clever. And she’s won a spot at the local grammar, but that’s--it’s good, but I really want her out of there at a proper good school, out of that neighbourhood and that flat and her mum’s latest loser boyfriend, see?”

This was the last thing Sherlock had been expecting. “What on earth makes you think I know anything about schools?”

Donovan’s tone became exasperated, which made him feel more comfortable immediately. “Because you’re the only really clever person I know and because--because people like you always know other people like you who are on, I don’t know, boards of governors and things.”

Sherlock opened his mouth to say that Donovan was vastly overestimating his social network, but then he paused. Mycroft was, of course, exactly the type of person who knew such people, and besides hadn’t there been something at Christmas about a board of governors, some conversation that he let slide by unabsorbed...wait a minute.

“Of course you’re right,” he said, taking another drag off his cigarette. “But I’d need to spend a bit of time with her first, see what would be the best fit and so on. Ordinarily I’d be far too busy but as it happens I’ve extra time on my hands right now as well as a fortuitous need for someone to run a few errands.”

There was a nonplussed silence. “Are you saying you want to hire my niece to be your PA?” Donovan said incredulously. “You realize she’s a kid. And it’s hardly appropriate--”

“Of course I realize she’s a kid, that was rather your point, was it not? And anyway Mrs. Hudson will be here.” Hopefully; she still wasn’t speaking to him. “Look, I’m on house arrest and I’m out of coffee. And chocolate. I just want someone to run out to the shops and that way I can see if your assessment of her intelligence is accurate.” More or less true.

“Well, she couldn’t come round til after school,” Donovan said slowly, “but as Mrs. Hudson will be there...I can’t believe I’m saying this, but she’s probably safer at yours than she is at her mum’s.”

“Excellent. Can she come tomorrow? I really am out of coffee.”

“Yeah, okay, I’ll text her now. And Holmes, if you let her get into any trouble…”

Apparently they had resolved the names issue. “I can’t even get myself into trouble right now. If any comes by I’m keeping it for myself.”

“Well, all right,” she said reluctantly, and rang off.

Next afternoon found Sherlock so deeply embroiled in a shouted argument with Mycroft regarding his ongoing house arrest (“I can’t believe you expect me to track down an elusive master criminal whilst confined to my flat, that’s ridiculous,” “Sherlock, you cannot possibly expect to be allowed to gallivant about London ad libitum after shooting an unarmed man. Until such time as you resolve this matter and we can use it to facilitate a pardon, you must keep a profile so low as to be invisible”) that he entirely missed hearing the bell and, as usual, Mrs. Hudson had to answer it.

Sherlock had just stabbed the disconnect button so hard his bitten fingertip left a smear of blood on the screen when Mrs Hudson appeared at the door: “Sherlock, dear, there’s a young lady to see you.”

Sherlock was already sizing up the stolid girl in her ill-fitting uniform and cheap coat: skin a few shades lighter than Donovan’s, unstyled hair frizzy and dry on the ends; white mother, couldn’t be bothered to learn to care for her daughter’s hair. He saw no immediate evidence of exceptional intelligence. “Yes, she’s expected,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“Maya Hobbes.”

Hobbes not Donovan; either half siblings or—no, Donovan had implied the girl’s parents hadn’t married. “Hobbes. Like the philosopher?”

“Don’t know,” the girl said. He face remained blank, but Sherlock saw something flicker in her dark eyes: she didn’t like admitting she didn’t know.

“Well, your aunt did say you went to a rubbish school,” he said. “I’m Sherlock Holmes. I need someone to run errands as I’m on house arrest because I murdered a man but only because he deserved it, so you’ve nothing to worry about. Up for the job?”

“Oh Sherlock, really,” Mrs. Hudson said in exasperation. “Don’t mind him, dear, he just likes to hear himself talk. I’ll bring you up some tea, shall I?”

“No time for that, Miss Hobbes is going back out straight away.”

“She’s only come from school—“

“I don’t mind,” Hobbes interposed. “I’ll go now. May I leave my satchel here?”

“Excellent. Off you go, Mrs. Hudson; you can have a proper little feast ready when she gets back. All right, this is where I want you to go.” Sherlock pulled up Regal Florist on his laptop, turning the screen to show her. “I want you to go there and buy some flowers and have a look around.”

“What sort of flowers?”

“Any sort you like; the flowers don’t matter. I want to know if it looks like anything else is going on there. Wait for some other customers to go in so you can eavesdrop—see if they talk about anything but flowers, if you see anything suspicious, that sort of thing. Don’t be obvious. Come back here to report when you’ve finished. Here’s money for the flowers; do you need Tube fare?”

Hobbes had an Oyster card and after peering at the website a minute to get the address took herself off. This left Sherlock alone with nothing to do but wait, never the best situation at the best of times, and these were definitely not the best of times. He’d been running from his own thoughts like a fox from the hounds for days. Sherlock calculated how long it would take her to get there and back, groaned in irritation, paced around a bit, and finally flung himself into his chair and forced himself to pick up the first book that came to hand, which happened to be Undrowned.

He was two chapters in when his text alert beeped: On my way back. Pix sent to ur email.

Email? How did Hobbes have his—wait. Pictures? Sherlock pulled up his inbox, opened the new message from a school domain, and felt his eyebrows shoot up. An array of little thumbnails was attached. Sherlock scrolled through them, growing progressively more incredulous: hadn’t he said inconspicuous?

When the doorbell rang this time Sherlock was down the stairs so fast Mrs. Hudson never even made it to her door. “How did you take pictures? Did anyone see you? Didn’t I say not to be obvious?”

“Nobody saw me,” Hobbes said, frowning a little. “Don’t you want to put these in water? And I’ve your change—“

“Never mind that, put them in the kitchen; I’ll give them to Mrs. Hudson later. What do you mean nobody saw you?”

“I took them on my phone,” Hobbes said, looking at Sherlock with a sort of pitying disdain. “It’s easy, you just—here, I’ll show you. Sit there?”

Sherlock sat at his desk, frowning, and Hobbes pulled out her phone. “On the street I just went along like I was texting—“ she walked toward the sofa, eyes on her phone, thumbs tapping busily,”—and I waited for a couple old ladies to go in the shop, like you said, so when I went in they were all busy, and I made like I was taking selfies, with the arrangements.” She held her phone out to pose in front of the bullet-hole smiley face, lips pursed and eyebrows raised in the ridiculous expression Sherlock had seen on hundreds of selfie-taking adolescent girls throughout London. Then she crossed over and handed him the phone. Sherlock swiped through ten photos of himself scowling at his desk.

“That’s…that’s really quite good,” he said, unwillingly impressed. Forget homeless network; what he needed was a teenaged girl network. How had Mycroft not caught onto this? Vapid self-absorption was the perfect cover for surveillance.

“Hoo hoo,” Mrs. Hudson said cheerily, bringing in a tea tray laden with biscuits and cakes. “I’ve brought a little snack! Everything all right with your errand?”

“Yes, of course,” Sherlock said distractedly. “Just set that on the coffee table, we’re fine, thank you.”

Hobbes stood up, but instead of moving toward the tea tray glanced at the kitchen and then uncertainly back at Sherlock. What did she want? “Oh! Right.” He leaped up, retrieved the big bouquet of yellow flowers, and shoved them at Mrs. Hudson. “These are for you. To make up for my being, er, a bit trying lately.”

Mrs. Hudson’s face sagged with such astonishment that for a moment Sherlock thought she was having a stroke—how dreadfully inconvenient would that be—but then her eyes filled with tears. “Oh Sherlock! How lovely of you! I never…oh…I’ll just put these in a vase, shall I?” She gave him a tremulous and rather watery smile, patted his shoulder, and shuffled off, sniffling loudly.

Hobbes and Sherlock exchanged a glance. “I should perhaps do that more often,” he said.

“I’ll go,” Hobbes began eagerly but Sherlock waved her into silence: “Later, let’s look at the photos now—oh, all right, get some tea.”

Hobbes collected a plate and cup whilst Sherlock, for the first time in months, cleared the debris from John’s side of the desk. Then she talked him through the pictures: “That’s the street, across the way, shops on either side—I couldn’t very well go round the back but I didn’t see anything—those are the two guys at the shop, they were ordinary, but there was a man in the back who had an accent. I heard him talking. He never came out front so I only got this one picture of him, here, through the door. Then he was talking to another guy—I think the one who drives the delivery lorry—and it was in another language, but I don’t know what it was.”

“Could you tell what sort of accent?”

“No. Sorry. They were white though.”

“Russian?”

“Er…I’m not sure. Perhaps?”

Sherlock magnified the picture as much as he could, but that just made the hazy profile into a useless blur. He’d thought for a second something about the man looked familiar, but he’d lost it now. “Hmm. All right, consider yourself hired. I’ll need you to go round to the shops now—no investigating this time, just shopping. I’ve a list. Oh and here, take a key so Mrs. Hudson needn’t bother letting you in.”

Sherlock spent the time cross-checking everything he’d dug up on Regal Florist against the pictures of the employees Hobbes had brought back, but he unearthed nothing new. At least he would have a fresh supply of chocolate to fuel his labors now. Eventually he heard Hobbes letting herself in downstairs and then the sound of her humming as she trudged up the stairs. “Stop humming,” he said, irritably.

The humming cut off as though he’d flipped a switch. “I got all but the cigarettes, you’ve got to be eighteen,” she said. “Shall I put this away for you?”

“Yes, all right.”

She started humming again putting the shopping away—something from that boy band with the ridiculous hair, incredibly grating, but she’d be gone soon so he let it go. When she’d finished she brought his change and receipts over and said, “Shall I come back tomorrow? It’s Saturday, I can—“

“No, I won’t need you for a bit. I’ll text you. Here—“ He pulled out his wallet. “That’s for today. If I need you to go back to the florist, can you go from your school and then come here?”

“Yeah, of course, but won’t you need something before then?”

“No. We’re finished now, Hobbes, run along.”

Hobbes collected her bag and departed with clear reluctance, and Sherlock went to the kitchen to put the coffee on. He realized the horrid One Direction song was now running through his head and groaned: he had, had to find Moriarty so he could get off house arrest. On the other hand: he had chocolate, he had coffee, he had something new to focus on, and for the first time since New Year’s the silence in the empty flat actually felt like a relief.

Chapter 6

Chapter Text

Saturday morning, one week clean, Sherlock stood in the bathroom and considered his reflection again. His skin was frankly terrible, pasty grey from living indoors on chocolate and coffee and scabby with sores he’d dug into his arms. He was wretchedly skinny and his eyes were sunken and shadowed from lack of sleep. His stomach hurt, which seemed to be a constant now, although that didn’t show. Still: the bruises were fading, and so were the needle marks, and he could look himself in the eye—at least briefly. The thought brushed at him when he looked at his protruding hipbones, John’s fingerprints, but he shoved it ruthlessly away. Perhaps he could take another step toward self-improvement: get in some actual food, for example, or do something about his skin? He dismissed this thought immediately. Staying clean another seven days would be accomplishment enough.

Sherlock spent the rest of the weekend getting nowhere. It was maddening: if he could just get out there, disappear into the streets of London where he felt most alive, he knew he could find the information he needed. Instead he was reduced to pacing the confines of the flat like a tiger in a cage. Would he actually wear a hole in the rug before his house arrest was lifted? This question diverted him temporarily and he ended up crawling about on the carpet with every measuring implement he could find, trying to determine if the pile on his usual pacing path was thinner than elsewhere. It was the highlight of his weekend: nearly an hour of not thinking about what he was not thinking about.

Sherlock examined the possible Russian connection from every conceivable angle, but nothing led to anything he could use. He even rang up Lestrade—who was delighted to hear from him on a Saturday evening—and got him to talk to a contact that monitored Russian gangs, but that proved a dead end as well. Finally on Sunday he pulled out his phone and sighed, girding himself for the phone call he’d known he would have to make sooner or later.

“I could talk,” Bill Wiggins said laconically. “Coming round?”

“No, I have to keep a low profile these days, can’t be seen there,” Sherlock said. “I need you to come to Baker Street.”

There was a brief silence. “That’ll cost.”

“Yes, fine,” Sherlock said tersely. “How soon can you be here?”

He kept an ear open for the bell, thinking Mrs. Hudson might not even let Wiggins in. He turned up a good half hour after the time he’d said. “You’re looking a bit peaky,” Wiggins observed when Sherlock opened the door. “Need a little bump? I’ve got some of your favorite—“

“Just information,” Sherlock said a bit more curtly that he intended. “We’re fine, thank you, go on back to your telly now,” he said to Mrs, Hudson even more sharply, seeing her peering out of her door at Wiggins. She sniffed disapprovingly.

“All right,” Sherlock said, when he’d got Wiggins settled on the sofa. “What do you know about Moriarty and Regal Florist?”

Wiggins gave this question his usual thorough consideration. “Heard the big man was back,” he said finally. “Or a new one. And that florist…might be a ticket window, like. Maybe.”

“Know anyone who’s used it?”

“Don’t know. Might. Could ask around. Be expensive, that would.”

Sherlock sighed, pulled out his wallet, and peeled off some notes. “Ask. Have you heard of other…ticket windows?”

“Nope.”

“I heard the florist might be connected to the Russians.”

Wiggins shook his head. “Haven’t heard anything about Russians. I did hear they were connected though, have some powerful friends, if you follow me.”

Sherlock frowned. “More powerful than Moriarty?”

“Different type of friends.”

“You mean like the police. They’re paying someone off?”

Wiggins shook his head again. “What I heard, they’re connected to someone high up. In the government maybe.”

Sherlock sat back and steepled his fingers, thinking. That was very interesting. Well worth the risk and aggravation of having Wiggins around, which was producing an annoyingly Pavlovian uptick in what had been a manageable level of craving. One more thing.

“Have you heard anything else about Moriarty? Anything I should know?”

“Just that he’s back in business. That’s all.”

“That announcement, on New Year’s Day,” Sherlock said, watching Wiggins closely. “Something was off. The message went out, but there wasn’t a crime of any note until days later. So either something went wrong, there should have been some other crime that didn’t go off as planned—“ ah there, just the tiniest flicker in those pale blank eyes “—or the message was intended not for the general public but for a very specific audience. An audience of one, you might say.”

“How do you mean?”

“Maybe he wasn’t advertising. Maybe he was throwing down a gauntlet. The king is dead, long live the king—unless there’s a fight for the succession. Maybe there isn’t one new Moriarty, but two.”

Wiggins’ face was completely smooth and disinterested again. “I haven’t heard nothing like that. I’ve only heard the one.”

“Well.” Sherlock shrugged lightly, ignoring the way his hands itched. A fix a fix a fix. Wiggins would have some, he always did. “Just a thought.”

When Wiggins had finally left Sherlock wasted no time in texting Hobbes and was on his way to check his nicotine patch supply—this was a three patch problem for certain, the government, who what why how who—when he caught sight of the tiny bag on the sofa. It lay innocently half slid between the cushions as though it had merely fallen from Wiggin’s pocket, which of course it hadn’t.

Sherlock stood rooted to the spot, staring at it. In the tiny bit of his mind not taken up with animal urgency he wondered if it were possibly to quantify longing: not as a scale surely, but perhaps as a percentage, as of one’s attention, because that was how people spoke of it, didn’t they? As being consumed by longing. He was consumed now, entirely consumed, he’d never wanted anything so much—

John’s fingertips burning through his clothes, closer please come closer, please kiss me again, please touch

Sherlock shoved the thought away so hard he physically stumbled. Moving. Keep moving. He strode toward the door, not even pausing as he passed the sofa but scooping up the bag as he went and then down the stairs and to Mrs. Hudson’s door, not pausing, not thinking, just moving. He closed his hand over the bag so he couldn’t see it until the door opened. “I’m afraid I must ask a favor of you.”

Mrs. Hudson took in his set face and outstretched hand with a befuddled expression before comprehension dawned. “Oh dear.” She took the bag, tucking it quickly into the pocket of her wrapper. “Yes, of course, I’ll get rid of it tomorrow when I go for my shopping. I knew that man was no good; if he dares show his face round here again I’ll be sure to let him know it, just you see.”

“It’s just business, Mrs. Hudson. Surely you can understand that.”

He regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth but the knowledge that the bag was right there, close enough to reach out and grab—it was burning him, consuming him. Mrs. Hudson flushed angrily. “Sherlock Holmes! You know I regret being mixed up in all that, you know it very well.”

“Sorry!” he said, cutting her off. “Sorry. I must—I know it’s an imposition, but could you please dispose of it tonight. Please.”

Mrs. Hudson glared at him a moment longer, but then her face softened. “Yes, all right. Do you need anything else whilst I’m out?”

“No. Nothing else tonight. Thank you.” He hoped she would understand the unspoken message to leave him alone. Mrs. Hudson nodded and closed the door with a little snap—still a bit miffed then—and he turned for the stairs, digging hard at the crawling skin of his arms.

Hobbes turned up the next afternoon earlier than he’d expected, trudging up the stairs humming yet another awful One Direction song. “No humming!” he shouted before she’d even reached the landing. “How are you here so early? You didn’t skive off school, did you?” Sherlock had not the least objection to this—on the contrary, he highly approved—but if Hobbes got in trouble Donovan would cut off his access, and likely flay him alive in the bargain.

“No, I’ve independent study in the afternoons,” Hobbes said. She placed the new bouquet of flowers gently on the kitchen table and set down her bag. “Said I needed a book they didn’t have at the library.”

“Did you get a book? It’s important to maintain your cover story.”

“Course,” Hobbes said, looking mildly affronted.

“Show.”

Hobbes hesitated, flushing a little, and then pulled a thick book from her satchel: Thomas Hobbes: Life and Writings. Sherlock felt his mouth twitch up. “How is it?”

“Well, I’ve not got far, I just started it on the bus,” she said, replacing it carefully in her bag. Sherlock counted out the last of his cash to pay her for the flowers and waited impatiently for her to dig out her phone, which he then snatched from her hand.

“What’s your passcode, Niall or Harry? Or no wait—it’ll be Zayn, obviously—“ Sherlock glanced at Hobbes and the words died in his mouth. Hobbes was staring at the floor in a kind of resigned disappointment that was somehow worse than anger. Undoubtedly she had been bullied her whole life, too much brains and not enough pretty, no family for refuge; used to having her things grabbed away, her secrets guessed and laughed at. She had thought, against all previous experience, that Sherlock was different. Well, Zayn hadn’t worked anyway. “Here,” he said, handing the phone back. “You do it; I’ll never guess it, you’re far too clever for that.”

Hobbes took the phone and hunched over it to enter the passcode so he couldn’t see, but he glimpsed the shy curve of her smile. “I bought sweets in a shop down the street and then pretended to look at magazines until the delivery lorry came,” she explained, pulling the video files up, “and then I went over. I’d have sent the files only they were too big.”

“Here, I’m going to play them on the computer, better sound.” Sherlock rummaged in a drawer to find a cable and attached the phone, opening the first file, which showed someone’s feet—retired teacher, played cards every day—shuffling as she waited for her flowers. A heavily accented voice called “Where is that order for the theatre?” Eastern European, definitely.

“This one, they’re talking in the back, but this lady’s talking at the same time,” Hobbes said, looking worried.

More feet, and an elderly woman said rather fretfully, “Now does it cost more? If you put that fern in?” But in the background Sherlock heard the two men, clearly enough: “Are the ones for the hospital ready?” “Right side, but wait—there’s one order just came in and it’s not done yet.”

“Could you hear them? Can you tell what language it is?”

Sherlock blinked at her. He’d understood what the men said without thinking, but—just to be sure he replayed the file, listening to the sound rather than the meaning, verifying what he’d already realized: the language the men were speaking wasn’t Russian at all. It was Serbian.

“You owe me twenty quid,” Mrs. Hudson said, leaning over to pour more tea into Sherlock’s mug.

“Mmm.” Sherlock did not look up from the newspaper he was perusing. “You’ll have to take my card, I gave the last of my cash to Hobbes…where is Hobbes?”

“At school, I hope,” Mrs. Hudson said. “You do realize it’s ten o’clock in the morning.”

Sherlock frowned. “I was just talking to her.”

“Eighteen hours ago. That’s why you owe me twenty pounds. She came down quite worried because she said you’d gone into a trance, but I told her not to bother, you did that all the time.”

“You overpaid,” Sherlock said. “I gave her twenty pounds the last time but she went all the way to the florist and back then, and the shops. Here, get some extra, would you? I’ve got my drugs test today, and I suppose I’ll need plenty of cash on hand if I’m to keep her on the payroll.”

When Mrs. Hudson had finally gone Sherlock took a shower and dressed—spiffing himself up for his big weekly outing –and then sat down in his chair to ring Mycroft. He’d spent a long time in his mind palace the previous night, going through the files he’d memorized before being sent to Serbia eighteen months before.

“The man at the florist was definitely part of the operation at the time I was there,” Sherlock said to Mycroft. “I don’t think we ever met face to face, but I’m certain his dossier was in the files.”

“We knew some of them slipped the net,” Mycroft said, “but why come to London? Unless…”

“Unless they had help. Wiggins said the florist was connected to Moriarty and that they had protection from someone high up in the government. What if they’re one and the same? I know you think I was simply careless, but I still believe my cover was blown in Serbia. “

“You’re implying that someone in my inner circle might have sold you out for personal gain,” Mycroft said, an infinity of raised eyebrow in his tone.

“No, I’m accusing someone in your inner circle of taking advantage of their insider information to become the new Moriarty.”

There was a brief silence, which Sherlock enjoyed immensely. He had so few pleasures these days.

“This is going to require very delicate handling,” Mycroft said finally.

“And not by you,” Sherlock said. “Any inquiries you make run the risk of tipping off the wrong person. I’ll have to look into it for you.” He didn’t really have any hope that this would get him out of house arrest, but the implication that he was doing Mycroft a favor was never a bad thing.

Mycroft sighed. “I’ll prepare a list. Everyone who had knowledge of the Serbia situation and is still based in London. There was a certain amount of interdepartmental cooperation involved, so it may take a few days.”

“I’ve nothing but time,” Sherlock said pointedly. “And Mycroft, please remember that I’m going for my drugs test today and don’t send a helicopter after me this time. “

“Don’t dawdle then,” Mycroft said and rang off.

“You don’t…look so good,” Molly said. She had her head bent over the crook of Sherlock’s arm, drawing blood; probably deliberately choosing that moment to avoid looking at him.

Sherlock felt a little hurt. He’d been clean for ten days, after all, and rather felt he deserved to be told he looked marvelous, whether or not that was strictly true. Anyway, what could he say? I’ve spent the past one hundred and sixty-six hours imprisoned in my flat. I stay awake for days because I can’t bear waking up. When I’m alone I hallucinate monsters and think about drugs and suicide. “Withdrawal,” he said instead. “Not known for being salubrious.”

“I can see that,” she said, which he assumed referred to the scabby sores on his arms. Maybe he really didn’t look good, at least with his sleeve rolled up. “But you seem a bit…stretched thin, you know? Held together with spit and baling wire.”

Sherlock realized to his surprise that this described exactly how he had been feeling recently. “More like coffee and cigarettes.”

Molly pressed a gauze pad to his arm and said, “Hold that. You’ll give yourself an ulcer, carrying on that way, you know.”

Oh. “Too late.”

Molly glanced up at him, fond exasperation shading into genuine concern. “Are you okay? Really?”

Sherlock looked down at the gauze pad, lifting it to see if the puncture had stopped bleeding. “Fine. Don’t let that sample out of your sight, John seems to think I’m hoodwinking you somehow.”

Molly sighed and took the tube over to set the sample running. When she came back she handed Sherlock a plaster. “He’s scared.”

Sherlock raised his eyebrows. “John Watson, scared.”

“Of course he is. Scared of giving up everything to put all his eggs in one dodgy basket’s that already failed him once. You really don’t know as much as you think you do, do you?”

“I never asked him to do anything of the sort,” Sherlock said, stung. No matter how desperately he wished the last three years had never happened, that things could go back the way they’d been, he wasn’t stupid enough to ask John to chuck his pregnant wife and move back in. Even if this would clearly be his best choice in the long run; who could possibly be happy as a family man in the suburbs? Ugh.

Molly just looked at him and Sherlock dropped his eyes again, fussing with the plaster to see if he could find an unmarred bit of skin.

“Have you got any salve for that?”

“Maybe. Probably not.”

“All right. I’ll find some and then I’ll fetch us some lunch. Actual food this time, not coffee.”

The sandwich helped, as did the antacid tablets he nicked from Mrs. Hudson’s medicine cabinet whilst she was out. When evening rolled around, Sherlock considered actually eating some dinner and going to bed like someone who cared about his long-term survival. He’d been up for days, he was at a standstill until Mycroft produced the list, and having foregone coffee (if not cigarettes) for the past several hours he might even be able to sleep. What did he have to lose? Well, quite a lot. If he stood still there was always the chance that the darkness would catch him, along with the thoughts he had been so desperately avoiding.

Sherlock stood in the kitchen looking between the coffee and refrigerator. His head was now pounding from lack of caffeine, but just looking at the coffee maker made his stomach hurt. He thought longingly of a nice dose of morphine, soothing everything into peaceful oblivion. Not an option; John—no, he was not thinking of that, not thinking of John clattering around the kitchen cursing the lack of proper ingredients and the general mess and calling “Eggs okay?”, no. Molly. Molly would tell him to eat.

Sherlock made himself a toasted cheese with a handful of antacids tablets for dessert and was surprised to realize he felt much better, and not a little sleepy. He would just read for a bit and then go to bed. He curled in his chair by the fire with a cup of tea and his book and felt, once again, that contentment might be something he could have. Maybe. Some day.

“Early night?”

Sherlock startled awake, fumbling with his book. John was standing in the doorway.

“Ah,” Sherlock said, unable to coax his suddenly thick tongue into saying anything coherent. John seemed…taut, rigid in a way he hadn’t been the last time he came round. Angry. Why? Sherlock hadn’t done anything, his second drugs test had come back clean—

“Mind if I join you?” John said. Not waiting for an answer, he moved into the kitchen and pulled down the bottle of whisky from the cupboard. He didn’t say anything about the fingerprint powder; not the sort of thing to cause remark at Baker Street. Sherlock looked down at his lap, realized he was still holding Undrowned, and quickly shoved it down the side of his chair.

John came out carrying his drink and sat down in his old chair, looking at the fire. Sherlock watched him covertly, but John barely seemed aware of him; he was staring into the flames with that hard closed expression Sherlock associated with the weeks after Sherlock had been shot. Sherlock picked up his tea out of habit, but of course it had gone cold. His skin itched. He folded his hands in his lap, then clasped his wrists tightly, as though to keep himself from digging at the thin skin of his inner arms, or perhaps from flying apart.

John finished his drink in a long swallow and got up to refill his glass. Watching him now, Sherlock saw that he’d already had quite a head start: drinking alone somewhere, but not straight from work, he’d gone somewhere first…where?

John returned from the kitchen. He took another drink, set it down, and then said abruptly, “When did you know?”

Sherlock frowned. His heart began to beat uncomfortably. “Know what?”

“About Mary.”

Sherlock blinked. “About thirty seconds before she shot me.”

John’s unyielding gaze pinned him. “And after that?”

“What do you mean? You were here, you heard it all when I did—she gave you the memory stick, not me.”

“And you haven’t talked to anyone else?”

Sherlock was now thoroughly confused. “Who?”

John held his eyes a minute longer, then looked away. He picked up his drink and drained it. With the deliberate care of the intoxicated, he placed the glass precisely in the center of the small table and then stood, pulling his jacket together to button it.

Nonononono. Sherlock had spent the past several days refusing to think so much as John’s name, but now that he was here in the flat Sherlock could not bear for him to leave. He leapt to his feet. “I passed my drugs test,” he blurted.

“Yeah,” John said tiredly. “I heard. Molly told me. Well done you, keep it up.”

Keep it up? Sudden anger flared in Sherlock’s chest. He had suffered, burned, craved for ten days and all he got was keep it up? No. “Don’t you want to be certain?” he said, not even trying to keep the acid from his voice as he shoved up his sleeve.

John’s hand caught his wrist with a sound like a slap. Startled, Sherlock jerked back and lost his balance—reflexes shot after ten days chewing himself to bits like an animal in a trap, pathetic—and John caught him by the other arm to stop him falling. Sherlock stumbled backward and landed against the bit of wall separating the kitchen and the landing door.

“No. No,” John said. His eyes were dark with an expression Sherlock had last seen the night he’d exposed Mary’s duplicity: not just anger but a terrible wounded wariness. What awful truth did he fear now? “Don’t do that.”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. “What, you don’t want to see my veins?” Anger. Stay angry. Don’t think about John’s hands on his wrist and arm, pinning him to the wall. Don’t think about how close he was. “You didn’t think I could do it, did you? Didn’t think I could make it without you.”

“I don’t. Want you. To take off your clothes.”

Sherlock blinked. Of course John didn’t want him to take off his clothes; that had been the whole point, hadn’t it? To make him uncomfortable? Apparently it had worked. Now it was Sherlock who was uncomfortable, pinned to the wall like a butterfly, suddenly acutely aware of the heat of John’s body just inches from his. The anger seemed to have drained from John’s face, although he was still gripping Sherlock hard enough to hurt. He was so close Sherlock could no longer read his face. He was close enough to kiss. Sherlock desperately wanted to kiss him and at the same time he wanted, equally desperately, to get away. “Fine,” he said, trying to sound supercilious and condescending, and twisted a little as though to break free and flounce off. He succeeded only in brushing his pyjama-clad erection against the hard bulge in John’s own trousers.

The glancing touch arced through Sherlock’s never endings like electricity. He froze. John’s face, inches from his, looked as shocked as Sherlock’s felt; his fingers tightened painfully around Sherlock’s bicep and wrist. Sherlock could not breathe. Longing. For what? He did not even know, only that he longed, that he craved, was consumed more desperately than he had ever been for any drug.

John swallowed, looked down. He was breathing hard. Sherlock knew suddenly that if he said in that haughty voice “Let go,” that John would let go, that he wanted to let go, couldn’t. They were so close. Sherlock’s back pressed into the wall, eyes level with John’s, legs splayed and braced on the smooth floor, don’t let go. Don’t let go. He tried to take a breath and a tiny, high-pitched sound squeaked out. John swallowed audibly, his jaw tightening, still looking away, and then somehow their hips were touching: John’s hard corduroy trousers pressed against the worn softness of Sherlock’s pajamas. Sherlock pressed his head against the wall and let his eyes fall closed. Longing. For this. This was what he craved. Further understanding was beyond him; his entire consciousness was taken up with the sensation of John’s groin pressed against his.

John’s hips moved ever so slightly, making pleasure flare through Sherlock’s body again. He heard his own voice whimper and John moved again, grinding into him and it was so much, so exquisite, that he could not help pushing back. Oh. John’s breath came harsh in his ear. Sherlock felt hyperaware of everything: the brush of John’s hair against his cheek, the rasping of his breath, the sharp pain of his viselike grip. The rising pleasure as John moved against him. The warmth of John’s breath. His mouth was so close: why weren’t they kissing? Sherlock knew why. If they kissed, this would be real. Sherlock kept still, kept his eyes closed, let John’s weight and strong hands hold him in place. Not real.

John shifted his weight a little to get a better angle and Sherlock arched his back, pressing his shoulder blades into the wall to push his hips forward, there. John was slotted between his legs with his chest pressed to Sherlock’s. Perfect. Don’t think about it, don’t think about anything but this, how good it felt.

Sherlock sensed the muscles of John’s buttocks flexing, building into a rhythm; instinctively, his own hips tightened to meet him, making the friction rise higher, harder. It was so much better, somehow, than when he’d touched himself. Pinned against the wall, John’s hips thrusting roughly against him, the gathering heat between his legs: he was no better than an animal, all higher functions subsumed in the need for John to keep rubbing against his co*ck. “Oh,” Sherlock gasped—the pleasure was surging, closer, closer, he was going to—“Oh. OH.” He was shuddering, the front of his pyjama bottoms hot and wet, legs gone weak, held up only by John’s grip—but John let go his wrist and Sherlock’s arm slipped down, scrabbling uselessly at the wall. John held him up with one strong hand on Sherlock’s bicep whilst he fumbled his flies opened with the other. Sherlock opened his eyes blearily and saw the room over John’s shoulder; John’s head was turned away from him, panting, as he worked himself until he stiffened, groaning into Sherlock’s ear as his hot sem*n spattered the cooling wet spot on Sherlock’s pyjamas.

The stayed like that for a moment, both breathing hard, before John pried his fingers loose from Sherlock’s arm and stepped back. Sherlock slid down the wall until he was sitting on the floor, knees folded up in front of him. He sensed John fishing in his pocket to pull out something—handkerchief, a tissue—to wipe his hand, then folding it and tucking himself away. It was very quiet. Sherlock opened his eyes and looked out at the flat; it seemed unbelievable to him that the room looked exactly the same as it had a few minutes before.

“I’m sorry,” John said in a very low voice. “I shouldn’t have—“

“Shut up,” Sherlock said curtly.

John lapsed into silence again. Sherlock stared straight ahead. The flat remained incomprehensibly unchanged, in contrast to the tumbling kaleidoscope in his head.

“Are you clean?” John asked abruptly.

Sherlock frowned. “Molly told you—“

“Not that kind of clean.”

Oh. “Of course I am. Are you?”

“Not the one with an intravenous drug habit, am I?”

Nor are you the one covered in another man’s sem*n, Sherlock thought with another hot flash of anger. “And I’m not the one with the lying wife.”

John went still and Sherlock braced himself before he was even aware of it, expecting John’s anger in the form of a fist.

It did not come. Instead John’s shoulders slumped audibly and he turned away. Sherlock looked into his direction for the first time and saw John walking slowly toward the stairs.

No—Sherlock leaped to his feet, feeling John’s leaving again as though he were being physically ripped away, come back don’t leave. He opened his mouth to say it but fear stopped his throat. John had come on him and walked away; if John kept walking after Sherlock cried come back, the humiliation would shatter him.

Sherlock buried the pajamas in the bottom of his hamper and took a long hot shower, scrubbing himself until the scent of the soap banished the last lingering aroma of sex in his nostrils. Drying off he caught a glimpse of something in the mirror and turned to see, craning his neck to look at the back of his upper arm. Red marks darkening to bruises. John had left fingerprints on his skin, after all.

Chapter 7

Chapter Text

Thursday morning Sherlock texted Hobbes. Mycroft had still not come through with a list, and Sherlock had spent the previous day and a half chain-smoking out the window and pressing the bruises on his wrist with his thumb in lieu of destroying his skin further; this morning his stomach had hurt so badly he’d vomited his coffee. Time to get back on the wagon. Besides, he was almost out of clean shirts.

Hobbes let herself in with her key midafternoon and Sherlock heard an indistinguishable buzz of voices—Mrs. Hudson sticking her head out to see what was up, probably—and then Hobbes’ stolid tread up the stairs, humming seguing into outright singing this time. Sherlock gritted his teeth, but the song oddly fit his mood (“Shake it off, shake it off”), so he waited until she reached the flat before he started shouting at her to stop.

“Here’s the address of the cleaner’s,” Sherlock informed her, handing her a slip of paper along with a heavy laundry bag. “It’s just round the corner. And here’s the shopping. Can you buy nicotine patches?”

“Don’t know. I can try,” Hobbes said. “Do you need me to go straightaway? Mrs. Hudson said she was going to bring up some tea.”

Since at least part of the reason he had texted Hobbes was to talk to someone, anyone, besides Mrs. Hudson—anyone who would not try to slip him drugs, at any rate, or—Sherlock acquiesced to this with minimal grumbling. Hobbes placed the bag carefully by the door and tucked the paper into her pocket. She looked less unkempt today, Sherlock thought, eyeing her narrowly: ah, the uniform. Hobbes’ uniform skirt had been too tight and too long, obviously bought secondhand off a taller, slimmer girl, but someone had hemmed the skirt and let it out a bit, so she looked almost smart.

“What about the florist? Am I not going there?”

“No, we’ve got all we can from there for now—I might have you go by next week on your way though, pick up another bouquet for Mrs. Hudson.”

“Yeah, all right. I got her to tell me what she likes best.”

“When—oh, of course, Monday.” And Mrs. Hudson had altered her uniform and given her tea, too; Sherlock would bet his violin on it. “She paid you too much. It’ll be less today.”

Mrs. Hudson turned up at this point with a large tray, clearly chosen more with an eye toward providing Hobbes with a healthy snack than pleasing Sherlock: fruit and little sandwiches. This did not bother Sherlock in the least. He ate three bananas and so many of the cucumber sandwiches that Mrs. Hudson actually pulled the plate away from him, relenting only when Hobbes admitted that she did not really like cucumber, but found the chicken delicious.

Sherlock felt astonishingly better after eating, so much so that he considered having a little kip on the sofa, but then as the icing on the cake a courier arrived with the packet from Mycroft. Sherlock tore it open, flipping through the five dossiers within; that one looked familiar—no, he’d been around during the Irene Adler mess, that was why. He began to read through more closely, making notes in the margins and pulling a fresh sheet of paper over to list the names in order of probability. Sherlock was so engrossed that he didn’t even register Hobbes’ return, the sound of her low humming as she moved about the kitchen producing only a vaguely pleasant sensation in the back of his mind of a presence there to look after him. “Tea,” he shouted toward the kitchen.

“Is that to do with the florist?” Hobbes asked, materializing at his side with a cup.

Sherlock took a sip of the tea and handed it back. “More sugar, and let it steep a bit longer next time. In a way. The man you recorded is a Serbian national who was previously involved in a criminal network thought to have been wiped out over a year ago. This is a list of intelligence agents who had knowledge of the network and may have been involved in helping him escape capture.”

“So they’re double agents?”

“Well, one of them is. Here, fix this up on the wall, next to the picture of the man at the florist—no, not that one, there, to the right. And leave off that—“

Sherlock stopped in midsentence. Hobbes peered over her shoulder, brow wrinkling. “All right?”

“What was that.”

“What?”

“That song. What was it?”

“Oh—er, it’s Beyonce, I’m sorry, I won’t—“

“Sing it again.”

Hobbes stared at him blankly.

“Sing it!”

Hobbes blinked, took a nervous breath, and began to sing in a thin uncertain voice: “Who run the world? Girls. Who run this motha--”

“—Girls,” Sherlock finished. “Look at the list. Who isn’t on there?”

Hobbes looked at the paper she had just fixed to the wall, all the Georges and Alistairs and Johns. “Girls?”

“Precisely. Leaving aside the astounding chauvinism of Her Majesty’s Secret Service, I requested a list of everyone with involved knowledge of the Serbian operation. These aren’t field agents, they’re desk-bound bureaucrats. So…” Mags, knowing everything. Mrs. Hudson so many years ago: Of course I know where the bodies are buried. “Who run the world?”

“Girls,” Hobbes said automatically and then, cottoning on, “Secretaries.”

“These men have assistants and those assistants know everything that they know, possibly more.” Sherlock knew he was grinning—it felt just as good as it always had, seeing what everyone else missed—and Hobbes grinned back. Realization of what he was doing suddenly struck him. “Get out.”

“What?” Hobbes said in disbelief.

“Get out. You can’t be involved in this. Haven’t you heard what I’ve just said? These are people with significant power and connections involved in criminal activity and you can’t know anything about it, forget everything I just said, go home.”

“But I could help! I can run errands and, and—make tea, and—“

“No you can’t.” Sherlock rather approved of the fuss she was kicking up—it was what he’d have done in her shoes—but it made no difference, and he was getting impatient: she needed to go so he could get on with the case. “Hobbes, you know if your aunt found out I’d even involved you in this much you’d never be allowed back. I’ll text you by next week at the latest.” He meant it. He’d already decided to keep her on after he got off house arrest: she could bring flowers to Mrs. Hudson, which would keep him in her good graces. And do the occasional surveillance, of course.

Hobbes finally thudded sulkily off down the stairs. As soon as she cleared the landing Sherlock picked up his phone and rang his brother.

“Mycroft,” he said when the call was picked up. “What happened to Anthea?”

Mycroft was a good bit less enlightened in reality than he’d been in Sherlock’s drug-fueled mind palace. He took a fair amount of persuasion.

“Why on earth would you think she’s not capable of this?” Sherlock said in exasperation. “She’s clearly intelligent and free of traditional moral qualms or you wouldn’t have hired her. Did you think it was personal loyalty? Were you loyal to her? How very touching, brother dear.”

“Shut up,” Mycroft said in irritation.

Sherlock shut up. He was a little surprised this shot had struck home. Now that he’d enjoyed his moment of schadenfreude, he felt a brief flare of pity for Mycroft: he, Sherlock Holmes, antisocial junkie murderer, had a circle of people to whom he could entrust his life. Whom did Mycroft have?

“I could meet you at the Diogenes if you can get me cleared to go out,” he offered after a moment.

“This is not getting you off house arrest.” Mycroft sounded restored by the opportunity to deny Sherlock, as he’d expected. “I’ll come round tonight. Maybe Mrs. Hudson can clear me a chair.”

“She never liked me,” Sherlock said. He had poured Mycroft a drink when he arrived, although no one else would have been able to tell that Mycroft needed one. The bottle of whisky was getting rather low. Sherlock wondered a little ruefully if Mrs. Hudson would pick some up for him, since even he knew that he could hardly send Hobbes out to buy whisky.

“By that criterion half of London would be under arrest for treason,” Mycroft said. He sighed. “But you’re essentially correct. She felt your peccadillos to be a distraction.”

“She must have been delighted to sell me out to the Serbians. I wonder if she’d already begun working her own angle by then, or just saw a convenient opportunity?”

Mycroft opened a hand, let it fall. “Unclear. She advocated against involving ourselves there, which suggests the former. Well. The more urgent concern is how we are going to catch her. There is, obviously, no evidence as of yet, and considerable risk of tipping her off. You’re certain you didn’t arouse suspicion?”

“Completely. I sent someone to buy flowers on two occasions, that’s all—someone new, absolutely no known association with me.”

“I suppose we could bring in the Serbians and squeeze them.”

“Then she’ll know you’re onto something, and if she’s any good whatsoever they will have no useful information for you.”

“We’ll have to go to surveillance then. I can arrange electronic monitoring, but we’ll need to station someone near her home, which is going to be a problem given her security clearance; she knows all our people.”

“Ask Lestrade,” Sherlock said. “The police can provide you with surveillance agents; there’s no way she’d recognize them.”

Mycroft considered this. “I suppose that’s not a bad idea. I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”

They lapsed into silence for a moment, Mycroft swirling his glass pensively. “I had a visit from John a few days ago.”

Sherlock looked up sharply: of course, Tuesday, that was where John had gone after work, but why had that made him so angry? “How lovely for you to have someone who could understand how much you have to bear with me.”

“As it happened, you were not the topic of our discussion.”

Really? “What was?”

“Mary Morstan. Specifically, what I knew of her true identity and how long I had known it.”

Sherlock frowned. “What did you tell him?”

“The truth. That I have known about Mary Morstan for a very long time.” Mycroft gave his tight little smile. “We are, you might say, old friends.”

Sherlock sat for a moment, considering this. He had a bad feeling he was not going to like where this conversation was going, and obviously John had liked it even less. There was the additional unpleasant fact that he had no idea what Mycroft was talking about. “Go ahead and gloat and get it over with. And then tell me everything from the beginning.”

“I regret to say very little gloating will be involved.” Mycroft took a sip of his drink. “As you will see. Several years ago, we found ourselves in need of a deep cover agent in London. This always poses a bit of a challenge, since there is always the risk of our own agents bumping up against their real lives, as it were. We have a reciprocal arrangement with the Americans for such situations, so they provided an agent, we created the Mary Morstan identity, she carried out the assignment, all was well. Since she had performed admirably and without blowing her cover, we decided to keep the persona active in case it was needed again. Mary Morstan ended the relationship in which she was involved—“ David, Sherlock thought, “—and announced she was taking a job in America, and for the next few years the American agent you know by that name maintained the identity via Facebook posts, Christmas cards, and so on. When you became temporarily deceased, I thought it would be a good idea to put someone on John, since if anyone suspected you of being among the living then they would most likely try to get to you through him. Mary Morstan was overqualified for such a job, but as it happened had recently completed a particularly dangerous assignment at considerable personal risk, and it was felt she might benefit from something bit less…adventurous. Additionally, she had spoken to her superiors expressing her availability for a long-term assignment due to personal reasons.”

Sherlock raised his eyebrows. “Personal reasons?”

“Her husband had been posted to Islamabad for three years.”

If Sherlock had had a drink, he would have choked on it. “Husband? Are you saying Mary has—“

“A husband in America, yes.”

“Then they’re not legally married. John and Mary.”

“Of course not. They never were, seeing as Mary Morstan is not a real person; you can’t have missed that.”

Sherlock did not argue his feeling that a little quibble like a name on a certificate should carry considerably less weight than being already married, albeit under a different name. “How on earth could you let this happen? You’ve made John’s life into a bad storyline on telly.”

“Oh, it gets worse,” Mycroft said drily. “At the point at which I put her into position I foresaw none of this. Mary Morstan had successfully entered into a relationship in the past as part of her cover with no difficulties, and John’s…romantic entanglements…had tended toward the transitory. We had planned for a six to twelve month assignment, assuming that by that time you would have returned or the danger would have passed. As it apparently did. However, at the point at which I planned to discontinue John’s surveillance, Charles Augustus Magnussen had begun to be a problem.”

Sherlock remembered to shut his mouth with some difficulty. “You were going after him all along!”

“Of course we were. Why could you not have just listened to me for once in your life? But I personally was not involved. I don’t actually run every operation, you realize; a subordinate was in charge of Magnussen. Mary Morstan stayed in her cover identity. She was to befriend Magnussen’s assistant, then manage to attract his attention as a potential target for blackmail, and offer certain sensitive documents in exchange for any incriminating information he might have on her. A sting. Killing him was to be a last resort. From what I was later told by her handler, becoming engaged was Mary’s idea—she thought she would make a better blackmail target as someone who had more to lose.”

“You didn’t know,” Sherlock said slowly. “Mary was no longer reporting to you. When did you find out about the engagement?”

Mycroft’s smile was absolutely without humor. “When I received the wedding invitation. John’s idea, I assume? I can’t imagine the bride wanted me in attendance.”

“John didn’t either, he just thought it would be nice for me if you were there,” Sherlock said bluntly.

“Hmm.” Mycroft did not appear hurt by this information. “Obviously at that point I called in Mary Morstan and demanded a full accounting. At first she prevaricated, claiming that Magnussen was refusing to take the bait for her trap—she’d already postponed the wedding from May to August to buy more time--but eventually she admitted that she’d developed…feelings…for John and was no longer completely sure what she was going to do when the job was finished. This was a development I had not anticipated, since I had in fact facilitated Mary’s husband’s new assignment to London when his Pakistan posting was up, at her request. Needless to say I felt that this level of interpersonal drama was unprofessional and would not best be served by her marrying another man and said so, which is when she told me that she was pregnant.”

“But—“ Sherlock began and then shut his mouth with a snap, feeling his cheeks color.

“Oh, really, Sherlock. Did you truly think you knew a woman was pregnant before she did? That’s a bit hubristic even for you.”

“And you’re saying you let your borrowed agent marry two men and now she’s pregnant and doesn’t know who the father is? This is ridiculous!”

Mycroft threw up his hands. “Of course it is! This is the last time I’m letting an American loose without personal supervision. And that was before things really fell apart. I agreed to let Mary Morstan stay in place until the baby was born—although her husband’s gone back to America; I can only assume he isn’t happy about all this either--assuming she managed to take down Magnussen. But it turned out she’d been telling the truth; Magnussen really was playing with her. He finally agreed to a meeting, then told her that the documents she’d provided weren’t good enough for a trade. At which point she had authorization to shoot him. Except…”

“I turned up,” Sherlock said. He felt like banging his head on the wall. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“Oh, as if you would have listened. When have you ever listened? “

“We could have worked together!”

“Really?” Mycroft raised his eyebrows. “And when you’d been told Mary Morstan’s true identity, what would you have done with that information?”

Sherlock opened his mouth, shut it again. No matter how things played out, wouldn’t they have ended up here in any case? “At least I wouldn’t have got shot.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, that was the only sensible thing she did in two years,” Mycroft snapped. “It gave us a second chance. I was to offer Magnussen valuable information in exchange for him keeping his mouth shut about you breaking into his office and then, when he took the bait, we could have disposed of him quietly. Instead you trampled in and made a terrific mess of the whole thing, as usual.”

“You approved her shooting me?” Sherlock said, outraged.

“I did not. I was extremely angry. But I did clear her of wrongdoing after the fact.”

“I’m telling Mummy.” Sherlock’s eyes had narrowed to furious slits.

Mycroft banged his glass down. “You will not—“ He took a deep breath through his nose, regaining control with some difficulty, and glared at Sherlock. “Do you want Mummy to know how you spent New Year’s?”

“My God, for the last time, I did not OD!” Sherlock shouted, completely losing his temper.

“You weren’t breathing!” Mycroft shouted back. “Do you know I carry naloxone all the time now? So that I never have to be the one to tell Mummy her precious baby boy—“

They were both shouting at each other so loudly that neither of them heard Mrs. Hudson until she shoved right in between them and said sternly, “Boys! That’s quite enough of that.”

Sherlock glared at her. He did not want to settle down. He was enjoying being angry, enjoying raging at Mycroft secure in the knowledge that it was safe, he could rail at Mycroft all night and he would never be rid of him, the great overbearing git had made that clear enough—

Oh. Sherlock blinked, dropped his gaze, blinked again. It was not Mycroft he was angry at, after all. This moment of insight made him feel suddenly exhausted. Before he could talk himself out of it he muttered to the floor, “Sorry.”

“Yes. Of course. I as well, naturally,” Mycroft said, after a momentary startled silence. “Apologies for disturbing your evening, Mrs. Hudson.”

“Well, if you’re going to row any more, I hope you’ll keep your voices down,” she said sternly. “I’m missing my programmes.”

When she’d finally gone there was an awkward silence, Mycroft and Sherlock both staring into the fire with their hand in their pockets.

“Now that we’ve that sorted,” Mycroft finally said. He picked up his glass and gazed into it as though gauging whether it was worth staying for the rest of his drink. “Care for a game?”

At first they both tried to let the other win, but that did not last very long.

“Will you be all right?”

Sherlock considered the question seriously, nodded. “Yes. I’ll be all right. For tonight, anyway.”

Mycroft glanced up from buttoning his coat and Sherlock met his gaze steadily. It was the best he could do, the only promise he could make, but it was true. He would be all right for that night.

Mycroft finally nodded and Sherlock stood in the doorway as he left, listening to his brother descending quietly down the stairs so as not to disturb Mrs. Hudson. He went to the kitchen, considered the almost-empty whisky bottle, and poured the last of it into a glass. Then he went to his chair by the fire.

In a clean neutral room of his mind palace Sherlock sat at an empty table. He took a long breath through his nose and made three boxes appear, neatly spaced; two simple wooden chests, like the pirate trunk he’d had as a boy, and the third of thick reinforced steel. He looked at the first box. Anger. The one he hadn’t recognized, the easiest and the hardest to open. The second: caring? Affection? Love? Even thinking the words in his head made him feel confused and afraid, but that box was so full, so much fuller than the other two, the lid straining to contain the bulging contents. And the last one, the one so studded with locks it was impossible even to make out the opening. Lust? Longing? Craving? He had closed that box long ago, triple-shielded it like the most dangerous of radioactive materials and sealed it in a lead-lined vault. He’d never opened it again. But somehow John’s hands on him had cracked the shielding and now the box was unstable and rattling, gamma rays leaking out and destabilizing his entire mind palace.

Sherlock stared at the boxes a long time. He finished his drink. But it was hopeless: he had no idea what to do with these feelings, he had never known, and the only person who had ever helped him was not there. In the end he took them all back to the lead-lined vault and locked them away.

Chapter 8

Chapter Text

With the surveillance in place on Anthea, there was nothing to do but wait. This was unmitigated torture for Sherlock. The only thing that got him through the next few days was Undrowned, which he took to rationing, but finally ended up finishing in an unstoppable binge very late Sunday night. He immediately took to the internet to order Undertow (rush shipping, obviously). Sherlock was now feeling a certain righteous sympathy with Aimee Lister: Tyler Austin would have made an atrocious Scythius. Hopefully the judge had read the trilogy.

Monday dragged: too many cigarettes, too much free time, too many thoughts he refused to think. The heaviness of despair began to pull at him. Sherlock had done fairly well through the weekend, eating toast and pot noodles and bananas—where had all the bananas come from? He hadn’t put them on the shopping list—but now food seemed too much bother even when Mrs. Hudson brought it, and the sour burning started up in his stomach again.

Fortunately Lestrade rang that afternoon.

“Mind if I come round later? I’ve got something I need you to look at.”

“Is it a case?”

“Of course it’s a case. There’s not enough money in the world to make me come over for a social call when you’re on house arrest. Thought I’d pick up some takeaway. Curry okay?”

“Yes, fine,” Sherlock said, far more interested in the case than the curry. “How soon can you get here?”

Lestrade arrived in due course with a bag of food, a file folder, and a memory stick. “I got all this today. It’s not our case—it happened outside London, a week ago—but word’s been put about that I’m to be brought in on anything that might be to do with Moriarty. Not sure what took so long. Anyway. This is the victim.” He pulled a photo out of the file: a man in late middle age, suit and tie, utterly uninteresting if he weren’t dead. “William Cooper. Rich businessman, on his second marriage, three kids total. Owned a string of companies including a ‘Ski Adventure Centre’ near Maidstone. “

“A what?”

“Indoor ski centre. I took the kids once, awful. So last Sunday afternoon he was found dead in the back garden of an employee at the Adventure Centre, one Sigrid Ekland.“ Another photo, this one of a young blonde woman.

“Has she admitted to the affair yet?”

Lestrade grinned. “Yes she did. She admitted it right away. But the thing was, she hadn’t seen him in a few weeks, what with the holidays and all. Her story is, he was supposed to come to her house that weekend because his wife was away at a spa. But Friday afternoon she got an email telling her there was a change in plans because the wife wasn’t going away after all, so he’d arranged a surprise for her: a spa weekend of her own. The email also said not to reply because his wife was already suspicious and he was going to break the news that he was leaving her that weekend. Miss Ekland was pregnant, see.”

“Ah,” Sherlock said, fingers steepled. “Good alibi then. I assume the story checked out?”

“Right down to the email from his account, which had been deleted from his sent mail folder. Reservation had been made online and paid for with his credit card. Ekland was there Friday to Sunday for a ‘Mum-to-be Pampering’ package and then returned home to find the body in her back garden. According to the police there she was convincingly hysterical—“

“—and more importantly had no motive,” Sherlock said. “Even if Cooper was lying and planned to throw her over, she’d have been wiser to bide her time and sue for paternity testing after the baby was born. Now she’ll have to go after the estate and establishing paternity will be a nightmare; the baby won’t be born for months and presumably the wife will obstruct her at every step.”

“Exactly what the Kent police thought. Which led them to look at the person who did have a motive.” Lestrade pulled out a third photograph with a flourish. “The wife. Imogen Cooper. Who actually was at the spa—a different spa--with some of her lady friends, on a ‘New Year, New You’ long weekend. What is it with these women and the spas? So she had a solid alibi, plus from what the Kent bloke said she seemed genuinely surprised. Initially she thought the police had brought bad news about her son, and when she heard her husband was dead said, ‘Well, thank God, that’s no great loss.’ Kent thought she’d have planned a bit better response if she was in on it. She freely admitted they’d not got on for ages. According to both her and the friends they fought about everything: her spending, his working, and especially the son, who’s apparently a bit of a bad lot. Expelled from school for drugs and now at a boarding school that’s supposed to straighten him out. There all weekend, obviously. Mrs. Cooper even admitted to knowing about the pregnant girlfriend, but claimed not to have been bothered—apparently Cooper left the first Mrs. Cooper high and dry when he ran off with number two, and she’d not the type to let a lesson like that go unlearnt. She’d have been well fixed, or so she claims.”

“But a lot better fixed now,” Sherlock observed.

“Oh yeah. They’ve looked at other possibilities, obviously—professional rivals and so on—but nobody else has a plausible motive, so Kent’s working that angle pretty hard. They’re assuming murder for hire, but so far no dodgy acquaintances or large cash withdrawals or anything of that sort.”

“Hmmm. So how was he killed?”

“Now we’re getting to the good part.” Lestrade pulled out a stack of new pictures: crime scene photos, all showing Cooper lying in what was clearly an utterly uninteresting back garden. His appearance was not improved by being dead. “Don’t know as you can see very well in these photos, but the ground all around the body was wet. Really wet, all mud and puddles. But last weekend was dry—it hadn’t rained for days. Ekland, the girlfriend, said she never went back there in the winter and didn’t know if it was usually wet, but there was no reason for it to be: no water nearby, pipes all checked out okay. Of course that evening it started raining and it’s rained off and on since so the whole place is wet now. They might not have really bothered with it only according to the post mortem Cooper had water droplets in his lungs.”

“How much water?”

“Not enough for him to have drowned. Their medical examiner couldn’t find another cause of death. He said it looked to him like dry drowning, which is a thing where—“

“Laryngospasm as a reflex response to immersion,” Sherlock said. He beamed at Lestrade. Drowning on dry land! This was excellent. “I’ll want Molly to review the post-mortem. What makes you think this is related to Moriarty? Beyond the evident cleverness, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Lestrade said drily. He pulled out a final photo. “Because this note was found in the dead man’s pocket. Ink had run a bit—the paper was still damp—but it was still legible, and some bright lad in Kent remembered the broadcast finally and thought they’d best bring me in.”

The photograph showed an unfolded slip of paper (ordinary writing paper; ordinary ink; nothing to deduce). Written on the paper in a blurry but discernible scrawl were the words “Did you miss me?”

Did you miss me?

Did you miss me?

Oh yes.

Not the deranged and obsessive madman who’d torn his life apart, of course, but an adversary worth his steel—yes, he’d missed this. And yet…the broadcast had been over two weeks ago, a week before the murder. Tyler Austin’s murder had been only a few days after. But there’d been no note there…what if his first instinct had been right, and there were two claimants jostling for the crown? Wiggins had said no, but Wiggins didn’t know everything.

Well, if Sherlock turned out to be right and it was a two-horse race, Sherlock was putting his money on this one. Drowning on dry land was a sight better than drowning in one’s own bath, even allowing for the celebrity shock value. Time to crack on! Sherlock plugged in the memory stick, fired up the coffee, and got to it.

As it turned out, the Kent police were not hopelessly moronic. Not testing the mysterious water around the body before the rain started up had been an unforgiveable oversight, but it might not have shown much in any case; high levels of chlorine, say, or salt water might have pointed…where? Forensics was reasonably certain he’d died there rather than being moved post-mortem, so it still didn’t answer the question of how Cooper had managed to drown in a back garden in Kent. The police had been meticulously thorough in combing through the Widow Cooper’s movements and finances as well. They hadn’t known to check for phone calls to a florist, of course, but phone records were attached going back three months, and Sherlock found no such calls. Of course she might have used a burner, but people were surprisingly careless about that sort of thing...something about that thought tickled the back of his mind, but he couldn’t quite catch it.

The upshot of all this was that Sherlock found himself next morning jittery with caffeine and irritation, head aching and stomach burning, and no farther along than the Kent police. It was a deeply annoying feeling. He stuck the picture of William Cooper’s dead body to the wall next to a copy of the note and glared at them. Stuck, stymied, thwarted, blocked. He needed to talk this through with—he needed a fresh perspective, but he couldn’t even go for a walk to clear his head, stuck stuck stuck in this miserable flat and—wait a minute.

“Mrs. Hudson!” Sherlock bellowed down the stairwell. “What day is it?”

Mrs. Hudson appeared at the bottom of the stairs and scowled up at him. “It’s Tuesday. And don’t shout. Don’t you have your drugs test today?”

Oh thank God.

Sherlock bounded into the lab all ready to tell Molly how much better he’d been feeling since he’d swapped sweets for antacid chews—the last time he’d broken into Mrs. Hudson’s flat he’d found a brand-new economy-size bottle, with a note affixed reading NEXT TIME JUST ASK—and begun eating regular meals, but Molly seemed curiously reticent. She held out a specimen cup without meeting his eye.

“What’s that? I want a serum sample as I did before.”

Molly blushed, the red rising from her collar to her hairline like a slow-motion tide. “John added some more tests this week. Didn’t he tell you?”

Oh. “He, er, mentioned it. Yes.” Are you clean? Sherlock felt the heat rising in his own face. “Do I do it the same, way, or…”

“Yes, just the same, only you don’t, er, need a, a witness…” Molly as now so deeply scarlet she was nearly purple.

“Right,” Sherlock said. He took the container and escaped down the corridor to the toilet. Idiot, of course it was the same way, how many different ways could there be to piss in a cup? At least he could do it alone. He still cringed at the memory---hazy though it was—of John standing in this very loo with his arms crossed, pointedly looking away as Sherlock fumbled his way through the process, trying to coax his humiliated bladder into giving up some urine. Don’t think about that.

When he returned to the lap with his carefully-dried cup Molly took it from him, not making eye contact, and affixed a label. “The rest of this’ll have to go to the lab—I can only do the tox screen here.”

“How long?”

“It might be a few days…they batch some of them. I’ll text you right away once I’ve the results. Arm?”

Molly blew the first vein out of nerves and fetched a butterfly needle, face scarlet again. Sherlock gritted his teeth. It would take half the day to fill all those tubes with a fine gauge needle; Mycroft would be texting him before he was even finished with the blood draw. Oh well, at least she’d got the blood flowing at last.

“There we are,” Molly said, sounding relieved. She switched out the first tube. “Sorry about that. I know it’s a lot, I think John just…well, you know. People don’t always make the best decisions when they’re impaired.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Molly, I nick the needles from you. You know how many I take. And do you really think I’m the sort to share anything?”

Molly went red again, eyes flicking toward the urine container and then quickly back to the slowly-filling tube. “I think he was, um. Different kind of bad decision. Oh, relax your arm!”

Sherlock hadn’t realized how much he had tensed. He forced his arm loose again, relieved when he saw the blood begin flowing through the thin line. “If you stick me a third time I’m going to make you text everyone saying it was you,” he said, trying to sound offhand.

Molly flashed a quick relieved grin. “Just one more. Oh, I talked to Greg this morning; he says you have a case?”

“Yes, I want you to review the autopsy. Has he arranged it?”

“Apparently the authorities in Kent are being a bit shirty…tell me about it?”

Sherlock did, in some detail, and by the time he had finished the tubes were full and she was slipping the small needle from his arm. “There we are, just hold that gauze for a bit. So do you think it’s related? To the florist I mean?”

“Not that I’ve found in her phone records. Of course it might be better to get the florist’s records and work backwards…” Sherlock trailed off, eyes sliding out of focus.

“Are you okay?” Molly asked, worried. “Should I get you a juice, or something?”

Sherlock snapped back to full awareness. “Brilliant! Molly, that’s brilliant, thank you. I knew I just needed to talk it out with someone.”

Molly blushed again, with pleasure this time. “Happy I could help. Shall we get something to eat whilst this runs?”

“Nope, no time today, got to get back. Let me know when you can get to Kent?”

In the cab Sherlock pulled out his phone and rang Mycroft.

“No, I don’t have anything incriminating to report on Anthea,” Mycroft said wearily when he’d picked up. “I don’t have anything new at all to report on Anthea since the last time I talked to you mere hours ago.”

“That was yesterday, and that’s not why I rang,” Sherlock said. “But has she used the Moriarty phone again?” Anthea had received a text on at least one occasion that caused her to go outside and make a call on what appeared to be a burner phone.

“No. I told you, I will tell you when anything happens.”

“I want the phone records from Regal Florists for the last three months.”

There was a brief second of silence. “Only Regal Florist, or do you want Anthea’s also?”

“Not yet. We’re stuck on Anthea until she makes a move. But I’m working another case—I’m stuck on that one too, until I get more information—and it gave me the idea that if we go through the phone records and can find more clients…”

“Maybe somebody will talk,” Mycroft said thoughtfully.

“Pull on enough strings, the whole thing might just unravel.”

“Not a bad thought,” Mycroft said. “And it will distract you from calling me every five minutes. Very well, I’ll get the records sent over and provide you with access to the database so you can identify callers. You should have it within a few hours.”

“Good. I also phoned to let you know I need to make a stop to buy more whisky on the way home, so don’t have me picked up.”

“You may not—“

“You’re the one that drank all of mine!”

Pause. “Fine. I’ll have my assistant purchase a bottle and send it over with the phone records. You are not to go shopping.”

Sherlock, who had no desire to go shopping for whisky and who knew Mycroft would buy a better bottle than he would anyway, nonetheless said, “What if you get something I don’t like?”

“Goodbye, brother mine,” Mycroft said in a long-suffering voice, and rang off.

Sherlock grinned, ridiculously pleased at having manipulated his brother into doing what he wanted, and texted Hobbes. Want to look at some phone records?

“Here’s the first month,” Sherlock said, dropping the thick stack of papers to the desk with a thud. “These are the phone records from Regal Florist. What we’re going to do is go through them looking for incoming calls with a duration of ten to sixty seconds, particularly those in the twenty to thirty range. Regal Florist provides criminal consultation services, you see, at least murder supplies but possibly others, I don’t know, it’s not as though they post a menu. A customer calls and asks for black orchids, and the employee takes their number and tells them it’s a special order and that someone will ring them back. I’ve timed it out, and if they’re not placed on hold it takes approximately twenty-five seconds. A wrong number is less than ten, and any actual order takes at least a minute what with explaining what you want and giving payment information and the recipient’s address and so on. I ordered a bouquet for Mrs. Hudsonto time it.”

“Someone might ask directions,” Hobbes pointed out.

“Or the shop hours, certainly, we’re going to catch some red herrings. Once you’ve identified a call that fits the parameters, look up the number in this directory on the computer—it’s easy, you can work it out—and then you can check the billing address if one’s listed. We’re looking for someone without a good reason to call Regal Florist—someone in a different part of the city, for example. It’s going to be mind-numbingly tedious, which is why you’re here. Got it?”

“Yeah, sure,” Hobbes said, pulling a biro out of her overstuffed bag. “Shall I make tea first?”

Sherlock glanced up at the eagerness in her voice—oh God, she’d been practicing—and said, “No need, Mrs. Hudson will almost certainly be up with some in a bit.”

Going through the phone records was every bit as dull as Sherlock had predicted. In the end it was he who broke first, scrubbing his bitten fingers through his hair and announcing, “I’ll make the tea. You finish that page.”

In the kitchen, he regarded Hobbes’ back with disapproval whilst waiting for the kettle to boil. She had twisted her heavy hair into two untidy plaits today, the ends of which resembled dried-out old paintbrushes. Sherlock, who was exceedingly fussy about his hair product and abhorred split ends, itched to lop them off. He plunked a cup down in front of Hobbes, who had covered a respectable stack of printed out pages in tiny notes, and said, “Have you got anything?”

“Just one. This call, here, came in on the seventh, at eleven in the morning. Lasted twenty-six seconds. The number it came from comes up as the private line of Mr. Timothy Whittington, who’s a senior partner at a financial services firm, and I wondered, what’s a City bloke doing ringng a dodgy place like Regal Florist—“

“—and why is he calling at all, men like that never do their own errands,” Sherlock finished. Hobbes glanced up at him and then swiftly dropped her eyes. Sherlock added irritably, “I’m on house arrest! I am capable of taking my own cleaning normally. What?”

“Nothing.”

“No, you’re laughing at me, and I demand to know why.”

“I’m not—it’s just, where I live, there’s no cleaners,” Hobbes said, twisting the end of a frizzed-out plait around her finger. “There’s launderettes.”

“Ah.” Sherlock considered this. “All right, I concede your point. I’d be utterly hopeless in a launderette.” Hobbes opened her mouth, undoubtedly to volunteer—good God, that was the last thing he needed, Hobbes washing his underpants with some cheap soap powder in a launderette—so Sherlock said hurriedly, “Good work. Now to see what he called them for.”

“How do we do that?”

“You start with Google. Put his name in, the firm’s name—see what comes up. I’ll do a background check.”

Once again Hobbes beat him to the punch. “Oh! It comes up right away. There was a junior partner at the same firm, Neville Collinsworth. He died on the eighteenth. Suicide versus accidental overdose—it doesn’t seem to have got much attention after the first story.”

“It can’t be that easy, give me that,” Sherlock said, fairly yanking the laptop away to read the story himself. Hobbes got up and peered over his shoulder. Apparently it could be that easy. The lone follow up story hinted at “financial reversals” as a possible motive for suicide.

“That means embezzlement. They’re trying to hush it up,” Sherlock said with satisfaction. “They’ll have it entirely backwards, just watch. Whittington’s story will be that he sniffed out the theft and tried to persuade Collinsworth to turn himself in, but it will have been the other way round, and when Collinsworth confronted him—“

“Sherlock Holmes!” Mrs. Hudson snapped from the doorway. “What are you doing? Maya should have been home hours ago! Your mum must be frantic.” This was to Hobbes, who had dropped her gaze to the floor, face back in its usual adolescent dull blankness.

“No, she likely hasn’t even—she’s likely at work, she works evenings,” Hobbes said, twisting her shoe in the rug.

“But you’ve missed your tea, surely.”

Hobbes shrugged. “It’s catch as catch can, when it’s just her boyfriend and the little ones. I can find something when I get home.”

Sherlock was impatient to get back to work. “All right, Mrs. Hudson, make Hobbes a sandwich and then put her in a cab. I’ll pay once you fetch me the cash. Hobbes, you come back tomorrow, we’ve enough here to keep you employed the rest of the week.”

“Yeah, all right,” Hobbes said, brightening, and she clattered off after Mrs. Hudson humming happily.

Sherlock wasted no time ringing Lestrade.

“Collinsworth, Colllinsworth,” Lestrade muttered, apparently typing something into a laptop. “Yeah, here it is. Case is closed though. No evidence of foul play.”

“To the limited mind perhaps not. Fortunately for Mr. Collinsworth’s legacy, I possess an unlimited mind. Who had the case?”

“Ah…Dimmock.”

“Dimmock won’t mind me looking. Can you send me the file?”

“Oh, bugger,” Lestrade groaned. “It takes me forever to manage stuff like that. The young guys, they know all about it…hold on, this might take a bit.” There was a clattering of keys and then Lestrade said, “I’m trying to attach it now. Guess Molly told you Kent’s got their back up about the post-mortem—I’ll call your brother in if I have to, but I’m hoping they’ll come around in a day or so when they haven’t got anywhere. You doing okay?”

“Fine,” Sherlock said automatically.

“Yeah?”

“Two weeks and three days,” Sherlock said and then, surprising himself, “I’d still murder your ex-wife for a hit.”

Lestrade laughed. “Yeah, I’d do it for a cigarette. Or just the pure pleasure half the time.” There was a pause as Lestrade swore irritably at the computer and then he said, “You aren’t quitting that too, are you?”

“God no. Maybe if I make it to a month…and get off house arrest.”

“Let me know and I’ll give it a go myself. See who lasts longer.”

Sherlock opened his mouth to say something rude, realized Lestrade was offering support in the only way he knew, and shut it again. “Thank you.”

Lestrade grunted. “Think I’ve about got this now. All right, I’ve sent the email. If you can’t open it or I buggered it up some other way, text me back and I’ll have Mags do it tomorrow.”

Sherlock turned to have been correct in every particular, of course. He considered the self-satisfied face of Timothy Whittington, imagining how much less pleased Whittington was going to look in his mug shot, but that was putting the cart before the horse. He’d no evidence, for one thing, and arresting Whittington might tip Anthea off that he was getting closer. “Follow the money,” Sherlock muttered, and rang Mycroft.

“No, she hasn’t used the other phone yet,” Mycroft said as soon as he picked up.

“I found a loose thread,” Sherlock said. “Have you got a forensic accountant you can trust to keep his or her mouth shut?”

“I can make sure it stays shut. What have you found?”

Sherlock laid it out for him and added, “Moriarty’s always used a sort of sliding scale, just as I do. She’ll have charged Whittington a fat sum for arranging this little cover-up. If we can trace that…”

“She’ll have used an offshore bank.”

“It’s a starting point. And if you can find the evidence on Whittington’s thefts so much the better. We can use it to squeeze him if need be, or to hang him when this is done.”

“Well, we have nothing to lose,” Mycroft said and rang off.

Sherlock dropped the phone on his desk and considered the teetering stack of phone records. All those potential cases! He could fire up the coffeemaker, break out the chocolate and the nicotine patches and the pomegranate energy drink…but he’d been up all night working the night before, and could already sense how he’d feel in the morning: pounding headache, burning stomach, eyes gritty and raw. But if he tried to sleep, his thoughts would inevitably start sliding in directions they couldn’t go. He realized he was digging his fingers into the fresh bruise in the crick of his arm.

“Sherlock?”

Sherlock startled, realizing from her tone that Mrs. Hudson had probably called his name several times already. “What?”

“I was just going to bed and I remembered I’d forgotten to bring this up. It came today when you were out.” Mrs. Hudson held out a parcel. “But if you don’t want to be disturbed…”

Sherlock looked at the Amazon logo and beamed. Saved by Mrs. Hudson, twice in one day: he was glad he’d ordered such a large bouquet earlier. “I’m in your debt. Put the kettle on before you go?”

Chapter 9

Chapter Text

Sherlock woke the next morning to an unfamiliar sensation. He’d been dreaming, something about his book, Scythius and…oh sodding scones, he was aroused. Sherlock hadn’t woken with an erection in years. What on earth was happening to him? He lay perfectly still, hoping that the unwanted heaviness against his thigh would somehow give up and melt away without any effort on his part, but this proved as fruitless as it had in his school days. This was unacceptable. Sherlock did not indulge arousal. This was clearly the pernicious influence of those bloody books, which he wouldn’t be reading if he weren’t on bloody house arrest…oh, he wasn’t even convincing himself. It wasn’t Undrowned that had weakened the shielding and loosened the chains around the trunk in the vault.

Well, Sherlock just needed to tighten them again, then. Sherlock gritted his teeth, sucked in a breath, and leaped from his bed, stripping off his pyjamas as he dashed to the shower, which he turned on as cold as it would go.

Wednesday they found nothing, but Thursday morning Sherlock uncovered a suspicious fire, and then Hobbes found a call from a woman who later disappeared.

“Domestic violence,” Sherlock said as soon as he looked at the photo. “Remember that line in the story about how she was so broken up over her mother’s death? Mum left her the money, or slipped it to her before she died; that’s how she escaped. We won’t be looking into this one, she can stay missing.”

“Good,” Hobbes muttered, glaring at the ostensibly distraught husband on the screen.

They had a routine now: they worked through the records until Mrs. Hudson brought up dinner, after which Hobbes left and Sherlock checked in with Mycroft. There were no developments with Anthea, but the forensic accountant had uncovered a paper trail that would put Timothy Whittington away for years as well as identified a money transfer to an account in the Channel Islands on which Mycroft had put a watch. Kent, infuriatingly, was still stalling on the autopsy review.

“The insurance agent’s convinced that fire was arson, but couldn’t get proof,” Sherlock told Mycroft Thursday night. “So they paid out. He’s also certain that someone was involved who’s done this before—the operation was too skilled to be amateur. I think she’s got a professional arsonist on retainer, or at least someone with experience with insurance fraud. If we can track that person down…”

“Good thought. I’ll get someone pulling records on fires.”

“You’ll probably hear from Lestrade tomorrow. Molly rang me today and she still hasn’t got approval to review the post mortem.” Molly had really rung to give Sherlock the rest of his lab results, which were all clear, but he saw no reason to inform Mycroft of this.

Mycroft gave a long-suffering sigh. “I do actually have professional obligations aside from—“

“—tracking down your own traitor?”

“Fine,” Mycroft said irritably and rang off.

Sherlock dropped the phone happily and went back to work. Going through the phone records was tedious and yet strangely addictive: there was always the possibility that the next number would yield an interesting case. One more page, he decided. Sherlock was currently allowing himself two chapters a night of Undertow, and he felt a happy frisson of anticipation. Nothing, nothing, nothing…maybe just one more.

“Sherlock?”

Sherlock glanced up and then froze, stunned by the sight of John standing in the doorway, looking awkward. He realized that, in spite of determinedly not thinking of John at all over the past ten days, he’d unconsciously resigned himself to never seeing him again.

“Mind if I come in?”

“Yes,” Sherlock said, unsticking his tongue with an effort. “I mean, no--of course, come in.” He had a fleeting moment of relief that he’d been found fully dressed and working at his desk, instead of curled up in his pyjamas reading an embarrassing work of fiction. “Do you want a drink? I’ve a new wobble of bisky—I mean—“

John smiled, looking fractionally more relaxed, and said, “I thought I’d stick to tea tonight. Mind if I put the kettle on?”

“I’ll do it,” Sherlock said, standing, but John said, “No, don’t trouble, you’re working.”

Sherlock looked down at the printout and had no idea what number he’d been about to look up. This was ridiculous; he was hardly going to carry on working now. He got the fire going instead, settling down in his chair by the hearth. He couldn’t stop staring toward the kitchen. It seemed miraculous to have John there, puttering about the kitchen as though he’d never left, making tea. Of course, maybe it just seemed miraculous to have someone who could make tea without bursting into song.

John came out carrying two mugs and handed one to Sherlock before settling into his old chair. Sherlock took a sip, savoring the perfection of it for a moment: tea always tasted better when John made it.

“Making any progress, then?” John asked, tilting his head toward the desk.

“Mmm. Of a sort.” Was he meant to respond in kind now? Surely it was not done to inquire into the recently disrupted state of someone’s marriage. What would consist of progress there anyway? Sherlock had no idea. He’d been so fiercely avoiding any thoughts of John that it only now occurred to him to wonder just what was happening in the Watson household. Was Sherlock even meant to know about that? Sherlock took another sip of tea and tried to think of something appropriate to say.

“I heard from Molly today.” John was gazing meditatively into the fire, holding his own mug loosely. “She said your tox screen was clear--that’s, what, two and a half weeks? Is that....”

Sherlock hesitated briefly, trapped by his pride, then admitted, “Possibly.” Certainly.

“That’s good, then. Really good. And, er, I know you wouldn’t have faked the sample. I shouldn’t have said that.”

Sherlock waved this off. “Well obviously I could have done, Mrs. Hudson would have given me some of hers, though on second thought that might not be my best option…”

John laughed and Sherlock’s heart gave a funny little squeeze. How long had it been since he had made John laugh?

“Still, I’m sorry,” John said, the smile fading from his face. He looked back at the fire. “I’m sorry about a lot of things.”

Since the list of things John might regret pertaining to Sherlock—ranging from meeting him five years ago to ejacul*ting on him last week—was extensive, Sherlock had no idea how to respond to this. Then he realized, belatedly, that John had just apologized to him. What was he meant to do with that? Sherlock had no experience with accepting apologies. He stared at John’s profile. There were bags under John’s eyes and new lines around his mouth; he looked almost as bad as Sherlock. Sherlock had the vague feeling he was meant to say something, but since his attempts at assistance had been less than useless thus far and he was afraid to ask any questions for fear of what John might answer, he kept quiet.

John was still staring into the fire. He took a sip of tea, absently, then glanced up at Sherlock. He rubbed the back of his neck, hesitated, and said, “I, er. I hear the rest of the tests were negative too.”

“Yes. Obviously,” Sherlock said, curt.

John shrugged apologetically. “Yeah, okay. Just, I worry about you, you know?”

This conversation felt to Sherlock as though he were walking on quicksand. He would have almost preferred John drunk and angry again; at least that way he knew where he stood. How to respond? Irritation? (“Unnecessary, as we’ve just established.”) Gratitude? (“Thank you, but it’s unnecessary, as we’ve just established.”) Go on the offensive? (“Don’t you have enough to worry about?”) No, definitely not that one. Why was John suddenly into talking? Why couldn’t they just drink tea, maybe discuss the case? All Sherlock wanted was to just bask in having John there in his chair by the fire, if only for a while.

John appeared to have concluded that Sherlock’s prolonged silence indicated that he did not understand this statement, so he forged on. “I mean, I always worry about you, but not about that specifically, because I thought you didn’t, er, well. But now…”

Sherlock barely kept himself from flinching. What did John—whose powers of observation were apparently far better than Sherlock had ever credited, in this area at least—think he had learned from one brief instance of grinding against a wall? “I don’t.”

“Oh,” John said, clearly taken aback. “Er…you mean you don’t, er, recently?”

Sherlock rolled his eyes and pointedly looked away.

John was quiet a moment, evidently getting up his nerve, and then took a deep breath. “Sherlock? When you were using before, when you were younger, did any--”

“No.”

“You don’t even know what I was going to ask,” John protested.

“No.”

John looked at him a minute, a crease between his warm eyes, and Sherlock looked stonily back. He had a brief strange flash of Hobbes, the way her face went blank whenever Mrs. Hudson mentioned her home.

John looked away and took a drink of his tea. “Sometimes people make bad choices when they’re impaired,” he said very gently.

Sherlock’s throat closed. He placed his mug carefully on the table, before it could slosh in the cup. So that was what this was about. Last week had been a mistake, a bad choice, something to be negated because John had been drunk; he meant to call up Sherlock’s own disastrous errors to set against it: see, we all make mistakes.

John had glanced back but Sherlock would not look at him. He stared fixedly into the fire. John cleared his throat and said, “Yeah, I’m doing this badly. I just thought it might be good to, I don’t know, talk? I mean, I suppose it seems funny after all this time, but I thought perhaps we could talk about…”

No. Sherlock’s ears were ringing, alarms going off as John spoke. No, he’d said, no, no, NO and yet John kept going, step after step down the staircase that led to the shielded vault. Sherlock’s hands were shaking. He had to cut him off, now, with whatever ammunition he had to hand, but not Mary, no, that was the nuclear option, he didn’t dare go there. “Why bother? I already know all there is to know about you. People making bad choices—that’s how it was with you and Major Sholto, wasn’t it? You were drunk then too, at least the first time. What did he say, ‘How do you know if you’ve never tried?’ Was it a blow j*b, that first time? ‘You’ll not believe how it feels from a man?’ And you told yourself you were just going along. You were drunk, just a bit of a lark, it’s not gay if your bollocks don’t touch, isn’t that how it goes? And yet you kept going back.” Sherlock was leaning forward, his hearth thudding in his ears and his hands feeling cold and distant as he stared fiercely into John’s shocked eyes. “You kept going back. Not just because the sex was fantastic although it was but because you weren’t supposed to, because it was bad, it was dirty, all the things you heard from your parents and so you were drunk every time, weren’t you, and you kept going back, didn’t you, even though you knew you shouldn’t, you kept going back. Because it wasn’t dangerous for you, not really, it was dangerous for him. He was your superior, and he was in love with you, and you were just enjoying the thrill.” Sherlock practically spat the last words and then sat back, bracing himself. He fully expected John to leap to his feet and storm out, and then Sherlock could fling himself into his path and shove him back, and they would…what? Nothing.

John did not storm out. He looked into the fire for a long moment with his jaw tightly clenched, but then he took a deep breath and said, “All right. Point taken.”

Sherlock blinked. The adrenaline was still surging in his blood, twisting his stomach with arousal and fear. What was he meant to do now?

“But, Sherlock,” John said very quietly, not meeting his eyes, “I need you to know…that’s not what’s happening here.”

“Nothing is happening here,” Sherlock snapped before he thought better of it.

John flinched and it was Sherlock who leapt to his feet, unable to stay sitting a moment longer. He strode toward the kitchen with no clear goal in mind—his mug was still half full—and stood for a second staring blankly around the cupboards before snatching up a packet of biscuits and striding back out to the lounge. John had stood up and was staring at him in some concern.

“Biscuit?” Sherlock said haughtily, thrusting the packet toward John. His hands were shaking too badly to open it.

John reached out carefully. He took the packet and then closed his other hand over Sherlock’s, clasping Sherlock’s cold, trembling fingers in his own warm steadiness. Every iota of Sherlock’s consciousness narrowed to their clasped hands. The trembling intensified.

“You’re shaking,” John whispered.

“Withdrawal,” Sherlock managed. The shivering had spread to the rest of his body now. John was so close to him, the blue of his eyes so deep and steady, so warm. Sherlock felt himself leaning into that warmth as though pulled by a magnet. He heard the packet of biscuits fall and John’s other hand wrapped around his.

“You deserve so much better,” John said so softly Sherlock could barely hear him.

Sherlock shook his head minutely, not trusting his own voice. His forehead touched John’s and he let it rest there. John’s lips had touched there, New Year’s Day. He had left invisible fingerprints on Sherlock’s face and the ghosts of kisses on his lips. Sherlock wanted those kisses again so badly that he was not even conscious of turning his face and leaning forward, closing the gap so his lips brushed John’s.

Sherlock gasped, and John's mouth stole the gasp from his, closed over his open mouth, breathed warm air into him. A kiss. Another kiss. They were kissing. The warmth spread and Sherlock’s trembling slowed. Sherlock became aware that John was straining on tiptoe and wanted to bend his knees, but he was afraid if he unlocked his legs he would fall.

John’s hand let go of his and wrapped around Sherlock’s back, encircling him. Sherlock’s fingers closed in the soft wool of his jumper. Now, wrapped in John’s arms, he could relax his knees and give himself up to the kiss. John clasped the back of his head and nuzzled against his cheek and Sherlock gasped again, turning his head and licking tentatively and John’s mouth closed over his once more, sending a wave of molten warmth through his body. Everything good in his life, everything beautiful—it had been nothing compared to this.

They kissed and kissed. Sherlock would have been content to stay there forever, his mind astonishingly, blissfully empty of everything but the sensation of John’s arms around him and John’s mouth on his. He never wanted to do anything else.

John’s strong arm let go his back and he cupped Sherlock’s face with both hands, holding him in place. Sherlock’s shallow breathing was loud in his own ears. “I can’t be what you deserve,” John whispered. “Not right now. I want to be more than anything, but I can’t.”

“I don’t care.”

“I know.” John’s voice broke on the words and he had to stop, swallowing hard. “I know you don’t. That’s why I have to go.”

Sherlock’s fists tightened in John’s jumper of their own volition but he forced himself to relax them, clenched his teeth to stop from begging. He could not, quite, bring himself to let go. John took a single anguished breath, kissed Sherlock once on the forehead, and then pulled himself free. Sherlock stumbled, but he managed to right himself, so at least he was still on his feet when John finally gained the door and, with a last searing glance back at Sherlock, made his way down the stairs.

Sherlock stood still in the center of the room. This was somehow worse than the last time; he felt flayed, as though every inch of him that had been pressed to John’s warmth had been left raw and exposed. At least I’m dry, he thought, trying the thought on for reassurance, but there was no comfort in it, and no matter how close he got to the fire he could not seem to get warm again.

Saturday morning, three weeks clean, Sherlock stood in the bathroom and stared critically at his reflection. He certainly hadn’t put on any weight since last week. Skin and bones, held together with spit and baling wire: he still looked like a junkie. The burning in his stomach had gotten better but had been replaced by a sort of low-level constant nausea, so that he was mostly living off toast and bananas (and tea, coffee—but less coffee--and five-hour pomegranate energy drink). His skin, though, that was definitely better. The sores were beginning to heal and now that the itching had abated a little he was able to keep himself from scratching new ones. Sherlock flexed his fingers to look at them in the mirror and then quickly curled them again: still bitten raw. They would hurt if he tried to play his violin, but he wouldn’t be doing that for a while anyway. Sherlock straightened his shoulders and looked himself in the eye. He still looked a bit of a wreck, but getting better, and he was three weeks clean. Deep down he felt a tiny glow of pride.

Mycroft had sent a thick file of questionable insurance payouts late Friday afternoon, and Sherlock worked steadily through the weekend. In spite of his good intentions he didn’t remember to eat until Saturday night. Standing in the kitchen, gloomily dumping beans out of a tin, he realized to his horror that he missed Hobbes: her midafternoon arrival had lent structure to the day, even though her humming drove him mad whenever she was there. At least she didn’t hum whilst she was working. Or eating. Sherlock had never felt lonely eating alone in his younger days, although that was probably because he hadn’t even realized how profoundly lonely he was back then; it was just his baseline state. But since coming back from the dead all his meals seemed to be like this one, eaten standing up or on the run. It had made a change having Hobbes there, the two of them eating in companionable silence at the desk, their books propped against each other.

Well, Hobbes was spending the weekend with her aunt, and at any rate he had plenty of work to do. Far better not to waste the time. Sherlock took his beans on toast back to the desk, where they sat uneaten as he worked on into the night.

“Mr. Mahdavi? My name is Sherlock Holmes. I’m a detective looking into the matter of—“

“A detective?”

“Yes, as I said, I’m—“

“Finally! Five times I have called the police and now you are ringing me back?”

Sherlock paused. “You phoned the police?”

“Yes! That is why you are calling, yes? You are the police?”

“Actually, no. Although I do work with the police on occasion and am doing so now. I was looking into a payment your insurance firm made to Mr. Anthony Lindner for the loss of his yacht and I wanted—“

“But that is why I called! Because I was suspicious about the sinking of the boat and also about his wife! And then when I talked to my colleague and found out that the young woman had been involved--”

“What young woman?”

“The wife! This is what I am telling you! I do not believe she is Mrs. Lindner. And I have three other cases now where I believe she has been present, under different names, and—“

“Mr. Mahdavi,” Sherlock said, with a rising feeling of excitement, “Would it be possible for you to meet with me today?”

Mr. Mahdavi was a small, balding man with a thick mustache and a fanatical gleam in his eye. It appeared he had been obsessed with the series of possible insurance frauds for some time, but had been unable to get the police to take an interest.

“I never felt comfortable about the sinking of Mr. Lindner’s boat. It did not sit right with me, although there was no evidence that anything happened beyond the storm which he blamed for the loss. So the firm made payment, but because I felt uneasy I looked also at his other policies, and I saw the age of his wife. Now it is possible such a well-to-lady might have plastic surgery and spa treatments as to look so young, but I do not believe so. I was telling about this case, at a meeting, and to my great surprise an adjustor from a different firm had also had a suspicious case involving a young woman. We compared our recollections of her appearance and I am convinced it was the same lady. When I met with her she was blonde and with my friend a ginger, but that is easily managed through dye or hairpieces, do you not think?”

“Definitely,” Sherlock said, itching to get his hands on the files in Mr. Mahdavi’s case.

“And so I sent many many emails, to all the claims adjustors of my acquaintance, and I have found two other cases in which I believe she is involved. I called the police, as I told you, but they only take a report and say someone will get back to me but of course they are too busy.”

“And the young woman. You are convinced it’s the same person?”

“Yes. As I said she changes her hair every time but I am convinced she is the same.”

“Can you describe her for me?”

“About so tall, very slim, fair with blue eyes. She is not curvy but has lovely features and even teeth, and she smiles with the confidence of a woman who knows every man’s attention is hers, do you understand what I mean?”

Sherlock blinked, thought of Irene Adler, and said, “Yes.”

“If I could show you these files….”

“I would like nothing better,” Sherlock said sincerely.

“Is this the last page?”

Sherlock looked around from where he was rearranging his now-sprawling wall collage to accommodate the insurance fraud cases. The wall resembled a giant octopus with the florist pictures at the center and all the cases they had found radiating off like tentacles, with the man who drowned on dry land all alone far off to the side, like a floating bit of plankton. Sherlock had delegated the remainder of the phone records to Hobbes whilst he worked on the new cases.

“I suppose it is,” Sherlock said. “Did you find anything else? No? Make some tea then.” She was getting better at it.

Hobbes trudged off to the kitchen and Sherlock realized he was unconsciously bracing himself and gritting his teeth. Sure enough, the humming started up a minute later, seguing all too soon into full-on singing. “If I was you, I’d want to be me too,” Hobbes warbled, apparently to the kettle.

“Were,” Sherlock shouted.

The singing stopped. “What?”

“If I were you, not if I was you.”

Hobbes appeared in the doorway. “Yeah, I know that, but that’s how the song goes, see?”

“The song’s wrong,” Sherlock said with finality.

Hobbes frowned at him. “I like that song,” she told him. “And now every time I hear it that’s going to bother me.”

“Good,” Sherlock said, turning back to the wall. When had she stopped being afraid of him anyway?

Hobbes appeared a few minutes later with the tea, which she placed carefully on the side table. “Now what? I could tidy up a bit, or—“

“Nothing. You’re finished.”

“—I could go round to the bookseller’s, you’ve nearly finished that book—“

Sherlock had already ordered Unending from Amazon, but he was not about to tell Hobbes this. “That was for a case.” Which he’d already solved, of course, but he wasn’t telling Hobbes that either.

Hobbes shifted her weight awkwardly from foot to foot and Sherlock sighed and set down his cup. “You must be able to tell Mrs. Hudson’s already cooking, you can hardly clear off now or she’ll be hurt. You can stay for tea. Read your book or something, just don’t sing.” He deliberately turned back to the wall so he would not see her face brighten.

Hobbes’ book was The Student’s Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes, which she claimed to find fascinating, although she admitted that she frequently had to look up words on her phone. Sherlock indulged in a momentary fantasy of passing Hobbes off to Mycroft, with their mutual appreciation of political philosophy and desserts; just the thought of Hobbes humming her way through the Diogenes Club made him smile inwardly. This in turn reminded him that Mycroft might well have information about the insurance fraud suspects from the forensic accountant by now. He shooed Hobbes off directly they’d finished eating so he could phone.

“As it happens, the information was remarkably easy to trace,” Mycroft said. “Three of the four made money transfers to the same account in the Channel Islands. The fourth was either cleverer about covering his tracks or paid in cash.”

“Will it be enough?”

“I believe so, yes. I have a meeting arranged with Detective inspector Lestrade tomorrow about using one of the Met’s undercover officers as bait.”

Sherlock desperately wanted to be at the meeting, but he was not about to give Mycroft the satisfaction of turning him down. Fortunately, Mycroft went on without giving him a chance to lose his resolve. “By the way, I was pleased to hear of your negative test results today. Three weeks sober is quite an accomplishment for you, is it not?”

“Three weeks and three days,” Sherlock said, unable to stop himself correcting this.

“Must be a record. I was pleasantly surprised, having thought Miss Hooper was going to Kent to review the post mortem today.”

“They were making a fuss about the disruption so Molly offered to go down after their regular work was completed for the day,” Sherlock explained. “I expect I’ll hear from her when she’s on her way back if she’s found anything.”

“Why are you still pursuing this? You never found any connection to the florist.”

This was true. Sherlock was not sure why he could not let the case go, aside from the obvious fact that he couldn’t solve it and that in itself drove him crazy; the note, he supposed, the note that had fitted into his dream and that had not been found at any other crime scene. It set his spidey-sense tingling, as John had once said. (Sherlock had had to look this up. He liked it.) He was certainly not about to admit to Mycroft that he had a feeling, however. “The fact that we did not find a connection certainly does not rule out that one exists. And besides—“

Sherlock’s phone beeped and he pulled it away to look at the screen: Molly. “Ah, there’s Molly now. I have to go,” he said, waited an extra second to see if Mycroft would say anything about going to the meeting tomorrow, and swiped over peevishly when Mycroft simply rang off.

“Hallo,” Molly said brightly. “I’m on my way back to London now, after we finished we went for a bit of dinner—he’s quite nice actually, the pathologist, it was his boss who—“

“Never mind that, what did you find out,” Sherlock said impatiently.

“Well, I didn’t find a whole new cause of death, if that’s what you were hoping. Although I’m not entirely convinced by the dry drowning explanation. There are a few things that look more like suffocation or smothering to me, but it’s not conclusive, and I’d expect to see more edema in the airway. There’s the water, though, that’s definitely hard to explain any other way—but the water itself is strange.”

“How so?”

“I analyzed it, as you asked, and it’s just water. Plain H2O. I mean, it’s not salt water or chlorinated pool water, it’s what you’d get from a tap.”

“Or a lake or pond?”

“If it were a very clean lake or pond. More like a spring. Normally in a freshwater drowning case I’d expect to see a lot more organic debris in the lungs—plant matter and mud and so on—and we didn’t see any of that. But then there wasn’t much water to begin with, so it’s hard to be certain.”

“So he would have been immersed in…what, a bathtub?”

“Exactly, and I’d expect to see more signs of a struggle in that case. There is one thing I thought of. I saw a case report months ago in which a man died of laryngospasm during waterboarding. That could look like this…but why would anyone have been waterboarding him?”

“His wife certainly thought she had cause, but it does seem a bit extreme,” Sherlock agreed.

“I’ll look the article up when I get home and put it with the photographs. Shall I message them over or do you want to just get them next week?”

“Neither; I’ve an assistant right now and I’ll have her pick them up tomorrow afternoon.”

“An assistant! What does John think about that?”

“Why should John think anything?”

“Well…I’d rather thought that was his job, isn’t it?”

“John was my partner, not my assistant. And he’s returned to his former profession. At any rate she’s short-term; I just have her going to the shops and running errands whilst I’m on house arrest.”

“Well, have her text me when she arrives and I’ll meet her at the main entrance,” Molly said, still sounding a bit disconcerted, and they hung up.

Sherlock texted Hobbes about going round to Bart’s tomorrow and then stared at the fire, thinking hard. Waterboarding. Why, who, where, why, why, why? Perhaps William Cooper had a secret life, connected with Anthea somehow, and had got himself killed that way? But why the note? Why draw attention to the body? Why have a body at all, in this scenario—surely Anthea had the resources to stage a reasonable cover-up, or just make the body disappear altogether.

The obvious thing to do was to ring Mycroft, but then Mycroft would think Sherlock was just using that as a pretext to phone in hopes Mycroft would allow him to attend the meeting with Lestrade. Which of course he wasn’t. Although possibly Mycroft was planning to let him go all along and was just letting him sweat, in which case…

Sherlock was so busy arguing this in his head that the phone ringing in his hand made him jump. Excellent! It must be Mycroft—Sherlock had been right after all. He answered the phone without looking at it. “What, I’m working,” he snapped in his most irritable voice.

“Oh,” John said, sounding startled. “Right, sorry, hadn’t realized you—“

“John!” Sherlock sat up so fast he nearly overbalanced and fell on his face. “Sorry, I thought—I was just talking to Mycroft a few minutes ago and thought he’d rung back.”

“That’s a relief,” John said, laughing. The laugh warmed Sherlock in a way that had nothing to do with the fire. “Completely understandable. Are you working?”

“A bit. Not really,” Sherlock said. Perhaps John was coming round—he’d worked late and was thinking of bringing a takeaway, perhaps, should Sherlock admit he’d already eaten so as to establish he wasn’t just sitting around waiting for John to call, or pretend he hadn’t so John—

“Well, I won’t keep you,” John was saying. “I just wanted to say well done, you know, three weeks clean and all.”

“Three weeks and three days,” Sherlock corrected automatically, feeling the warmth ebbing away, leaving a disappointed chill in its wake.

“Even better. You should be—“

“You never rang to congratulate me before,” Sherlock interrupted, a bit too much edge in his voice.

“Yeah, I know,” John said. His own voice sounded oddly flattened, as though all the warmth had leaked out of him too. “It’s just that…right now, until…Sherlock, if I come round I’m going to end up touching you, and if I start touching you, I won’t be able to stop.”

Sherlock went numb. He could not follow John’s reasoning, but the bottom line was clear enough: touching Sherlock was something to be avoided at all costs. He felt his face go blank, tried to school his voice into cool indifference. “Of course. Best not to risk it.” He knew immediately he’d gotten the tone wrong: too loud and too shrill.

“Sherlock,” John began pleadingly and then paused, apparently registering Sherlock’s agitation. When he spoke again his tone had gone tentative. “Sherlock, is that…is that what you want? Do you not want me to touch you?”

No. No. It was the unanswerable question, John down in the vault and shaking the box now to see what rattled, Sherlock couldn’t answer, because of course he did not want John to touch him, Sherlock did not want anyone to touch him, he’d put all that aside and locked it away, touching was for ordinary people, not for him, no thank you, no.

Except he did.

“Sherlock—“

“I have to go,” Sherlock said abruptly. He disconnected the phone and then, for good measure, turned it off. He stood up, the phone still clutched in his numb fingers, and paced back and forth. Why did John have to ask that question? Why ask at all as he’d already said he wouldn’t come, wouldn’t touch him? Why couldn’t things just go back to the way they’d been, John in his chair and at Sherlock’s side and everything simple and perfect except now that John had touched him he did want it, more than anything, and yet he didn’t, and it didn’t matter because John had already decided against and why, why, WHY were all these decisions suddenly up to John alone?

Sherlock was shaking, heart banging in his ears. He couldn’t think about this anymore. The thought that he might be angry at John—that he might have good reason—was the last straw, the final blow to his tentative equilibrium. He had to get away from his own head. He reached for the power button on his phone and dropped it, cursing as he tried to pick it back up with his shaking fingers and dropping it again. He’d been deluding himself; deep down he’d always known he wouldn’t make it. They probably had bets on—

Three weeks and three days.

Sherlock snarled at the memory of the ridiculous stupid pride in his voice. Must be a record—that had been sarcasm, surely, and besides he’d not used at all when he lived with John—

But it was a record, since he’d come back.

Three weeks and three days.

Twenty-four days. Twenty-four days of nausea, tremors, insomnia, craving, burning, itching. Five hundred and seventy-six hours, give or take, and every one of them felt as though it lasted years. Was he really going to let it all go to waste?

I am better than this.

Strangely it was that thought—shaky and tremulous though the memory was—that saved him. He was Sherlock Holmes. He had bested Irene Adler, Jim Moriarty, an entire criminal network single-handedly. Was he really going to be undone by one man with bad taste in jumpers? A man who promised to stay and didn’t?

Sherlock took a deep, shaky breath and strode out the door and down the stairs. At the bottom he hesitated only a moment before sliding the switched-off phone under Mrs. Hudson’s door. He’d get it back in the morning.

It was only when he was back in his own kitchen filling the kettle that it occurred to Sherlock that he hadn’t heard Jim Moriarty’s voice once.

Chapter 10

Chapter Text

Hobbes turned up the next afternoon, bearing the autopsy report and Mrs. Hudson’s weekly bouquet and humming merrily. Sherlock shouted at her so viciously that even Hobbes, who was usually immune to his snappishness, blinked a bit and subsided. Sherlock had been in a foul temper since the previous night, a situation not improved by the knowledge that Mycroft and Lestrade were meeting at that very moment.

“Found Miss Hooper all right, I see,” Sherlock said as he emptied the envelope onto his desk. He felt the tiniest bit abashed for ranting.

“Yeah. You let her think I was a grown-up, didn’t you? She was that surprised. Offered to buy me an ice cream.”

Sherlock glanced over. “You didn’t take it?” That was a first. Hobbes had a sweet tooth to rival Mycroft’s.

“I told her I was working,” Hobbes said with dignity.

“Well, no doubt Mrs. Hudson will be up any minute with the tea tray. No dinner today though—I’ve no detective work to be done and you’ve already got all the shopping. Next week for the flowers and errands unless I text.” Sherlock was in a vile enough mood to take a small mean satisfaction at disappointing her, but Hobbes merely nodded, stoically blank. She was wearing her hair in a sort of exploding ponytail today, a style so hideous it actually hurt Sherlock’s eyes, emphasizing her frizzy hair and round face.

Sherlock sorted through the autopsy report quickly, spreading out the photos and skimming the conclusion. Molly’s follow-up research had evidently bolstered the conclusions she’d reached in Kent; there was nothing new there. Sherlock took the water analysis and a photo of a nice slice of William Cooper’s lungs, wrote “Waterboarding?” across the bottom in an irritable slash, and handed them to Hobbes. “Put those up on the wall—over to the side, where the man who drowned on dry land is.”

“He drowned from being waterboarded?” Hobbes said with interest, affixing the papers to the wall.

“Maybe. Maybe not. No, not like that, put them higher.”

Mrs. Hudson appeared with a heavily laden tea tray at this juncture. “Really, Sherlock, lungs? I don’t know how you can eat with such things on the wall…oh, thank you, Maya dear, aren’t those lovely! You always pick out such a pretty bouquet. And you for thinking of it,” she added hurriedly at Sherlock’s glare.

They had their tea in silence, Hobbes reading The Student’s Leviathan as she munched away whilst Sherlock sipped his tea and stared into space. He thought poisonous thoughts about Mycroft. He thought poisonous thoughts about Lestrade. He thought about how hateful everything was and how as soon as Hobbes left he was going to chain-smoke an entire pack of cigarettes. He absolutely did not think about anything else. How long did it take those incompetent nitwits to plan a sting anyway? Why hadn’t anyone phoned to update him?

When Mrs. Hudson returned for the tea things she said in surprised disappointment, “Sherlock, you didn’t eat anything.”

“Those scones were burnt.”

“They weren’t!” Hobbes said indignantly. “They were lovely.”

Mrs. Hudson had known Sherlock far too long to take this seriously. “But you haven’t eaten all day. Are you all feeling all right? Should I call John?”

Sherlock stood up in a sudden fury. “Get out! I don’t need you pestering me, isn’t it enough you’ve an actual thirteen year old now to fuss over?”

“Don’t you take that tone with me, young man,” Mrs. Hudson said, affronted. “No, thank you, Maya dear, I’m fine. You just take these sandwiches into the kitchen and wrap them up for later, and if Himself turns up his nose then you take them along with you.” She marched out the door with the tea tray, the picture of offended dignity.

Hobbes stomped back to the door of the kitchen, hands on her hips. “She was just trying to be nice to you!” she burst out, glaring at Sherlock. “Why can’t you let her?”

This was too much. “And why don’t you let your aunt take you to have your hair done? It’s hideous.”

Hobbes looked as though Sherlock had slapped her. One hand rose almost unconsciously to the mess of her unfortunate ponytail. Her face went red, and to his horror Sherlock saw tears starting in her eyes.

“Sorry,” Sherlock muttered. “I’m sorry.” He sat back down in his chair, unable to keep looking at her. He felt suddenly exhausted. He had been up all night, biting his fingers bloody and clawing new holes in his just-healed skin, and now he just wanted to go to bed and hope things would be better tomorrow.

He heard Hobbes sniffle and wipe at her face with her sleeve. “Do you want me to go?”

“No,” Sherlock said. He really did, but he couldn’t send her off like this. “Could you, er…make us some tea?”

“Yeah, course,” Hobbes said eagerly, not mentioning that they’d only just finished having tea. She moved back to the kitchen and Sherlock clenched his teeth reflexively, but the kitchen stayed silent.

After a bit Hobbes came out and handed him his cup, settling onto the sofa with her own. “The girls at school,” she said, looking at her feet.

Sherlock looked up. “What?”

“The girls at school. The popular ones. They don’t take any notice of me now, but if I was to get my hair done…they’d think I was trying to be like them, you see?”

“Yes,” Sherlock said. He did see. He took a drink of tea and said, “This is good.”

She gave him the ghost of a smile. “Thanks.”

“Your aunt wants you to go to boarding school.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to go?” Sherlock said, wondering belatedly if anyone had actually asked her this question.

Hobbes did not hesitate. “Yeah. I mean…I’m scared it will be posh, but the girls can’t be worse than the ones at my school now, and I want to go to a good school. I want to go to university and then I want to be a scholar and stay there always. I’m going to be a professor, and have a whole room full of books, on all four sides. Except a fireplace.”

This was more personal information than Hobbes had imparted in their entire acquaintance. “You do realize that if the girls are awful at boarding school you won’t be able to get away from them. You can’t go home.”

Hobbes met his gaze calmly. “Yeah, I know.”

She did know, he realized. That was part of the appeal for her.

Sherlock took another sip of his tea and for a moment they just sat drinking in a companionable silence.

“Before you go away to school,” Sherlock said abruptly, “let your aunt take you to get your hair done. Any style you like—straightened, braided, natural—you decide, only you. But get it professionally done. Get good product, I’ll pay. Bring your uniforms to Mrs. Hudson so they fit perfectly. Shine your shoes every day. If your appearance is impeccable, no one will know you are afraid.”

An adult would have looked at Sherlock in his perfectly fitted suit and polished shoes and drawn uncomfortable conclusions, but Hobbes had an adolescent’s solipsism. “Yeah?”

“Yes.”

Hobbes looked down at her cup and took another sip, but Sherlock had seen the look in her eyes, and for once he did not have any trouble recognizing it. He had seen that look in his own mirror often enough over the past few weeks. She wanted to believe him. She wanted to hope.

When Hobbes had clattered off, the sound of her singing drifting back up the stairway—Fifth Harmony this time, dear God—Sherlock took his cigarettes to the window and then realized he no longer felt like smoking the whole pack. He no longer felt like kicking anything either. Maybe he would eat the sandwiches Mrs. Hudson had left and allow himself an extra chapter of Unending. Maybe, after, he would even take the plate down and apologize and let himself be hugged. There were worse things.

Things finally started moving on Thursday.

At nine-thirty that morning one of the Met’s undercover agents sat in a windowless office, hyperventilated a few times to make himself sound nervous, and dialed Regal Florist. He told the pleasant young man who answered that he was looking to order black orchids and the young man answered, perfectly cheerfully, that this was a special order item and not always in season; would he care to leave his number for the manager to ring him back?

The surveillance team at the florist’s street was unable to see any of this—the call had been taken in the back—but thirty seconds later the hidden cameras in Anthea’s office recorded her receiving a text on the mobile they called the Moriarty phone. (Sherlock had begun calling it this to annoy Mycroft; it stuck.) Anthea read the text, dropped the phone back into her handbag, and did nothing else until lunchtime, when she strolled out of the building and onto the pavement as though wanting only a chance to stretch her legs. She then looked at the Moriarty phone again, pulled out a third phone, and dialed a number.

The undercover agent picked up. “Yes hello,” he said in a rush.

“Mr. Dockery?” The voice on the phone was electronically altered to a deep artificial growl. “I was told you wanted to place a special order.”

“Yes, I—I need a house burned down. For the insurance money.”

“And who recommended you to us?”

“Tony Lindner—I’m a friend of a friend, I mean. I didn’t speak to him directly.” Anthony Lindner was the man who had first aroused Mr. Mahdavi’s suspicions by arranging to have his own yacht sunk. He was currently out of the country and difficult to reach, or so they hoped.

Anthea walked on for a few minutes considering this, then spoke into the phone. The electronic voice said, “Very well. Someone will be in touch.”

“Not tonight, please,” the man posing as Paul Dockery said quickly. “Before seven. I can’t risk my wife overhearing.”

“Tomorrow,” the voice said curtly, and the call was cut off. On the street Anthea disconnected, walked casually toward a sewer grating, and dropped the phone into it.

“Damn,” Sherlock said when Mycroft told him this bit. “If she’d only binned it—“

“If she were the type to bin it, we’d never have hired her,” Mycroft said.

That night Anthea went home to her hidden-camera-filled flat, opened a well-concealed secret compartment under her wardrobe the search team had completely missed, and pulled out a new phone from what appeared to be a large collection. She plugged this in to charge and spent twenty minutes researching Paul Dockery online. Apparently satisfied—the Met had been thorough—she pulled out the Moriarty phone again and sent a text. Then she poured herself a glass of wine, sat down on the sofa, and turned on Simply Come Dancing.

“You’re not serious,” Sherlock said.

“Unfortunately, I am. The cameras captured the screen quite well.”

“Jim Moriarty never watched Simply Come Dancing.”

“You do,” Mycroft pointed out.

Sherlock rang off without another word. Watching Simply Come Dancing was a good way to study nonverbal cues, that was all.

Friday morning Paul Dockery’s phone rang with another unlisted number. The woman on the other end of the call was sounded young and brightly upbeat, as though she were calling to inquire about showing Mr. Dockery a timeshare instead of arranging a major crime. Mr. Mahdavi’s attractive young lady, Sherlock thought. Dockery stuttered about meeting the following Monday—Mycroft had decided it would be preferable to try to flush out Anthea whilst at work instead of moving as quickly as possible, to Sherlock’s outrage—but that turned out to be a moot point; the young lady was popular as well as attractive and not available until the following Thursday.

“Thursday!” Sherlock bellowed. “You expect me to remain on house arrest another six days?”

“There is no alternative, brother dear,” Mycroft answered. “Cheer up. Perhaps Simply Come Dancing will air a marathon.”

Mycroft was not quite as cruel as he pretended, or perhaps he feared for Sherlock’s sanity left cooped up in his flat for the next week. By the end of the day he had messengered over a thick file containing everything Anthea had been involved with—no matter how tangentially—during the two years Sherlock had been taking down Moriarty’s network, in the hopes he might find a second avenue to pursue. Apparently Lestrade had the same concern and passed the word along as well: Dimmock, who had the weekend, rang him with a case Sunday, and Monday he heard from his new friend Detective Inspector MacDougall as well. Both cases were ridiculously easy—Dimmock’s in particular could have been solved by a learning-disabled dachshund—but Sherlock was in no position to turn down any distraction.

DI MacDougall did not sound completely surprised when Sherlock rang her back with the solution, which led Sherlock to suspect she hadn’t been quite as stumped as she’d claimed when she’d phoned. She professed to be deeply grateful, however.

Sherlock, disarmed by the warmth in her voice, thawed enough to say, “Thank you for the book, by the way.”

MacDougall laughed. “Did you like it? I bought it as a bit of a joke really, but then I read the first few pages on my way back and I was hooked! I had to buy a copy for myself and then the rest of the series.”

“I did too,” Sherlock admitted. “I’d have finished ages ago only I’m still on house arrest, so I’ve been making it last.”

“Whoever wanted to put Tyler Austin in that part was a raging idiot,” MacDougall said with conviction. “He’d have been horrid. Especially—no, we can’t talk about that, not if you haven’t finished. You won’t tell anyone, will you?”

“Not if you don’t,” Sherlock said hastily, and MacDougall laughed again.

“Until next time,” she said, and Sherlock smiled for the first time in days.

The cases helped, and so did Mycroft’s files, but the nonstop confinement was taking a toll. Mrs. Hudson seemed to be afraid to even enter the flat…although that might have been the state of the flat. Walking out of the kitchen with a cup of tea in one hand and his eyes on a file in the other Sherlock tripped over a pile of phone records and went sprawling, saved by the fact that his fall was broken by another teetering stack of insurance records. Sitting on the floor surrounded by broken crockery and tea-soaked papers, Sherlock looked around the fusty wreckage of the room and decided, for the first unprompted time in his life, to tidy up.

Purging the lounge was surprisingly cathartic. He made three huge piles--rubbish, recycling, possibly classified material best left to Mycroft—and shoved them all out to the landing. He washed more tea mugs than he’d been aware he even owned and cleared the litter of candy wrappers away from under the desk. Under the table, Sherlock found the game he’d played with Mycroft a few weeks ago and he carefully packed all the pieces away, returning the box to the cupboard with the others: Cluedo, Operation, Risk—Mycroft loved that one—Chinese Checkers. For a moment Sherlock paused, running a finger over the boxes. Mycroft had given him the board games for Christmas, just before he turned fifteen. The rest of that year was a dark blank in his memory, like North Korea on a satellite map, but he remembered the games.

A little shiver ran down Sherlock’s spine. He shut the cupboard firmly and went to shout over the landing for a broom.

“Well, this is much better,” Mrs. Hudson said with approval, surveying the flat from the doorway as Sherlock returned from dropping another load in the bins. “I hope you don’t expect me to cart this lot off, now. I’ve got a hip.”

“I’ll clear it out after Thursday,” Sherlock promised. Thursday Thursday Thursday, it had been running along the back of his mind like a mantra. “I should be clear of house arrest then. Mycroft will have to get most of it anyway. Can I borrow your Hoover?”

By Tuesday morning the only thing that kept Sherlock from suffocating himself with his own pillow when he woke up was the thought that at least he’d get to leave the flat for his drugs test that day. He sighed, regarded his hard-on with disfavor—the morning erections persisted in spite of his stubborn refusal to indulge them—and padded morosely into the bath for his cold shower. He stripped off his pyjamas and then it hit him: the day was February the first. He’d been clean an entire month.

Sherlock let the thought sit in his brain for a moment and then reached to turn off the shower. He stared at his reflection in the mirror. One month clean! No matter how hard he tried to downplay it, he couldn’t suppress a bubbling sense of pride. He looked…okay. Still a little thin, ridiculously pale, nails a mess; but his eyes were clear and his spine was straight and last week’s fresh sores were nearly healed. John’s words brushed against his mind (I wouldn’t be able to stop touching you) and he pushed them ruthlessly away, but he couldn’t help glancing back again. Did he look…touchable? Perhaps he did. Sherlock shook his head quickly like a dog throwing off water: it didn’t matter, that was nonsense, he didn’t want to be touched. He turned the cold water on and stepped decisively in the shower.

“You look good,” Molly said, smiling, as she tossed the needle in the sharps container.

“One month today,” Sherlock said offhandedly as though this had just occurred to him.

“A month! Really? That’s fantastic! Gosh, it doesn’t seem that long, does it?” Sherlock just looked at her and she said hurriedly, “I suppose it does. Anyway, well done!”

“I’d thought I could buy you a proper lunch this time, to celebrate.”

“Oh.” Molly’s face fell. “I’d love too, really I would, but we’ve two people out right now and I’m so behind—I really shouldn’t be doing this now but of course I’d promised and it doesn’t take all that much time, not really…”

“Quite all right. My brother would be texting incessantly if I didn’t return on time anyway,” Sherlock said with as much nonchalance as he could muster.

Mrs. Hudson was on her way out when he returned, a little deflated, to Baker Street. “Oh, Sherlock! Will Maya be coming round tomorrow?”

“I suppose so,” Sherlock said. He’d engaged Hobbes to bring flowers every Wednesday—for Mrs. Hudson—and run errands; he’d assumed he’d be off house arrest by now and she could just do the tedious errands he loathed, but it appeared she’d be getting the shopping this week again.

“I’ll get something extra-nice for tea then,” Mrs. Hudson said brightly as she passed him.

A whole month clean, and no one thought to remark on it? Why wasn’t Mycroft here with a cake? Sherlock deliberately did not think of the person he really wanted to take notice, the person who would certainly be calling later that night full of praise for Sherlock’s accomplishment. He did not think of him at all.

Which was just as well, because no call ever came.

Chapter 11

Chapter Text

Wednesday morning Sherlock woke and thought that for the first time in his life he actually saw the point of a holiday. If he had to look at the wallpaper in this flat one more day, he was going to strip it off with his teeth. Perhaps he should take a holiday. Someplace warm and sunny, where he would not have to stay inside a single second he did not wish to—Mexico, maybe. He could have a little hut on the beach. Or something. Open to the breeze, anyway. Sherlock shifted to roll over on his back and felt the drag of cloth against his ridiculous morning woody. Maybe be would just find a stranger there and shag him, come to that. A local, someone browned and muscular, maybe a…surfing instructor. Or kiteboarding. He wouldn’t speak any English, and he’d take Sherlock back to his hut and f*ck his brains out and…

Sherlock thumped his face into the pillow. Of course he wasn’t going to go to Mexico and shag a surfing instructor. Sherlock didn’t do sex, he wasn’t interested, he didn’t want to.

One more day, Sherlock reminded himself. He’d gotten Mycroft’s assurance he could be present during the sting itself. One more day and at least he’d be out of this flat for a bit. He dragged himself up and into the bathroom, thought bitterly one month and one day clean, and turned the cold water on.

The bell rang several hours later whilst Sherlock worked listlessly through the classified report on a money laundering operation he’d shut down early in the Moriarty cleanup process. This was dull, this was pointless, surely Mycroft’s people had…wait a minute. Channel Islands?

Sherlock blinked, looked again, and sat up. He searched the file but could find nothing else on the disposition of the account other than the notation “Emptied and closed”. Had he ever gotten the number of the account in the Channel Islands where Regal Florist’s customers were sending payment? He pulled out his phone and punched Mycroft’s number and then jumped a mile when a phone rang directly behind him. “Christ!”

“If you’d answer your door instead of waiting for Mrs. Hudson to do it you wouldn’t have had to bother ringing,” Mycroft said drily, seating himself without waiting to be asked.

“I didn’t hear it, I was concentrating. Look at this.” Sherlock passed over the sheet of paper with the information about the account.

Mycroft skimmed it and his eyebrows went up: “This is the same account we’ve been monitoring.”

“I suppose it’s safe to assume that legwork type tasks like closing illicit accounts and transferring their assets to the Crown is left to assistants like Anthea?”

“There should have been an audit,” Mycroft muttered, frowning at the paper. “I suppose it would have been a simple enough matter to claim that a lesser amount of money had been found in the account and transfer it out, leaving…well, enough to begin on, anyway.”

“Startup funds.”

“Precisely.” Mycroft pulled the rest of the file over and tucked it into his attaché case. “This is a good find. I’ll see what else we can uncover.”

“Why are you here?” Sherlock said, suddenly realizing that it was unlikely Mycroft had appeared in his flat due to correctly predicting that Sherlock would make a useful discovery.

Mycroft glanced up, face unreadable. “I came by to see how you were doing. I assume you’ve heard the news?”

Sherlock frowned. “What news?”

Mycroft looked at him a long minute and then sighed. His voice was uncharacteristically gentle. “Baby Girl Watson arrived last evening. The name has apparently yet to be settled. It is my understanding that mother and child are doing well and will be discharged home later this afternoon.”

Sherlock sat there, uncomprehending. He understood the words, they just didn’t seem to make any sense. For a minute he felt absurdly pleased: John hadn’t rung him last night because his wife was having a baby, of course, excellent excuse, he’d be ringing later then. Not just John’s wife. John. John had a baby. He’d never belong to Sherlock again.

Sherlock shut his eyes.

“I have not heard,” Mycroft said tentatively, “if any determination of pater—“

“Don’t,” Sherlock said without opening his eyes.

Mycroft was quiet a moment and then sighed. There was a slight rustle and the sound of something being placed on the table. Sherlock opened his eyes dully and looked at it: a white box.

“I brought a cake,” Mycroft said as calmly as though discussing the weather. “One month clean, I rather thought a bit of celebration was in order?”

Sherlock looked at him incredulously. A cake? His life was over and Mycroft had brought a cake?

At that moment the door banged downstairs and a minute later they heard footsteps, accompanied by the unmistakable sound of an off-key adolescent voice singing: “I’ve got a blank space baby, I’ll write your name.” Sherlock looked at Mycroft and knew if he started laughing he wouldn’t be able to stop.

“Would you care to join us for tea?” Sherlock said politely. “Hobbes would love some cake.”

Hobbes’ arrival—followed shortly by Mrs. Hudson, who seemed to feel the presence of both Mycroft and a cake implied a party to which she was of course invited--provided sufficient distraction that by the time they all cleared out early that evening Sherlock had managed to shove the matter of John firmly down into the subterranean depths of his mind palace and bolt the door. He had things to do. He was not thinking about this. Sherlock settled himself at his desk, pulled the stack of remaining files over, and bent his considerable will to focusing only on the papers in front of him.

It took a bit of time, but ultimately he fell into the rhythm of it. An hour passed and then two. When the clock struck Sherlock set down his pen and stood, stretching his back, which creaked and popped gratifyingly. Sleep or keep working? He was bored but not very tired. If he followed his usual routine, tea and book and cozy fire and then bed, Sherlock worried he’d find himself wide awake with his mind tiptoeing down the back stairs to the cellar. No. Stay up it was, then; he’d make a pot of breakfast tea and get back to work, and if he got tired enough perhaps he’d manage a few hours’ sleep on the sofa.

In the kitchen Sherlock filled the kettle—that horrid Taylor Swift song was running through his head now; could he possibly pack Hobbes off to school in mid term? He turned around and almost dropped the kettle. John was standing in the doorway of the kitchen.

For a moment they just stood staring at each other. Sherlock, who had no idea what to make of this, was trying very hard not to think at all; John was…what? His brows were drawn together in an expression almost of pain. There was anger there too though—Sherlock was adept at spotting John’s anger by now—and weariness, and something else Sherlock couldn’t decipher. Wearing yesterday’s clothes, a scraping of stubble. Drunk? Not close enough to tell.

John swallowed, the sound oddly loud in the silent flat. The ache in his eyes seemed to intensify and suddenly Sherlock understood that the strange expression on John’s face was yearning, a longing that bordered on desperation. Sherlock had no idea what to do. His fingers tightened on the kettle, some vague notion hovering of offering John a cup of tea.

“God, I want this,” John said. His voice was hoarse and so quiet Sherlock could barely hear it. “I want it back. All of it.”

Sherlock understood “this” to mean the flat and all it encompassed: Baker Street, their old life together, Sherlock himself making tea in the kitchen. “It’s yours,” he said, voice scraping in his throat. “It’s always been yours.”

John took a step forward. “All of it?”

“Of course.”

What was he saying yes to? He didn’t know. It didn’t matter.

“I can have this.” John took another step. Closer. Another. “Just like that. You. I can have you.”

“Yes.”

John made a sound Sherlock couldn’t decipher and then he was there, reaching, and Sherlock had only enough time to drop the kettle and reach back before John’s mouth was on his, John’s body pressed against him, strong hands gripping his arms. Sherlock’s mind spun wildly and he tried to find something to focus on, something to ground himself, what was this, what was happening? John’s hands were in his hair and John’s tongue in his mouth and Sherlock tasted beer and whisky and how much of this was the alcohol and how much was John?

John was pressing into him, making Sherlock stumble backwards. He didn’t want that. His brain might be splintering into chaos but his body was quite focused and what his body wanted was John’s body, so he clutched at him dragging John closer so that they staggered backward in a kind of awkward dance that ended with Sherlock backed into the wall. Why always the wall? No sooner had that thought occurred that the alternative followed, John on top of him, on a sofa on a bed on a floor and Sherlock’s mind whited out briefly in pure panic.

“Jesus,” John gasped, “you’re shaking, are you—“ and Sherlock gripped him fiercely, letting himself slide a little so he could open his mouth under John’s, yes, and John’s tongue was in his mouth and John was groaning, “Christ, yes, mine,” his hands pulling at Sherlock’s shirt and sliding up under it and Sherlock shuddered and gasped. Yes. His body lit up with desire, hips bucking into John’s almost of their own accord. John ran his mouth over Sherlock’s neck and down, undoing buttons as best he could with Sherlock hanging on to him, rubbing at Sherlock’s nipples with his thumbs God and then his lips tickling Sherlock’s ear as he breathed “I want you, I want you so much.”

Had he said yes? Sherlock didn’t know. He was lightheaded from sensation and forgetting to breathe. I want you too, he wanted to say, or maybe he did? He couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter, they were pressing together again, John’s groin rubbing little circles against his so the pleasure arced through him like electric current and he dug his heels in for better leverage and pressed back. Oh.

John’s fingers fumbled with Sherlock’s trousers and Sherlock moaned, yes, please, yes. They were open, John was reaching in, John was touching him, stroking his fingers down Sherlock’s throbbing length and Sherlock’s vision washed rainbow sparkles as he panted helplessly. John kissed him possessively and stroked him and then let go to push his trousers down his thighs. Sherlock tried, clumsily, to help, but he only succeeded in nearly toppling them both until his pants and trousers were puddled around his ankles and he could kick free.

John opened his own trousers, fumbling, and then they were pressed together again with John’s hand wrapped around them both and Sherlock wanted to say something, wanted to groan out his pleasure, but he seemed capable only of a desperate whimpering. John was breathing hard, fingers digging into Sherlock’s back. “Have you—we’re going to want---f*ck,” he gritted out, thrusting. He abruptly let go and reached up and slid his fingers into Sherlock’s mouth. Sherlock jerked a little in surprise, the salty thickness of flesh tripping something long buried, but he shoved it down, closed his mouth around John’s fingers, and sucked. He didn’t let himself think about it, just let instinct and old reflex take over. John groaned, rolling their hips together, and rubbed at Sherlock’s bottom lip with his thumb: “Jesus, your mouth, oh Jesus.” Sherlock curled his tongue around John’s fingers and rocked against him, feeling pleasure gathering like thunder at the base of his spine: any minute he was going to come like this, spilling hot and wet over John as John f*cked his mouth with his fingers standing up under the harsh fluorescent lights of the kitchen and it felt good, it felt so good—

John pulled his fingers out and in one swift motion hiked Sherlock’s leg up to his waist and slid his hand under so his palm cupped Sherlock’s buttock. The movement broke Sherlock’s rhythm and his mind stutter-stepped, what—and then John’s finger pressed against him and in.

Sherlock went rigid. The initial shock froze him in place, then receded like the ocean before a massive wave, discomfort tipped with a fine edge of arousal overwhelmed by a tsunami of panic. He shoved John hard with both hands, sending him stumbling backward into the kitchen table. John staggered and barely caught himself. “Oh sh*t,” he said, seeing God only knew what in Sherlock’s expression. “Sherlock, I’m sorry, I thought when you said I could—“

“And then what?” Sherlock bit. He was trying for cold venom but knew he was missing by a mile. “You come inside me and then leave me on the floor again when you walk out? You promised to stay.”

John’s face crumpled. Sherlock had expected anger, contempt, feeling ridiculous in only his shirt and socks clinging to his virtue like a girl in the back of a car, but instead John looked as though Sherlock had struck him.

“Oh, Jesus, I’m so sorry,” John said. He straightened, letting go of the table, and reached out one hand to Sherlock almost tentatively, as though Sherlock might swat him away. “I just, I just…I’m so sorry, can I just hold you? Please? Can I, I just want to feel you against me, I just want to touch you, if…”

John was swallowing hard, voice cracking, and Sherlock could not bear it. If John had raged back at him they could have fought—that would have been familiar ground, safe, but this was unknown territory and he could not see the way forward. Besides: I just want to feel you against me—he wanted that too. Desperately. Sherlock took John’s outstretched hand.

The first kiss was tentative, but at the touch of John’s tongue against his Sherlock forgot everything else and quite soon it was messy and frantic, all panting and grasping and John obviously trying to be careful and Sherlock clutching at him as though he were drowning. He thought that he might be. They ended up on the floor after all, on the rug in the lounge. The feeling of John’s co*ck pressed against his nearly drove Sherlock mad with confused desire: so much contact, his thighs against John’s, John’s lips against his neck and Sherlock’s fingers tangled in John’s hair. John did not roll on top of Sherlock or try to drag his head downward; they lay side by side facing each other, kissing and kissing, and John licked his own palm before taking Sherlock in his hand. Sherlock twitched, unsure, but John whispered again, “Please let me touch you,” and Sherlock did. When he came, forehead pressed into John’s shoulder and fingers digging into his back, it was with John’s other hand cradling the back of his head as though he were something fragile. John himself finished quickly after, rutting against the slick hollow of Sherlock’s hip and chanting his name: “Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock”.

Afterwards they lay alongside each other on their backs, getting their breath, staring up into the dimly lit room. The only light came from the soft glow of the lamp on Sherlock’s desk.

“I love you, you know,” John said quietly.

Sherlock turned his face away. “Don’t.”

“No, let me say it. Maybe I have all along, but when I saw you on that plane, not breathing—“John took a harsh breath. “And Mycroft, how it was almost like he expected to find you that way, and that’s when I realized you were never meant to come back. And I saw then, really saw, how all the things you had done, all the mad terrible choices, you did all those things for me. To protect me.”

“Not entirely,” Sherlock said, wondering as he so often did in these moments why he couldn’t just shut up.

“Yeah, I know that too.” John blew out a small breath, not quite a laugh. “But all the choices Mary made—they were all to protect herself.”

Sherlock was quiet. He could not argue that.

John rolled his head toward Sherlock. “Let me ask you something. If it had been you that night in Magnussen’s office, if you were the one with the gun and the secret—would you have shot Mary?”

Sherlock stared at the ceiling. “No.”

John nodded. “Right.”

They lay quietly a long moment, just breathing.

“Two-three syndactyly,” John said abruptly.

“What?”

“Syndactyly. The second and third toes are fused at the base. It’s a benign condition, no real functional deficit.”

“Okay,” Sherlock said, having no clear idea where this was going.

John lapsed into silence again. When he spoke again, his voice was heavy. “I never really wanted kids. I never wanted any of it: the wife, the house, the family, the steady job.” He lifted one hand a few inches, let it fall back on the rug with a thump. “Why I joined the army. Took up with you. But with all that gone…” He sighed. “I told Mary I didn’t think I wanted kids and she said that was fine, she’d rather travel. But when I found out she was pregnant, I was happy. Truly happy. It amazed me. I don’t know why. Chance at genetic immortality, maybe, or just to make a better job of it than my own dad. But I really wanted to be a father. And then you got shot and it all went to sh*t, and it just kept getting worse.”

“Why did you go to Mycroft?” Sherlock asked. He had never thought to wonder at this before, probably because he had been resolutely abstaining from thinking about John at all.

“Because that was the other thing I realized that day on the plane. Oh, not right away, it took a few days to sink in. That Mycroft knew about Mary and Mary knew that he knew. And it was just the last straw. I was already angry, I was so sick of being kept in the dark—you not being dead, Mary, Magnussen, the drugs, the suicide mission, all of it.” John gave a short, humorless laugh. “And I didn’t know the half of it then. God, I was…furious. At all of you. But then I came here, and I saw that you really hadn’t known, about Mary, and then…it was like my whole life had blown up, and all the pieces were falling around me. And I saw that you were really the one thing, the one true thing in my life.” John’s voice cracked. He swallowed hard. “All I wanted then was to chuck it, to walk out of my life and back into the one I had before. But I couldn’t. Because if it turned out—if Mary was right, if the baby turned out to be mine, I couldn’t leave. That’s the one thing I couldn’t do, do you understand? I couldn’t abandon my child.”

“The way your own father did,” Sherlock said.

John exhaled. “Yeah, should have known you’d have worked that out. So. I waited. It was hell. It was like waiting for sentencing or something; I just wanted to be free. And I wanted so badly to be with you, but I couldn’t, not until I knew. It wouldn’t have been fair to you. But then last night…they put her in my arms, and she looked just like Harry’s baby pictures, and Mary was crying and saying she looked like me, and I thought…I thought I was a father. It changed everything.”

Sherlock closed his eyes.

“I saw her toes at the beginning, when they had her on the warming table. I didn’t pay it much mind. As I said, it’s benign, and I knew it wouldn’t fuss Mary that she wasn’t perfect. I didn’t think about it again until today when we went home. I’d taken care of the baby whilst we were in hospital, the nappies and all that, but when we got home Mary said she wanted changing and about time she took a hand, so…and then she saw.”

Sherlock opened his eyes and turned to look at John, but now it was John who was staring fixedly upwards.

“2,3 syndactyly can be part of a genetic syndrome—other birth defects—but most of the time it’s an isolated finding, familial. The inheritance is autosomal dominant.”

“An affected parent has a fifty percent chance of passing on the trait,” Sherlock said automatically and then, understanding, “The husband in America.”

“Yeah. I think Mary didn’t know it was hereditary, or she forgot, or didn’t think…lucky for me, I suppose. Roll the dice the other way and I wouldn’t have known the truth until the paternity tests came back. As it was, I just walked out. Left her standing there, the baby on the changing table. Didn’t even take my coat. Walked until I realized I was freezing and stopped at a pub. Drank. Walked some more. I’ve been doing it for hours now, although I suppose I always knew I was coming here.”

The baby was not John’s. John was free. Wasn’t that what he had wanted? Surely it was what Sherlock wanted? And yet here they were, lying on the floor as though flattened by grief instead of celebrating. What do I want, Sherlock wondered, and knew the answer without having to think.

He took a deep breath. “Are you going to stay?”

John sighed. The sigh seemed to come from the very depths of his being. “I want to, more than anything, and I hope eventually you’ll let me, but right now it’s not that simple. I’ve got a job and a house and, legally, a wife and child—although I suppose that’s debatable, the legal bit—and it’s going to take time to sort all that. Besides, even after everything, it’s still Mary, you know? Now that I know I’m not bound to her I…I don’t want to be unkind. The way I’ve been before. Anyway, she just had a baby yesterday, I can hardly chuck the two of them on a transatlantic flight. You know that.”

Sherlock opened his mouth to say, honestly, that he did know, that he understood, but found he could not. He tried to swallow, but it was as though something thick and bitter were lodged in his throat. He swallowed again. He felt suddenly very cold and exposed. So, after all, he was going to be left here on the floor, used and discarded, as John walked away again.

And then Sherlock thought very clearly: sod that.

He pushed himself up to his feet and turned for the kitchen. He wanted to stop, to offer and plead: Mycroft can manage the logistics. Stop the night at least, you’re exhausted. But he didn’t. For once in his life, Sherlock kept his mouth shut.

“Sherlock?” John said, sounding surprised.

Sherlock found his pants and trousers and stepped into them. He did not turn around until he had fastened them, buttoned his shirt, and tucked that in as well. John was sitting up on the rug leaning back on his hands, looking bemused.

Sherlock took a deep breath and said, “Come back when you’re ready to stay.”

When John had gone, Sherlock went straight to the bathroom and stood in the shower for a long time. He did not think about the new places John’s fingers had touched, or about the way everything taut inside him had gone liquid under John’s kiss. He did not think about John at all, or Mary, or the baby. He made himself think of nothing but the mechanics of washing until his mind too was scrubbed clean and blank, and then he turned off the water.

Wrapped in his pajamas and dressing gown, Sherlock made a pot of tea and carried his mug to the desk. He settled into his seat, took a long, comfortingly sweet sip, and got back to work.

Chapter 12

Chapter Text

“You lot in position?” Lestrade said into the speaker.

“Ready.”

“We’re go here…nothing on the drive yet.”

“I’m about to make the turn,” the undercover agent posing as Paul Dockery said. “Turning this off...now.”

“See our guy, nothing else yet.”

“Wait,” the second man said. “Red car, just coming down the drive. There’s a woman inside, looks blonde, pretty.”

“Can you get a clear view?”

“Not yet. When she gets out. Okay, she’s out of the car now, they both are. Get out of the way you bloody branch…there we go. Transmitting now.”

A woman sitting at the table tapped a keyboard and a large screen lit up, showing several pictures of a woman in a black coat standing by a red car, speaking to Dockery. She had shoulder-length strawberry blonde hair, a small pert face, and a bright dimpled smile. An attractive young lady. The pictures had been taken by the officer stashed in the hayloft of the small stable; the other was monitoring the action from the attic of the cottage. Sherlock would have loved to have been on the scene, but that would have been ridiculous even under normal circ*mstances—today he was only delighted to be out of the flat.

“Run one over to Mahdavi,” Lestrade commanded and the woman nodded. Mr. Mahdavi had been stashed in a nearby room for the express purpose of making an identification; the police had several other photos of pretty young women already made up for comparison.

“She’s checking for a wire,” the other agent said. “She’s made him open his shirt, patting him down…now she’s checking his ears. Knows her business, this one. Okay, she’s satisfied, he’s buttoning up…they should be in range of the mics in a minute.”

For a moment there was only silence, all of them intently listening, and then a clear voice gradually faded in: “…such a lovely cottage, and with a paddock and all!”

“It is that,” Dockery said, in a fairly convincing imitation of a man in a nervous sweat. “But the inside’s all dry rot, and to repair it would cost far more than we’ve got. The wife won’t sell because it was her gran’s cottage. She’s got memories of coming here as a girl, see, but we can’t afford to keep it and she won’t sell, so…”

“I quite understand,” the woman said soothingly. There was a scraping sound, and then the voices came more clearly: “Has anyone else got keys?”

“I don’t know,” Dockery said nervously. “Maybe some of the family? We never changed the locks.”

“That’s helpful. Although it wouldn’t take much to break in either, so it will all be quite easy. We’ll make it look as though kids were holing up in here, drinking and smoking. One of them goes to put his cigarette out on the wooden floor and whoosh! Up it goes.”

“When can you do it?”

“Saturday night? A believable night for partying, and you can arrange to be with your wife the whole evening, can’t you?”

“That would be perfect,” Dockery said eagerly. “Shall I do anything—copy the key for you, or unlock a window—“

“Not at all, leave all that to me. You will need to wire payment though, I’ve the information right here.”

“Don’t you want cash? I’ve brought the amount we discussed in my car.“

“No, you’ll need to send payment to this account. I’m rather a subcontractor, you see, so payment all goes through the central agency…now, your wife is going to find out about the cottage burning, isn’t she? You’re not going to try to keep it from her.”

“How would I manage that? She’ll be that upset, but hopefully she won’t suspect I’d anything to do with it.”

“I get called in a lot when people are planning a divorce and want to, shall we say, liquidate assets,” the woman said cheerfully. “This will be much easier. The insurance company will be less suspicious if your wife is really devastated, and you won’t need me to pretend to be her, so the cost is less. I’ve just texted you the account number and bank name—that’s all you need, it’s offshore, so wire the money tomorrow and we’ll be in business for Saturday.”

“Have we got the phone link up?“ Lestrade asked and the woman officer nodded at another computer screen. Sherlock leaned in unconsciously and a few seconds later the screen lit with a text, showing a bank name and a long string of numbers.

“Is that—“

“Yes,” Sherlock and Mycroft said in unison.

“That a go then?” the disembodied voice on the speaker said. “Looks like she’s turning toward the car.”

“Go,” Lestrade said.

“Well, I think that’s all,” the woman’s voice was saying. “Pleasure doing business with you!”

“One more thing.” Dockery’s voice had lost its timorousness, ringing out clearly over the audio connection. “Would you tell me your real name?”

“Oh, come now, Mr. Dockery, that’s not how this works.” The woman still sounded unconcerned, almost playful, and Sherlock could picture the smile twinkling her dimples. “You’ll just have to settle for calling me Angela.”

“I don’t mind at all, but it’s for the paperwork.”

“What paperwork?”

And then, creating a feedback whine that hurt Sherlock’s ears, the previously hidden agent’s voice rang out over both his wire and the hidden microphones: “Miss, hands in the air and remain where you are, please. You’re under arrest.”

The attractive young lady’s real name turned out to be Angelica Harlow. She was not initially inclined to be cooperative, and Sherlock thought sourly that had the police been left to their own devices she might have charmed her way right out of custody, but after Mycroft strolled into the interrogation room she saw the sense of working with them quite quickly. They were ready to go sooner than Sherlock had dared hope, but then Mycroft insisted on waiting until ten minutes before Anthea was due to leave for a meeting. This was infuriating, but even Sherlock had to acknowledge the sense of it: the last thing they wanted was Anthea going outside the building, which would afford her an opportunity to destroy the phone and possibly give the men Mycroft had waiting the slip.

Finally, finally, Mycroft gave a nod and Angelica Harlow picked up her phone.

999. I’ve got a bad feeling about that Dockery guy. I think he might be undercover police.

On the screen showing the feed from the hidden camera in Anthea’s office, Anthea turned her head toward her bag and retrieved the phone. She studied the screen briefly before texting back.

I checked him out quite thoroughly. What did he say?

Wanted me to take cash. Got quite insistent. So I didn’t give him the account number. Said I’d text him later. But I did get his picture whilst I pretended to check the calendar.

This last had been Sherlock’s contribution. He watched, feeling smug, as Anthea bent over the phone, typing; a minute later the picture of Dockery allegedly taken that morning appeared on her computer screen. Anthea studied it a moment, then tapped on her keyboard. The computer flashed a “please wait” followed by “retrieving” and then a second picture appeared alongside the first, this one an official police photo complete with Dockery’s real name. Anthea froze for only a second before hitting a key to clear the screen and texting back urgently.

You’re right, he’s police. RUN NOW.

Angelic Harlow looked up and Lestrade nodded at her and held out a hand; she passed the phone over without a word. Onscreen, Anthea was bent over her phone again, typing.

“Keep an eye on Regal Florist and tell that team to be ready to move,” Mycroft said calmly.

Anthea stood up abruptly and headed to the door. The phone was still in her hand.

“Where’s she going?” Lestrade said. “Is she doing a runner?”

“She hasn’t her coat or bag,” Mycroft said, frowning. “But she’s turning toward the lifts…”

“Is she actually going to the meeting?” Sherlock asked, eyebrows raised. “That’s certainly dedicated.”

“The toilets,” Sally Donovan said abruptly, standing up. “She’s going to the ladies’. It’ll be by the lifts, yeah?”

“She’s going to drop the phone in a toilet,” Sherlock said, standing too. “Mycroft! Call your people, tell them to get to her now!”

Mycroft was already shouting into the speaker: “Engage immediately, you are cleared to enter the ladies’ toilet, repeat you are to engage immediately—“

They were all on their feet, staring at the screen which now showed the corridor by the lifts Anthea had walked down. There were, of course, no cameras in the ladies’ itself. Too slow, too slow, Sherlock thought, she’ll have drowned it by now, why didn’t we catch on sooner, but at that moment the all-male team rushed into view and charged into the loo with what seemed to Sherlock a distinct lack of enthusiasm.

Anthea’s downfall was brought about by the fact that a clerk named Tess Whatley had turned thirty that very day. A number of her friends had taken her out to lunch to celebrate, and a quantity of champagne and then coffee had been consumed, with the result being that the ladies’ on the seventh floor was experiencing an unusually high volume of traffic. When the agents burst in Anthea was still waiting impatiently for a stall. (Tess Whatley, who considered Anthea to be a stuck-up bitch, would have been delighted.) The Moriarty phone was recovered safe and sound, although of course it was locked. Anthea herself refused to speak a single word after her arrest. They had better luck at Regal Florist, where the team waiting there stopped the delivery lorry attempting to leave the premises about an hour after Anthea’s text; both men in the lorry were arrested, and the lorry itself turned out to contain an impressive quantity of illegal firearms.

“Getting anywhere?” Sherlock asked when Mycroft stepped out of the interrogation room. He was just doing it to be annoying; he knew perfectly well Anthea had been sitting in serenely stubborn silence for the past few hours.

“I hadn’t expected to.” Mycroft did not, in fact, seem particularly fussed. “If she cracked this early I’d be enormously disappointed. No, we’ll pop her in our detention centre for a day or two, let her think we’ve forgotten about her whilst her underlings tell us all they know.”

“Let me try,” Sherlock said suddenly.

Mycroft glanced up, eyebrows raised. “Why on earth would she talk to you?”

“Why would she talk to you? You’re looking at her the way Mummy used to when she caught you in the ice cream. If she’s really Moriarty, if she actually put that video up on the telly New Year’s Day, then at heart she’s a show-off. I’m going to let her show off.”

“Five pounds says he gets her to talk, if only to tell him to sod off,” Lestrade said to Mycroft.

“I don’t gamble,” Mycroft said superciliously. “Very well, brother mine, take your best shot.” He nodded at the guard at the door, who unlocked it and stood aside to let Sherlock in.

Anthea was sitting in her chair as though waiting to be served tea, looking completely calm and collected. She did not even raise an eyebrow at Sherlock’s entry. Sherlock plopped himself in the other chair, considered her a long moment, and then beamed at her. This tended to unnerve most people, but Anthea merely regarded him indifferently.

“Relax, I’m going to be the best fun you’ll have all night,” Sherlock said brightly. “I’ve come to thank you. You got me back from Eastern Europe—probably unintentionally, granted, but I’m grateful all the same—and you saved us from the atrocity of Tyler Austin playing Scythius. If there were any justice in the world that would be counted against your crimes, but it probably won’t.”

Nothing. He might as well be reciting nursery rhymes for all the interest she showed.

“Sorry you’re going to miss Strictly Cone Dancing for a bit. Maybe I’ll come back and fill you in. Do you have a favorite? No? Not a very strong field this year. Do you know, I like talking to you—so few people are sensible enough to realize that they’ve really nothing to say, or at least nothing worth my time. I’m sure my brother would love to know all sorts of things, but I couldn’t care less about most of that. There’s really only one thing I want you to tell me.” Was he imagining it, or was there the faintest flicker in her dark eyes? Sherlock leaned forward. “The man who drowned on dry land. How was it done? I’ve been working and working that case and I just can’t make it out.”

Anthea smiled. Her smile had nothing of Angelica Harlow’s dazzle; like Mycroft’s, it was cold and patently false, but Sherlock saw an undercurrent of real amusem*nt there.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said.

Sherlock sat back and crossed his arms. He had the unsettling feeling that he believed her.

“That went well,” Lestrade said cheerfully as Sherlock came out. He was sliding a five-pound note into his wallet. “Come on, I’m to see you home, and your brother’s agreed to a bit of a celebration on the way.”

“Is my house arrest lifted?” Sherlock demanded.

“Of course not, we’ll need to go through proper channels and it’s likely to take at least a day. But as long as you keep a low profile I see no reason you shouldn’t stop for a quiet dinner.” Mycroft’s nose was wrinkled so far he resembled a shar pei.

“Let’s go,” Lestrade said, clapping Sherlock out of the back to steer him out of the room. When they’d got out of earshot he said, “We’re off to the pub. Quiet dinner my arse, I’ve got five quid off your brother and I’m buying the first round.”

Ordinarily Sherlock would have made any excuse to avoid such an outing—or refused outright—but the prospect of returning to his empty flat with no work to distract him was bleak enough that anything seemed preferable. The first two rounds went down quickly, and then they had some food, and by the time Lestrade retuned with their third pints Sherlock was feeling loose and relaxed in a way that he hadn’t in a very long time.

“Bet you’re glad of a chance to get out, eh?” Lestrade said, taking a long drink. “How long has it been?”

“Since I’ve left the flat? Tuesday, for my drugs test. House arrest…a month and two days. I can tell you to the hour if you’d like.”

“I’ll pass. Wait a minute.” Lestrade set down his pint. “So that means—have you been a clean a whole month?”

“A month and two days. I can tell you that to the hour too, but it’s a bit less because I count from when my last hit wore off.”

“A whole month! Well done you! When do we give up smoking?”

Sherlock winced. “Not until I’m off house arrest at least. Maybe two months. Or three.”

“I hear you,” Lestrade said amiably. “Just give the word and I’ll stop with you. See who lasts longer; that’ll be a bit extra incentive, yeah? Maybe I can get your brother to take a wager again.”

“He’ll only do it if he can bet against me,” Sherlock warned.

“John wouldn’t though…hey, how is John? Haven’t heard from him in a while. He must be dead chuffed you’ve gone a whole month clean.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Sherlock said shortly. It came out more bitter than he’d intended and he took a drink to busy himself.

Lestrade lowered his own drink, studying him. “Did something…oh, sh*t. You didn’t. You did!”

Sherlock looked up, confused. “Did what?”

“It! What everyone at the Met’s been assuming you were doing from day one! You shagged him, didn’t you?”

Sherlock froze. How did Lestrade know? Wait, had he? What constituted shagging anyway? Did the mutual spilling of sem*n qualify or did it require actual…

“Oh my God, I can’t believe this,” Lestrade was saying, grinning like a loon. Then he got a look at Sherlock’s face and sobered. “So what went wrong? Ah, hell. He freaked out, didn’t he? Some crazy heat-of-the-moment thing and then he took off and hasn’t come back.”

“Oh, he comes,” Sherlock said sourly. “But then he always leaves again.”

Lestrade’s drink had stopped halfway to his mouth. Sherlock frowned at his stunned expression, realized what he’d just said, and felt himself turning red to the roots of his hair.

Lestrade burst out laughing and slammed his drink back down on the table to slap Sherlock’s shoulder. He was laughing so hard his eyes were streaming and Sherlock could not help laughing too, the sound unfamiliar and rusty. When was the last time he had laughed?

Lestrade picked up his drink and drained it in one go. Then he shoved Sherlock’s toward him. “Drink up,” he said cheerfully. “Your round next, and we need to be a lot more drunk for this conversation.”

Sherlock ended up telling him nearly all of it. Not about Mary and the baby, obviously, as that wasn’t his to tell, and he glossed over the details of the shagging, which Lestrade didn’t want to hear anyway.

“All right,” Lestrade said finally, setting his glass down with the air of one about to impart words of profound wisdom. “You and John belong together, that’s obvious to anyone with eyes. But adultery…” He grimaced. “And now with a kid on the way, that’s a big deal. It’s going to be a hell of a mess however it turns out.”

Sherlock nodded glumly. The last bit, at least, was undeniably true.

“John’s going to make up his own mind about that. You can’t decide for him. But that doesn’t mean you just have to sit there and wait.”

“No?”

“No. See, Sherlock, I know you know crime, but I know about crimes of the heart.” It was perhaps a measure of Sherlock’s inebriation that this seemed to make complete sense. “If you let John keep using you like that, he’s not going to stop. You have to respect yourself before anyone else will.”

Sherlock frowned at him. “Did you get that off some sort of support group for cuckolds?”

“Maybe. Doesn’t mean it’s not true. Stand up for yourself! Why’s John going to buy the cow if he can eat his cake too? I mean…oh, you know what I mean.”

“No. But I did do that,” Sherlock said. “Last night. I told him not to come back until he planned to stay.”

Lestrade beamed. “Good on you, mate! That’s exactly what you should do.” He raised his pint to Sherlock, who clinked his obediently and took another drink, thinking vaguely that he needed to piss again but wasn’t sure he could feel his legs well enough to walk to the loo.

Lestrade set his empty glass on the table and leaned forward. “Listen, Sherlock. There’s something else.” He hesitated, shifting in his seat, and Sherlock raised an eyebrow: he’d never known Lestrade to be diffident. “That night Donovan and I came round for the drugs. I know it was John who did that, who gave you that pounding. Now I heard about what happened on the plane, and I reckon he had cause, and same with when you came back from being dead, but…there’s got to be an end to it, Sherlock. If I see another bruise on your face that he put there, I’ll have him up on charges.”

Sherlock had the distant feeling this would have been a lot more humiliating if he’d been sober, but he felt his face burn all the same. He made his voice dismissive. “I can assure you, George…”

Lestrade stopped him with a look. “Nobody has the right to hurt you, Sherlock,” he said quietly. “Not even John.”

Sherlock looked away. “Understood,” he said with as much dignity as he could muster.

Lestrade clapped him on the shoulder again. “Excellent. One more? Or shall we switch to something stronger?”

Chapter 13

Chapter Text

Sherlock woke next morning feeling surprisingly un-terrible. His head ached, and his mouth had a thick unpleasant sort of furriness to it, but otherwise not bad; he’d been in much worse shape after John’s stag night. He had a vague memory of Lestrade standing over him whilst he downed several glasses of water, which he supposed explained the absence of a more punishing hangover. He felt even better after a shower. Out in the flat, Sherlock discovered more evidence of Lestrade’s solicitous presence: a blanket folded on the sofa and a note on the table next to a bottle of paracetamol: “TAKE THIS AND DRINK MORE WATER, YOU’LL THANK ME LATER.”

Sherlock obediently followed these instructions—Lestrade’s dictates had the authority of experience--and after some consideration decided that he could manage some tea and toast as well. The day was rather less gloomy than usual for February, and as Sherlock sat munching his toast he felt unexpectedly happy. He’d beaten Moriarty’s latest incarnation; he’d stood up for himself and earned Lestrade’s completely useless approval; he was a month and three days clean; he was not dead in Eastern Europe. He would soon be freed from house arrest. He was Sherlock Holmes. With or without John Watson, life was good.

Sherlock stretched like a cat, made himself another cup of tea, and considered his options. Mycroft would probably welcome his help sorting out whatever they’d gotten from the Regal Florist lot, but that was exactly the kind of tedious clean-up duty Sherlock avoided whenever possible. It might get him out of the flat though…he’d already gone through all the files he’d gotten from Mycroft; better shove those out on the landing with the others to be safely disposed of. Come to think of it, he might as well tidy away all the stuff he’d pinned to the wall too. Sherlock looked over at the wall with some fondness and a picture caught his eye. What had he been thinking? He still had a case.

Sherlock pulled out the file on the man who drowned on dry land, considered taking the other pictures off the wall and decided to make Hobbes do it later, and started over in a new spot. There wasn’t a lot of clean wall to work with, so he stuck pictures on the mirror over the fireplace. Someone had wanted William Cooper dead. Sherlock, consumed with the fascinating question of how, had ignored the question of who, assuming that solving the one would naturally lead to the other, but he’d hit a dead end. Time to return to the most basic question: who benefited from his death? Not Sigrid Ekland. Imogen Cooper, certainly, but between the Met and Kent there was no part of the woman’s life that had not been combed over. If she did it, she’d been remarkably circ*mspect. So. Who else?

Sherlock took out the witness statements and began reading methodically, paying particular attention to Imogen Cooper’s spa-going friends. They’d all been investigated as well, of course, and nothing had turned up, but Sherlock was more interested in what they had to say about the family. When he’d finished he dug through the file until he found a collection of notes he’d only glanced at previously. He read it through twice, steepled his fingers, and stared hard into space for ten minutes. Then he rang Lestrade.

“Jake Cooper,” he said when Lestrade picked up.

“What?” Lestrade said, sounding completely discombobulated. “I thought you were phoning to complain about your hangover.”

“Of course not, I’m fine. No doubt due to your excellent care and advice,” he added as an afterthought.

“Yeah, okay, that’s good. Now who did you say?”

“Jake Cooper,” Sherlock said with thinly veiled impatience. “The son of the man who drowned on dry land.”

“Oh, him,” Lestrade said. “What are you bothering with that for? I thought that was down to Moriarty.”

“I’m not so sure it was Anthea. And I still want to work out how it was done. We’ll never be able to pin this on Imogen, not unless someone talks. That’s why I’m looking at the son.”

“The son…oh, sh*t. You think he was in on it?”

“Jake Cooper was at his boarding school in Northumberland the weekend of the murder. It’s a school for juvenile misfits with a history of lawbreaking or substance abuse; they’re quite strict about students leaving the grounds, and students aren’t allowed to keep their mobiles with them. But during the holidays…”

“Jake was expelled from his school in London for dealing drugs,” Lestrade said slowly. “He’d have contacts.”

“I want his phone records.”

“I can do that. I’m with your brother, give me a few minutes to put Donovan on it.”

That gave Sherlock another idea, and when he’d rung off he texted Hobbes: Up for some more phone records?

Of course she was.

As it turned out, Hobbes arrived shortly before the phone records themselves. This was all to the good, as Sherlock had been too distracted Wednesday to make a proper shopping list, and as a result had run out of soap and pot noodles. Hobbes trundled off, humming contentedly, and ten minutes later the phone records arrived.

Sherlock had spent the past few hours investigating Jake Cooper’s social media existence. It was surprisingly scant. He had the usual Instagram and Twitter accounts, of course, but it seemed that being incarcerated at a school where access to one’s mobile was limited to a few strictly monitored occasions a week tended to curtail one’s posting. Sherlock had also looked up the school itself, which left him with a sort of giddy relief that his own antisocial activities had taken place at an age past which his parents might have been tempted to lock him up in such a place.

Sherlock had also noted that the uptick in posts and tweets over the Christmas holidays had been followed by a similar increase a week or so later; presumably Jake Cooper had been allowed to go home to his ostensibly grieving mother. Flipping through the phone records, he saw now that the pattern persisted. Evidently Jake had remained at home. Grief? Or had his mother not agreed with his being packed off to the school in the first place? Jake had been a source of contention for his bickering parents; that much had been clear in the statements. Sherlock divided the phone records into two halves, keeping the half that began in mid-December for himself. He was itching to get started, but knew Mrs. Hudson would be hard on Hobbes’ heels with a snack when she returned, so resigned himself to waiting a bit longer.

Mrs. Hudson’s tea tray was unexpectedly festive with little sandwiches and tarts. “It’s my cards night tonight,” Mrs. Hudson explained, setting it carefully on the table. “First Friday of the month. We’re meant to take it in turns to host, but nobody wants to come back here after that time with the grenades, you remember, Sherlock…not everyone has my nerve, you know, and I think that man running through after he’d been set on fire quite put some of them off.”

“I’m sorry to have caused extra work,” Hobbes said, holding her petit four as though worried Mrs. Hudson might ask for it back.

“Oh, it’s no trouble, dear, I already had everything made up. Mrs. Turner hosts when it’s my turn, you see, and I take the food. Only I won’t be back until late this evening, so can you make sure Sherlock washes the tea things? I’ll fetch them back in the morning.”

Hobbes was looking more distressed than the absence of a downstairs landlady would seem to merit. “How late will you be out?”

“Ten, eleven? I’m sorry about that, dear.”

There was something going on here, but Sherlock was too impatient to pay attention. “I’m perfectly capable of doing the washing up without being reminded.”

Hobbes looked at him in disbelief. “You’ve still got the tea things from Wednesday sitting in the kitchen!”

“Well, you wash them up then, it’s not as though I’m paying you for musical entertainment,” Sherlock said. “Let’s get to work.”

“So what are we doing with these?” Hobbes asked, hefting her stack of printouts.

“Start off looking for Regal Florist. If we don’t find that we’ll start going through them together, it will be faster. You can ignore the texts for now.”

Going through the phone records was even more tedious than Sherlock remembered, but his good mood persisted, and it was pleasant having a bit of company again. When evening closed in Sherlock lit the fire and Hobbes made more tea, humming her way about the kitchen in a manner that for once seemed familiar instead of irritating. There were no calls to Regal Florist, as Sherlock had expected, so the real work began.

“You’ve the better handwriting and I’m faster on the database,” Sherlock told her. “So you’ll start there, 17 December, and read out the numbers. Once we’ve identified them you can just mark through any repeats. This is a teenager, a few years older than you but not so clever, so I doubt he’ll have thought to get a burner phone, and there are a lot of texts—but what we’re looking for might be a text, so we have to go through everything.”

This did not turn out to be quite as bad as Sherlock thought. There were indeed pages on pages of text messages—was Jake Cooper making up for lost time, or did all teenagers text so much?—but most of them were to or from the same few London numbers, all from family phone accounts in posh neighborhoods. Friends from his old school, no doubt. A handful from other parts of the country, likely friends from the new school, and the occasional call or text from his mother or father. Other than that there were almost no phone calls at all.

“Repeat, repeat, repeat,” Hobbes muttered, scoring through numbers on the page as she spoke. “Here’s one, 1326—“

“We’ve had that one before.”

“Have we? Oh right, the girl in Falmouth.” She marked it through. “Okay. 20 6712 3558.”

Sherlock’s fingers went still on the keys. “Say that again.”

“20 6712 3558,” Hobbes repeated obediently.

Sherlock sat unmoving, his mind tumbling almost faster than even he could follow. He did not need to finish typing the number into the database to know who it belonged to; he knew that number. Very, very well.

“Have you got something?” Hobbes said, looking up expectantly.

“Be quiet.” Anthea, smiling. The Did you miss me? note. His own intuition, which he should have trusted all along.

Sherlock drew his own phone toward him slowly and typed in the number to send a text. We need to meet. Tonight. SH

The response came so quickly it was as though the recipient had been waiting to hear from him. Bit busy at the moment.

I’ll make it worth your while. SH

A slightly longer pause, then: Your place?

Yes. SH

Give me an hour.

Sherlock placed the phone carefully on the desk and looked up to see Hobbes sitting perfectly still, watching him wide-eyed. “You need to clear out,” he told her.

“Ah, Mr. Holmes…”

“No, I mean it, go home. This isn’t something you need to be mixed up with.”

“But the washing up!”

“Look, you can come back in the morning and I’ll do it then, I’ll pay you,” Sherlock said impatiently. “Now go.”

She must have read something in his face that told her not to argue, because she cleared their mugs swiftly and shouldered her bag without even humming. At the door she turned to say, “What time—“

“I’ll text you.”

“All right then,” Hobbes said and clattered off, the low lilt of some Fifth Harmony tune floating up the stairs until the slam of the front door cut her off.

Sherlock had stopped listening. He was deep in his own head, turning over everything that had happened the past few months and then, in closer details, the past few weeks, fitting it all around the new information. God, how had he been such an idiot? He’d been no better that Mycroft, letting his guileless assumptions of loyalty leave him blind to what was really going on. The doorbell had to ring twice before Sherlock remembered Mrs. Hudson was out and went downstairs to answer it.

“Took your time,” Wiggins said, slouched on the doorstep and looking as unprepossessing as ever. “Thought you was in a hurry to talk to me.”

“Come upstairs,” Sherlock said curtly. He led the way up. Wiggins flopped onto the sofa as he had previously, leaving Sherlock to sit in his chair and regard him unblinkingly for a long moment.

Wiggins raised his eyebrows, apparently unperturbed. “S’Friday night, Mr. Holmes. I’m going to need to get back soon. You want to waste your money just sitting, that’s fine by me, but—“

“Oh, I rather think I’m owed a bit for free, don’t you?” Sherlock said. “I didn’t exactly get my money’s worth last time.”

“Seems to me you got bit more than your money’s worth,” Wiggins remarked.

“I paid you for information, not distraction. And I believe you left me a bit short.”

“Ah.” Wiggins, grinned, showing his atrocious teeth. “Caught on at last, have you? Took you long enough. What tipped you off?”

“Jake Cooper,” Sherlock said. “He phoned you to arrange his father’s murder. Did his mother even know? He must have paid out of his own trust fund; that’s why we never found a record of any withdrawals from his mother’s accounts. I assume you’d been his dealer.”

“Yeah. His own dad,” Wiggins said. “Cold little bastard.”

“So there was another Moriarty all along,” Sherlock said softly. “How long have you been working for him?”

Something passed across Wiggins’ face, a dark spasm gone so swiftly Sherlock almost thought he’d imagined it. Wiggins smiled again. “Wrong question, Mr. Holmes.”

Sherlock frowned. Wrong question…and then he understood, and on the heels of that realized he’d just made a truly astronomical mistake.

“It’s you. You’re not working for Moriarty, you are Moriarty.”

“Always underestimating me, aren’t you? All those times I showed you what I could do but you never noticed. Never observed.” Wiggins’ lip had curled, the dark gleam back in his pale eyes.

“Oh, really, that’s what this is all about?” Sherlock said in as bored a tone as he could muster. “All that blather at Christmas about being my protégé? I didn’t appreciate you enough so you became a criminal mastermind to get my attention?”

Wiggins shrugged. “Maybe in the beginning. But turns out I like being a criminal mastermind, see? Money’s a lot better too. I’m not going to be running a doss house forever, you know. At first, yeah, I was thinking it’d be fun to show you up; you always acting like I was just there because you wanted me for something, information or tipping off Magnussen; you never even wondered what I was really in it for. I was going to take down the other one and see how long it took you to catch on, but you had to go shoot Magnussen, get yourself sent away.”

“What a disappointment for you.”

“I saw the silver lining though. Always have a plan B, that’s what I learned. Didn’t sound like you was coming back from what I heard, so what better way to grab the throne for myself than to go ahead and take you out? Had it all sorted, though you made it dead easy. You told me exactly when the flight’d take off, how long you’d be in the air, how long you wanted the high to last before you switched to cocaine. I knew you’d take it right away. Had the video set to release ten minutes in, cause I knew by then you’d be dead. Except I hadn’t reckoned on you standing around saying your goodbyes an extra five minutes and I hadn’t planned on them being able to get you back once you landed.” Wiggins sighed. “Always need a plan B,” he added sagely, as though Sherlock had asked him for advice.

Sherlock was barely paying attention. “That dose you gave me—“

“Pure heroin, five times higher than usual,” Wiggins said, nodding. “Must have been a great rush.”

So Mycroft, John, they’d all been right. He had overdosed after all. “Too bad for you my brother now carries naloxone with him everywhere,” he said coolly.

“No, this worked out better,” Wiggins said earnestly. “When you came back, I realized this way I could use you to take out the other Moriarty for me. Didn’t have to do hardly any work myself; just point you in the right direction. I’ve had had boys on you this whole time, keeping an eye out. There’s two in the café right now. I knew what with that one being in the government they’d hush it up once you solved it, but I reckoned that would get you off house arrest, so I’d know. My guys said you were out all day yesterday, came home legless drunk and with company to boot—sounds like you solved it then.”

Your guys don’t know everything, Sherlock thought. “I hope you didn’t pay them too much. Watching a man on house arrest with no friends? They’ll have hardly earned it.”

Wiggins’ grin showed his hideous teeth again. “Oh, that’s not true, Mr. Holmes. We know you’ve got at least one friend. And good thing for me too, as it makes this bit much easier.”

“Which bit?”

“The part where you die. You’ve got the competition out of the way for me and I’ve had the fun of pulling the scales from your eyes, so I don’t need you anymore, see?”

“Not really. And I certainly don’t see how you think you’ll manage to murder me in my own flat.”

“I’m not going to murder you.” Wiggins actually sounded somewhat offended. “You’re going to OD, aren’t you? No surprise there.”

“Wasn’t planning on it, no.”

“Let me show you your options, Mr. Holmes.” Wiggins reached into his shabby jacket. The words and gesture were so familiar that Sherlock felt an instantaneous low craving vibrate under his skin. He pushed it back ruthlessly. Wiggins withdrew a plastic case and opened it, showing two syringes marked with red and blue tape.

“Wait,” Sherlock said quickly. He had to swallow past the dryness in his mouth. “Know you’ve got your evil villain speech prepared, hate to break the flow, but before you get on with it tell me: William Cooper. How did you do it? I couldn’t bear to die without knowing.”

Wiggins set the case on the coffee table, a wide grin of genuine delight spreading across his face. “You never worked it out?”

“Nope.” Sherlock shook his head. “Tried and tried, got a second autopsy and everything. Couldn’t solve it.”

“It was snow. Snow from his own ski centre. Dropped him in the back garden and dumped a lorryful over him. Bit overkill, but I had to get your attention, didn’t I?”

“Snow.” Sherlock closed his eyes. Molly had been right all along: William Cooper had suffocated, not drowned; the water particles had been inhaled as snow crystals, before his breath had melted and then frozen the snow around his face to ice. Sherlock knew the mechanics, but he’d never expected to encounter death by avalanche in the south of England. He opened his eyes and looked at Wiggins with genuine admiration. “That was good.”

“Much better than Regal with the roofies all the time,” Wiggins agreed. “One-trick pony, that one.”

“Yes, it was getting to be no fun at all.” Could Sherlock draw this out? There wasn’t a clear advantage to be gained by stalling, but maybe he could think of some way to escape—presumably the two men at Speedy’s were meant to keep him making a break for the front door, but if he could somehow get out the back…

“All right now, I’ve a business to get back to,” Wiggins said. He pulled out a pair of gloves and slid them on, reaching to tap the blue syringe with one nitrile-clad finger. “I’d recommend this one. Pure heroin, best I’ve got, same stuff I gave you on the plane. Only I’ve learnt from that experience so I’ve got a bit of potassium in it, see? Stops the heart. Even if you’ve got naloxone in your own pocket it won’t do you any good. Shouldn’t affect the high at all though. Beautiful rush and off you go, all your problems over.”

“Lovely,” Sherlock said drily. “What’s in the other one?”

“This one’s not so nice. Bit of morphine, enough to show up on the drugs screen but it won’t do more than take the edge off, and the rest is vecuronium. Are you familiar with that, Mr. Holmes? They use it in America for executions—“

“I know what it does,” Sherlock cut in. Vecuronum was a paralytic. Injecting it would leave him unable to move, fight, scream, or—most importantly—breathe, but he would be fully conscious for the long minutes it would take him to die.

“Bit of a disincentive, see. If you want to make it easy on all of us, you take the blue one. If I have to get my boys up here to reason with you, well…you get the red one.”

“You can’t be serious. That’s your plan? Worst case scenario I put up enough of a struggle that even the police couldn’t believe I suffered an accidental overdose. Best case—well, three against one, not fantastic odds, but I’ve beaten worse. Why on earth would you think I’d go along with this?”

“Two reasons,” Wiggins said. He reached back into his jacket and pulled out a small plastic card, with a magnetic strip on one side and a clip attached, the sort of ID badge someone might wear at work. He turned the badge so Sherlock could see the front, and for the first time Sherlock felt a cold trickle of fear: the badge was John’s.

“You were paying attention to what I said before, right?” Wiggins asked, gesturing with the badge toward the syringes. “Heroin, and morphine. How do you think we got the morphine, Mr. Holmes? A lot of morphine, too. I’ve made use of some of it, but we’ve got a case downstairs in the café right now, in a holdall. Going to cause a lot of trouble for Dr. Watson when that gets out. Might even go to prison. He won’t be practicing medicine again at any rate.”

“That’s absurd,” Sherlock said. “It’s obvious John wouldn’t do anything like that. My brother—“

Wiggins waved this aside “So maybe you pinched the card from him and used it yourself. Which is dead easy, by the way, as you see. Still not going to do him any favors and he’s not going to be thinking very highly of you either, is he?”

Sherlock stared at him. Surely John wouldn’t believe that Sherlock…of course he would. Sherlock was an addict, and addicts lie. John would go to his grave thinking that Sherlock had ruined his life yet again. He made himself shrug. “All the more reason to put up a fight then.”

Wiggins sighed. “I did say I had two reasons.” He reached back into his jacket and produced a gun which Sherlock immediately recognized as John’s. “Always have a plan B, see? I’d rather the overdose, but drugs deal gone bad works too. Nice bonus this.” He co*cked the pistol, aiming squarely at Sherlock’s chest. “Dr. Watson wasn’t supposed to keep it, was he? Make a bit of extra trouble that way too.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed. “Where’s John? What have you done with him?”

Wiggins actually looked rather affronted. “Nothing. Why would I? Had one of my lads pick his pocket and another search his house. He shouldn’t be having this there now anyway, what with the kid and all.”

Sherlock sat still, rifling frantically through every possibility he could think of, which were few. He could take his chances on a sudden leap at Wiggins, but with his finger on the trigger he didn’t need to be any kind of a shot to take Sherlock out at this range. Trying to go for any sort of a weapon posed the same problem. And presumably the men below were listening in somehow, so even if he managed to get past Wiggins…

“You’re going to die, Mr. Holmes,” Wiggins said placidly. “You’ve three minutes to decide how.”

Sherlock felt a strange, fatalistic sense of calm settle over him. It was always going to come down to this, wasn’t it? Two pills in a bottle, two syringes in a case; so they had begun, he and John, and so they would end. Perhaps he’d been meant to die that night and these five years had been stolen from fate by John. If he had died that night Sherlock wouldn’t have minded; it would have been worth it, just for the rush of putting the pill in his mouth and waiting to see if he’d been right. Now he felt…what? Regret? For that life he’d glimpsed in the last month, the one he he’d had today, where he could have cases, moments of contentment? No. Now that he’d known John Watson’s touch it would never have been enough. What Sherlock was feeling was not regret. It was relief. John was not coming back. He’d been gone for two days now, no word. He wasn’t coming back, and Sherlock knew that deep down he’d always known he wouldn’t. Happy endings were for fairy tales. Fairy tales didn’t exist, and if they did, Sherlock wouldn’t be in one.

But what if he does?

Then Sherlock would fail him, somehow, as he always failed everyone, as he always failed himself, and in the end John would leave again. And that would be even worse.

Well, Sherlock had proclaimed his willingness to die for John twice now, so it was time to walk the walk. Mycroft would work it out eventually, so one day John might even know the truth about Sherlock’s death. And as last days on earth went: it wouldn’t have been his first choice, but after all, this hadn’t been one to complain about.

Sherlock looked up at Wiggins. “If I take the blue one—“

Wiggins understood immediately. He jerked his chin at the badge lying on the coffee table. “It’s gone. The morphine too. We’ll wipe the records and none’ll be the wiser. I’ll even put the gun back.”

“All right,” Sherlock said. “I’ll do it. Have you got a tourniquet? I got rid of all mine.”

“Yeah.” If Wiggins had any reaction to Sherlock’s decision—either relief or disappointment—Sherlock saw no sign of it on his face. He pulled out a tangle of rubber strips and handed one over and Sherlock slipped out of his jacket, folded it over the arm of his chair, and rolled up his sleeve. Now that he’d made up his mind there was nothing to be gained by wasting time. He found a good vein right away and tightened the tourniquet, reaching out without looking for Wiggins to hand him the blue-taped syringe. Sherlock certainly didn’t want his last sight in the world to be Bill Wiggins—his own fire would do nicely. Not a bad way to go, he decided, although as he popped the cap off the syringe he had a fleeting moment of regret that he’d never finish Unending. He bowed his head over his forearm so Wiggins wouldn’t see him close his eyes. Dear God, in the extremely unlikely event that you actually exist and intend to grant me access to some sort of afterlife, I would very much appreciate knowing what becomes of Scythius. Thank you. There. He opened his eyes. Better than “Please God let me live”, anyway. He slid the needle home.

For a few seconds there was nothing, and then the fire began to glow with accelerated intensity, brighter and brighter with a warmth that seemed to spread through Sherlock’s whole body. He sat up straight and lifted his chin to meet it, eyes steady and unblinking. He’d have liked his last thought to be of John, but that sort of thing belonged with fairy tales and heroes.

How do you like your blue-eyed boy mister death

And then the brightness took him.

Chapter 14

Chapter Text

Sherlock’s initial sensation of consciousness was of heaviness, as though a thick soft blanket were weighing him down. There were voices, and an awareness of pain, though not pain itself, but it all seemed so distant. He let himself sink back into darkness again. At intervals he was aware of drifting upward: there were voices calling his name, usually accompanied by a command to open his eyes, cough, squeeze their fingers. He ignored them all.

There was no single moment of awakening. Rather he simply failed to drift back down, and gradually the world coalesced around him: lights, stiff industrially-laundered sheets, beeping. A hospital. His chest hurt, and for a disoriented moment he thought he had just imagined everything that happened after he’d been shot, but that wasn’t right. Where was he?

Sherlock must have stirred, because there was a sudden pressure on his fingers—a hand holding his tightened—and he jerked reflexively, thinking Magnussen. But then a face came into view and it wasn’t Magnussen at all; of course not, Magnussen was dead. It was John.

“Hey,” John very softly. “Hey. How are you doing?”

Sherlock blinked heavy eyelids, trying to focus. John looked terrible. He was haggard and unshaven, and had clearly been wearing his clothes for days. He’d been like that the last time Sherlock saw him but that had been because of the baby, and now he looked even worse, and—wait. Why was John here? Hadn’t he gone away?

“Why are you here?” Sherlock asked in the faintest rasp of a whisper. It hurt his throat.

John’s face lit with an astonished joy that made absolutely no sense to Sherlock. “Oh my God. You’re talking!” He actually laughed in amazement, though his eyes were filling with tears; had anyone ever been so delighted for Sherlock to talk? His hand tightened on Sherlock’s. “I’m here with you, of course. Where I should have been all along. I never, ever should have left you, Sherlock, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry…” The tears spilled onto his cheeks and he wiped at them with his free hand.

None of this made any sense. Sherlock’s throat and chest ached; he just wanted to go back to sleep, and speaking seemed such an enormous effort. What had happened to him? He remembered a needle, a fireplace—and then it all came back and he remembered what he’d done. Oh God. John would never forgive him for this. But he was here, he must know what Sherlock had done and yet he was still here, and come to that why was Sherlock himself here? He was supposed to be dead and beyond worrying about any of it.

John was still beaming at him, even as he scrubbed over his face with his sleeve. “I was scared I’d never hear your voice again.”

“I’m sorry,” Sherlock managed to croak.

“No, Jesus, Sherlock…I know what happened, why you did it, Lestrade told me everything, that girl heard it all, it’s okay, it’s okay. I should have been there.” John’s voice had gone tremulous again and he was gripping Sherlock’s hand too tightly.

It was all too much. Sherlock closed his eyes again, too exhausted to try to understand what John was saying. He was alive, John was here holding his hand, swearing never to leave again. He was going to be so happy. Eventually.

The next time Sherlock woke it was to the sound of voices, familiar ones, speaking softly a little distance away. He felt a bit more properly awake this time, so he turned his head to look.

“Well, look who’s awake,” Lestrade said, grinning at him from the doorway. “Heard us talking about you, did you?”

John, still rumpled and unshaven, turned to look too and his face lit with that same puzzling joy. “How are you feeling?”

Terrible. “Water,” Sherlock rasped.

“Okay.” John pushed the button to raise the head of the bed slightly and brought a cup of ice water to his lips. Sherlock sipped awkwardly. A little better.

“Why does my chest hurt,” he managed, his voice still a scratchy husk of itself.

“Oh.” Lestrade looked discomfited. “That’s down to me, I’m afraid. I don’t have a lot of experience and it seems I cracked some of your ribs. Sorry about that.”

“Greg had to give you chest compressions,” John explained. “You were down a long time, Sherlock. It’s incredibly lucky you’re alive.”

“How?” It was so exhausting to talk, as though he had to dredge each word up from some vast depth. “How am I? What happened?”

Lestrade and John both started to speak at once, then stopped, and John looked at Lestrade and said, “Better you.”

“Yeah, okay.” Lestrade settled into the bedside chair and John leaned against the wall, crossing his arms. “So Donovan and I were interviewing a witness, this was Friday night, right, and she got a text in the middle of it. She went white, just shocked, and pulled me aside and said we had to go, right now, her niece was at Baker Street and you were in trouble. Of course I’ve got no idea what’s going on—I mean, I knew she had a niece but what she’s doing at Baker Street?—but she was basically running for the car at that point so I got the story from her once we were heading over there.”

“But Hobbes was gone,” Sherlock said. “I sent her home.”

“Yeah, she didn’t go very far. Donovan didn’t really understand at that point either, and she hasn’t wanted to say much about it, but sounds like things aren’t good at home. I gather the kid, Maya, her mum’s been working evenings and mum’s boyfriend’s a bit of a bad lot, and Maya doesn’t really like being there, especially on the weekends after he’s been round the pub. I got most of that from Mrs. Hudson, actually. Seems the kid’s been spending a lot of nights in her spare room. But Friday night Mrs. Hudson was out, so when you sent her packing Maya decided to wait for her. She went down the street, turned the corner in case you were watching, bought some sweets, and then came back round the alley and let herself in the back. I suppose Mrs. Hudson’d given her a key.”

“That was me,” Sherlock said. He was torn between pride at Hobbes’ sneakiness and dread of what Donovan was going to do to him once he was back on his feet.

“Right. So she settles in on the back stairs, eating sweets and reading, until she hears the bell. Naturally she’s curious about who it is you’re so keen to keep her away from, so she crept up to the landing to listen—there was a load of rubbish or something there, it was easy enough to hide--and when she realized what was happening, when Wiggins admitted he’d arranged William Cooper’s murder, she texted Donovan. And then she started recording on her phone. So we had most of your little chat, from the part about how Wiggins fancies himself the new Moriarty to the bit where he says you’re going to overdose. Of course Donovan wanted her to get the hell out of there—kept texting her—but the kid just ignored her until she thought you were really in danger, and then she started texting again: hurry up, bring an ambulance, he’s going to do something bad, like that. She warned us about the two guys in Speedy’s so we had the first officers who got there block off the street, and then Donovan and I just walked past Speedy’s and broke in the door whilst the rest of the guys secured the café and the back. And there was Wiggins coming down the stairs, cool as a cucumber. Course, we didn’t know he had a gun, cause Maya hadn’t been able to see anything, but he’d already put it away by then and never had a chance to go for it.”

“So he’s…”

“Under arrest, yep,” Lestrade said, nodding.

“She saved your life,” John said, in an oddly constrained voice. “That kid. She saved your life.”

“Yeah, she did. By the time I got up there with the paramedics Donovan was giving you the kiss of life—yeah, don’t make that face, I don’t think she enjoyed it either—and the girl was screaming: ‘Heroin and potassium, he took heroin and potassium’. From what I understand if they hadn’t known about the potassium until the hospital it would have been too late. I’d had Donovan ring John at the hotel on the way over, so he got there just after we did and was able to tell the paramedics what they needed to do.”

“Glucose and insulin, and they were set up for emergency dialysis as soon as we hit the door,” John said. “As it was—“ his voice faltered and he turned away, rubbing a hand over his face.

Lestrade sobered, glancing at John before looking back at Sherlock. “You gave us a right scare there. Never thought I’d be so glad to hear your voice again, I don’t mind telling you.”

Sherlock frowned, looking at John for explanation.

John rubbed at his face with his hand again, wincing a bit at the stubble. “We didn’t know if you were going to make it for oh, forty-eight hours or so. Like I said, you were down a long time, and you developed ARDS—respiratory distress syndrome—and acute kidney injury. You’ve only just started making urine again. And once you started breathing on your own, we still didn’t know how much neurologic damage there might have been. It took another couple days for you to start responding.”

Sherlock just lay for a minute, trying to take this in. “What day is it?”

“Friday.”

A week. He’d lost an entire week, lying in…what, a coma? A week in which John had aged ten years but which was only an empty void to Sherlock. Maybe he had suffered brain damage, because he didn’t seem to be able to absorb any of this. He sifted through the information he’d been given and finally arrived at the one thing that felt crucial to clarify now.

“Hobbes,” he said. “Maya. She’s all right?”

“She’s fine. I think she’s staying with Donovan right now.”

He was meant to be doing something about Hobbes, but that could wait. At the moment Sherlock felt too drained and exhausted to think about any of this any longer. He nodded and let his eyes fall closed.

“Well, better let you get some rest,” Lestrade said, his chair scraping back. “Great to see you back with us, Sherlock, I mean that. John?”

Footsteps moved toward the door and there was a low murmuring from the corridor. Sherlock groped for the button and lowered the head of his bed so he could lie flat again.

John came back into the room. “Here, let me close the blinds for you.” He moved around and the room darkened beyond Sherlock’s eyelids. “Need anything else? Water? You all right with the pain?”

“I’m all right.” He wasn’t, but it wasn’t too bad at the moment. John’s hand wrapped around his again and Sherlock felt the brush of lips against his knuckles.

“Get some rest,” John said softly. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Sherlock did not answer. He kept his head turned away and his eyes closed, pretending to be asleep, wondering why he felt so empty, until at last he fell asleep for real.

When Sherlock woke again the light outside had thickened into dusk and Mycroft was sitting in the bedside chair.

“Spontaneous eye opening,” Mycroft remarked. “Very good. You’ve advanced a whole point on the Glasgow Coma Scale since I saw you last.”

“Where’s John?”

“I was able to persuade Dr. Watson to leave by telling him I wished some time alone with you. I may have intimated a concern that I would be overcome by brotherly emotion when you awoke. The truth is that he’d begun to smell, and I am hoping he avails himself of the opportunity to have a rest and a shower.” When Sherlock did not react to this Mycroft went on, “Our parents were also here but have returned home, although Mummy’s made it clear they’ll be back.”

Sherlock had no energy for bickering. “Why are you really here?”

Mycroft uncrossed his legs. “Your medical team has expressed a highly unrealistic wish that you eat. I thought this might have a slightly better chance of success if I brought some options more palatable than the usual hospital fare.” He tipped his head toward the rolling tray table, which held a carrier bag and another white box. Sherlock felt a small spark of amusem*nt—was there any situation Mycroft did not feel could be fixed with cake?—but it flickered and died.

“Also this.” Mycroft withdrew a book and held it out. “I thought you might like to have it.”

The book was Unending. Sherlock looked at it for a long moment and then away, staring into the gathering dark outside.

“Obviously, you are off house arrest now,” Mycroft went on. “While the usual public accolades are unlikely to be forthcoming on this occasion, your reputation survives intact, as do you. You will be free to return to your usual little amusem*nts. Mrs. Hudson is a bit upset over coming home to find her front door broken and her house overrun by police, but she appears open to forgiving you. John shows every sign of devoting the rest of his life to satisfying your every whim.” He softened his voice. “Sherlock…what is it?”

Sherlock squeezed his eyes tightly shut. Part of the answer was obvious—being back here so soon after the last time, with the pain and weakness and having to be grateful he was finally making his own urine into a catheter bag on the side of the bed—but how could he ever make Mycroft understand the rest of it? How to explain that he’d made peace with losing John, with his own death, and had gone willingly and bravely to make that sacrifice, only to find out that it had been for nothing? That here he was back in this place, hurting and afraid once again: that he would ruin things with John, that he’d never been meant for a relationship, that he couldn’t stay clean, that he would fail. His eyes burned traitorously and he clenched his jaw as well. “I don’t know,” he bit out finally, hating the desperation in his voice. “I have everything I ever wanted so why? Why do I feel like this?”

Mycroft was quiet a moment, but Sherlock felt a soft pressure settle on his wrist. Mycroft was not quite holding his hand, but his fingertips brushed Sherlock’s palm, where he could curl around them if he wished.

“I think,” Mycroft said finally, “that you have been running from this for a very long time, little brother. Perhaps it is time you turned and faced it.”

Sherlock felt one tear slip from beneath his tightly closed lids, then two. They ran down his cheeks and into his ears. He held himself furiously rigid, unable even to take a breath, until he could no longer stand it and sucked in a huge, shuddering sob. It was awful. The tears brought no relief; they stung his eyes and his already raw throat and dripped uncomfortably into his ears. He cried because he couldn’t help it, because he was tired and hurting and afraid, because the cellar was flooded and the dark bitter memories were rising unchecked, reminding him that he could never have what he now knew he wanted desperately; he was unworthy.

Sherlock wept for a long, long time, until he was limp and wrung-out and exhausted. Mycroft did not leave. He not-quite-held Sherlock’s hand and wiped his face gently, first with his own handkerchief, then with paper tissues, and finally with a cool damp cloth, until Sherlock fell asleep.

That night Sherlock spiked a fever, frighteningly high, wracking his body with bone-rattling deep chills. There was a flurry of activity: blood, more blood, urine—the bag proved to be a silver lining after all—portable chest film. When they all finally cleared out Sherlock curled around himself trying to go back to sleep, but his chest was hurting worse than ever and his teeth were chattering so badly that the whole bed seemed to shake. He fell into a terrifying half-dream of being buried in snow like William Cooper. He was going to freeze to death, he was suffocating, he was going to die—

A hand wrapped around his, a warm, strong, familiar hand. John. John would pull him out of the snow. Sherlock shivered, whimpering, and John said calmly, “I’m here, I’ve got you. Jesus, you’re burning up. We’re going to get some more blankets and then a pulse oximeter in here, all right? I don’t like how you’re breathing. You’re going to be okay.”

Sherlock remembered the dream on the plane, the one where John had appeared to save him from Moriarty at the waterfall. “There’s always two of us,” John had said. That was how it worked, wasn’t it? Nothing would happen to him with John here.

“I’m here,” John was saying, wrapping both warm hands around Sherlock’s. ”I’m here.”

Sherlock turned out to have pneumonia. As John explained—to Sherlock, to Mycroft, to Mummy, to Lestrade, to Sherlock again—this was not unexpected after the ventilator, but it was extremely unpleasant. Sherlock kept sliding back into his fever dream of being buried in snow, obsessively trying to work out how to definitively tell up from down. If he spit, would he be able to see which way it fell?

“There’s no snow, Sherlock,” John said patiently, pulling the oxygen mask out to wipe the spot where Sherlock had tried, feebly, to spit. “You’re indoors.”

Sherlock forced his eyes open and looked around blearily. Right. He was in hospital. He drank a little water and took the paracetamol John handed him, and then closed his eyes and tried to think about something warm. Belize. He had gone to Belize when he was taking down Moriarty’s network. There had been a ceiling fan. He had been waiting for a call and he lay there and stared at it, wondering what John was doing, waiting for the fan to stir enough of a cool breeze to reach him…he slid right back into the snow again.

The fever came down eventually, leaving Sherlock with a hideous hacking cough that every doctor he encountered gleefully told him would probably become a constant companion if he didn’t quit smoking. The catheter came out (thank God). His parents were persuaded to return home again, and Mycroft—with evident relief—once more made himself scarce. Mrs. Hudson turned up with a bag of treats, which Sherlock suspected she’d shared with the nursing staff, as they were much nicer to him after her visit.

The darkness was still there. Now that he’d stopped fighting to escape, Sherlock found himself drifting along in it, as though in a rip current; not safely ashore, but not drowning either. And he had, still, the sensation of John’s hand keeping him from drifting away, although he didn’t examine the feeling too closely.

Then Sally Donovan turned up.

John’s face when he opened the door and saw Donovan standing there with a bouquet of flowers would have made Sherlock grin at any other time. “Sergeant Donovan,” John said, sounding startled, and then evidently remembering: “Oh. Your niece! How is she?”

“Yeah, she’s great, thanks,” Donovan said, moving past John to set the flowers carefully on the windowsill. “She picked these out. She wanted to come and see you, but I said maybe after you were back at home.” This was to Sherlock.

John gestured awkwardly at the chair. “Well, it’s certainly very…” Unprecedented? uncharacteristic? unbelievable? Sherlock wondered. “…considerate of you to come by.”

“Wanted a word,” Donovan said, settling herself in the chair with a pointed look at Sherlock.

“John, why don’t you take a break. Get some fresh clothing.” Sherlock was going to have to face this particular music sooner or later, and since he still had the oxygen cannula on perhaps Donovan wouldn’t actually punch him in the face.

John was clearly reluctant. He fussed around for a bit, offering to run down for coffee, making certain Sherlock’s bed was adjusted to the right angle and he had tissues and water to hand. He finally gave Sherlock a quick awkward pat—Sherlock had the impression he wanted to squeeze his hand, but wasn’t sure if he should with Donovan there—and eased his way out, giving Sherlock one last concerned glance as he left.

Sherlock jumped in as soon as the door closed. “Detective Sergeant, I assure you, I truly believed Hobbes to be gone long before Wiggins arrived. I always sent her away if anyone came to the flat or even if I were making a phone call of a sensitive—“ he broke off into a fit of coughing.

Donovan poured water into a tumbler, looking faintly alarmed. “You all right? You need me to call someone?”

“No, I’m fine.” Sherlock sipped the water, coughed again, drank some more and finally set it down.

“Yeah, I don’t actually blame you for that,” Donovan said. “You weren’t to know she wasn’t going home. I should have known. So I’m not angry about that. I’m angry because you stuck a bloody needle in your arm and tried to top yourself.”

Sherlock frowned. “But you know why I—“

“I know why you think you did it,” Donovan interrupted. “You think you did it for John Watson. I heard the whole thing, Maya recorded most of it.” She leaned forward, and even through her cold rage Sherlock thought he detected a thread of satisfaction as she said fiercely, “You’re an idiot. John Watson would have wanted you to fight. Even if you were sure you’d lose, that you’d ruin his life, you should have kept fighting, because as long as you’re alive there’s a chance you can still turn it around.”

Something clicked in Sherlock’s mind, pieces that had seemed only mildly incongruous at the time suddenly fitting together. “Your brother,” he said. “He didn’t die in Afghanistan, did he.”

Donovan sat back and raised her eyebrows. “You’ve only just now worked that out?”

“Hadn’t really given it any thought, to be honest.”

Donovan folded her arms. “Oh, Afghanistan killed him, all right. He just didn’t die there. He came back all messed up. Couldn’t sleep, couldn’t concentrate, always angry…maybe if Holly hadn’t chucked him already, if he’d had his family to go home to, but he’d nothing. Couldn’t keep a job even before the drugs.” She grimaced, looking away. “They had shared custody at first. But he went to pick up Maya one weekend and he was so high he couldn’t even find the right flat. Holly called the police, and after that he couldn’t even see his own kid unless it was at my mum’s. He tried to get clean, but he couldn’t do it on his own, and then he tried to get into rehab but the wait lists were too long. He died on that wait list. Overdosed. My mum found him; she was never the same after that, had a stroke six months later.” She looked Sherlock full in the face again. “I want to believe it was an accident. He didn’t leave a note or anything. But he’d said to me, before, that he should have died over there, cause he wasn’t any use as a dad anyway and at least that way Maya’d have the memory of him being a hero. And that was crap. She didn’t need a dead hero, she needed her dad. And I needed my brother, and my mum needed her son, and John Watson needs you, not a martyr or a hero, you, no matter how much of a sociopath arsehole condescending junkie tosser you are.”

Sherlock blinked. He had an utterly inappropriate urge to smile: her anger felt refreshingly bracing, like a stiff breeze in the face, after all of John and Mycroft and even Mummy’s careful, gentle patience. Also, she was entirely correct; Sherlock had put his own desire to solve his problems by making a spectacular martyr of himself over what John had explicitly told him he wanted. He could still hear John’s furious voice all those weeks ago: I don’t want you to die for me. I want you to live for me.

“You’re right,” he said bluntly. “I was wrong. I apologize.” He broke off to cough and then added a little stiffly, “Sorry about your brother.”

Donovan’s expression had gone so shocked that Sherlock did smile then. “Did you just say you were wrong?”

Sherlock coughed again and reached for the little bottle of hand sanitizer. “If you tell Lestrade I’ll tell him you buy your knickers at Agent Provocateur.”

Donovan narrowed her eyes. “You bloody…”

“We all have our vices, Detective Sergeant,” Sherlock said. He coated his hands thoroughly, shook them briefly in the air to dry them, and then stuck out his hand. “Thank you.”

When she’d gone, Sherlock lowered the head of his bed a little and closed his eyes—even short conversations exhausted him—and, as he drifted off, realized he felt much better about being alive.

Chapter 15

Chapter Text

Sherlock’s kidney function normalized. A neuropsychologist administered a battery of tedious little tests and declared him free of permanent cognitive deficits, to Sherlock’s secret relief, and he was changed to oral antibiotics. A gastroenterologist recommended long-term acid suppressors and a follow up consultation in three months, to which Sherlock acceded. After considerable thought, he declined monthly naltrexone injections, a decision in which he was unexpectedly seconded by John: “If you decide you want to get high on naltrexone, you’ll manage it, and whatever you do will be a lot more dangerous and likely end up killing you.”

On the day the attending physician said, “I think we can start planning for discharge tomorrow or next day,” John shut the door after him, still grinning broadly, and came to sit down in the char. “We need to talk,” he said.

Sherlock instinctively braced his feet against the foot of the bed. He thought his face had slid into haughty indifference, but John’s eyes softened and he reached to lay his hand over Sherlock’s. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “I promised you I would never leave again, and I won’t, not unless you want me to.”

“Yes of course,” Sherlock said coolly, but he turned his hand so that it grasped John’s. Tethered. Safe.

“So, um.” John rubbed the back of his head, looking uncomfortable. “I’ve had a couple talks with Greg, over the past weeks. I’ve realized that, er, I wasn’t very fair to you, these last months. And that it was harder on you than I knew. So, I’m, well. I’m sorry about that.”

“Completely unnecessary. You had a lot on your plate—“

“Yeah, I did, but that’s no excuse,” John said, seeming to gain confidence now that he’d gotten past the apology. “I took a lot for granted. I thought I knew what you wanted, and I thought you knew what I wanted—I assumed you could read my mind, really. I thought,” he took a deep breath. “I thought you were made of Teflon. That I couldn’t hurt you. And I did hurt you, I see that now. If it’s any help at all, I never wanted to; that’s why I stayed away. That time when I phoned? I knew it would be unfair for me to come and see you knowing that I couldn’t stay. I just wasn’t always as strong as I wanted to be.” John looked at Sherlock, his eyes full of pain. “Sherlock, when I kissed you that day--I thought I was kissing you good-bye. I thought you had decided to just burn yourself out, like lighting all the fireworks at once on Bonfire Night instead of making them last, and I didn’t know why, and I didn’t think I could do anything to stop you. And I was so angry and so…I just thought, sod it. I’m not going to watch him destroy himself and if I’m walking out now then I’m going to do this just one time before it’s all over. I didn’t even know how much I wanted to until I did it. And I never, ever dreamt you would kiss me back.” John laughed a little ruefully. “I was properly banjaxed.”

Sherlock nodded, remembering how he’d felt himself.

John looked down. “That month. It was…well, I’ve told you before. That last night especially. I wanted so much to be with you, but those things you’d said, about James Sholto—I never wanted you to feel like I thought of you that way, like you were some kind of dirty secret, and I didn’t want to end it with Mary the way I did with him. I didn’t want to run away this time, from the choices I’d made, do you see? I thought that I’d been given a final chance to do it right. To end things with Mary so that I could come back to you honestly and permanently. You were right about that, I never should have come to you, not until I’d ended it, but since I did—I never should have left. That was my last, biggest mistake. I never should have left you, not once I’d told you I loved you. And then,” his voice choked a little and he looked away, jaw working, “I thought I might not ever have the chance to make it up to you.”

Now it was Sherlock who squeezed John’s hand—a little tentatively, but he hadn’t had a lot of practice being the reassuring one, after all. Or being on the receiving end of apologies. John looked at him and tried to smile. “I’m pants at this. Will you forgive me?”

Sherlock blinked. “Of course,” he said. “I didn’t like being angry with you; it felt all wrong. I’d prefer to move past it.”

John’s smile warmed. “Good. Because that’s what I want to do. I want to start over. Make a fresh start, with us.”

Sherlock frowned at him. “What does that even mean, a fresh start.”

John’s eyes crinkled at his acerbic tone. “It means...it means, Sherlock Holmes, that I love you. I love you with all my heart. And I would really like to come back to Baker Street and spend the rest of my life with you. I want to solve crimes with you, and write them up in my blog, and listen to you complain about my writing and put things in there about how fantastic you are because I know secretly you love that. I want to stay. If you want me.”

All the things he could have said crowded immediately to the front of Sherlock’s mind: If you like. I suppose I could clean out the other room. Much more convenient, having you close at hand. I assume the blog is negotiable. But John was holding his hand and that made him brave, so Sherlock took a breath and said, “I’ve never wanted anything else.”

John grinned and put his other hand over Sherlock’s. “I also, er. I know I’ve no ground to stand on when it comes to mixed messages, and let me add I’m sorry about that too, and I was a right prat for all that ‘I’m not gay’ stuff. Which you saw through anyway. And, er, I know now that you do feel things that way, in spite of what you’ve said in the past. But there could be all kinds of reasons why you might not want to be in a relationship with me, no matter how you feel. I’ve caused all sorts of harm making assumptions, so I won’t make any now--I just want to say I rather fancy shagging you through the mattress every night, but that’s not essential if it isn’t something you want. I’m still staying.”

Sherlock’s heart gave a quick uncomfortable little stutter but he ignored it. Turn and face it. “I want that,” he said, as steadily as he could.

John smiled again and squeezed his hand. “Good. That’s good. So…Mary’s leaving Friday next; she and the baby are going to America. The baby will be a month old, so, she’s cleared to fly. I’ve allowed…Mary’s been staying on at the house with the baby and I’ve been staying at a hotel since that night at your flat. Now that you’re going home I’d like to move back to Baker Street, but if you’d rather take things more slowly…”

“No,” Sherlock said immediately. “Come home, John.”

John squeezed his hand again, his smile warm on Sherlock’s face. “Okay.”

After spending well over a month desperate to get free of the place, Sherlock was surprised at how happy he was to be back in 221B. Perhaps there were things worse than house arrest after all. Besides, now John was here too, which would have made even house arrest bearable. Well, slightly less unbearable, anyway.

Sherlock was a bit taken aback to realize that John had put his few things into the upstairs bedroom.

“Let’s not rush,” John said. “We’re making a fresh start, remember? We’ll start out slow. Besides, I know how particular you are about your clothes and things.”

Sherlock considered this, feeling a peculiar mixture of disappointment and relief. John sounded almost…tentative? It was an astonishing revelation, that John did not necessarily have all the answers, was worried about putting a foot wrong. Sherlock felt much better all of a sudden. They would muddle through this together. “Probably for the best. I’ve been told I’m not the easiest to live with.”

John seemed to understand what he was thinking. “We’ll work it out. Tea?”

They endured the unavoidable fussing from Mrs. Hudson and had takeaway for dinner and then John turned on the telly, and it was all so wonderful and familiar that Sherlock didn’t even feel bored; he just sat in his chair and stared at John staring at the television. At length John clicked the remote and said, “Well, I’m off to bed. Don’t stay up too late, all right? You need your rest.”

“I’m just going to read a bit.” Sherlock still had Unending hidden away in his bag—of course he hadn’t read it at the hospital; anyone might have caught him at it.

“Okay.” John smiled at him, and then he crossed over and put his arms around Sherlock a little awkwardly. Sherlock went stiff with surprise. What was this? Was John hugging him? John didn’t hug. Sherlock felt John’s arms loosen, realized he was standing there like a mannequin, and quickly wrapped his own arms around John’s solid wool-clad body and squeezed back. John made a little “oof” sound and Sherlock realized he had hugged too hard, so he loosened his grip but didn’t let go.

John reached up, cupped the back of Sherlock’s head in one hand, and kissed him. It was a gentle kiss, undemanding, but it sent a wave of warmth flowing all the way to Sherlock’s toes. He tightened his arms, wanting more, but John kissed him again and let go. “I’ll see you in the morning,” he said.

Sherlock stared after him, feeling that strange mingling of disappointment and relief again. He’d committed himself to a relationship, after all, but he hadn’t really brought himself to think much about what would happen. Right at the moment he wanted something to happen, wanted it very much, but at the same time…

Sherlock shook himself mentally and collected his book, putting the matter firmly out of his mind. He read his two chapters, stopping reluctantly—things were moving quickly toward the climax now—and took himself off to bed, where he found himself thinking about John again. What would it be like, to have John here? Not the sex sort of thing, the actual sharing a bed thing. Would they sleep side by side? Cuddle? Sherlock reflexively sneered, but he couldn’t help picturing himself wrapped up in John’s arms, feeling John’s strong heart beating against his. It would be…rather nice. He would like that, to sleep in John’s arms. He would like that very much.

The next day dawned unseasonably bright and sunny. Sherlock walked down the street to get cappuccinos for the pure pleasure of being able to do it—stopping only twice to cough, better—and returned to find John pocketing his phone.

“Thought I’d run over to the house this afternoon to fetch a few more things,” John said. “I’ll clear it out properly and sell it once Mary’s gone, but I could really use some more clothes. Mary says she’ll take the baby out for walk so it needn’t be awkward.”

“Fine,” Sherlock said, pleased at the unexpected opportunity to get back to his book.

But he was only a few pages in before the bell went downstairs. Sherlock ignored it the first two times, but Mrs. Hudson must be out: the third time whoever was on the other end leaned on it for a full ten seconds. Fine. Sherlock shoved his book aside and stomped downstairs, planning to cough all over his annoying caller as soon as he opened the door. Well, unless they were an interesting client. John had made him promise to hold off until next week, but that didn’t mean Sherlock couldn’t at least listen.

But the person at the door was neither a client nor someone who deserved a good spraying with nasty bacteria. It was Mary.

“Hi,” Mary said, looking up at him and shifting the infant carrier she was holding. “Mind if I come in?”

“John’s not here,” Sherlock said reflexively and then, annoyed at himself: “Of course you knew that already. Shall I take that for you?”

“No, I’ve got it. There’s a bit of a trick to balancing the weight, and anyway from what I hear I’m in better shape than you are.”

“Also less infectious,” Sherlock said, closing the door. The carrier had been draped with a blanket, a sensible precaution. He followed Mary up the stairs and took her coat and hat. She looked tired, purpling bags under her eyes and lines around her mouth, and her hair was a much darker shade of honey blonde than he’d seen previously. Trying to get back to her natural color, perhaps. “Tea?”

“That would be lovely.”

Sherlock brought the tea and Mary said, “Thanks,” and then, as he sat down, “I’m glad this worked out. I was afraid I’d have to leave London without seeing you.”

Sherlock raised his eyebrows. “And why did you want to see me?”

Mary co*cked her head as though surprised by the question. “To apologize.”

She clearly meant to go on but Sherlock held his hand up, stopping her. “No. You won’t. If you apologize then I’ll have to apologize and we’ll go round and round and I’ve had quite enough of those conversations lately. That’s what I always liked about you, Mary, we don’t do conversations like that.”

Mary laughed. Something about her laughter reminded Sherlock of the night he’d been with Lestrade, how good it felt to laugh when there’d been nothing to make him smile for weeks, and he felt an abrupt pang of sympathy for Mary. “Are we still friends then?”

“Of course we’re friends.”

“Good.” She took a drink of her tea, still smiling at him.

“So what are you going to do now?”

“Well…give it a go.” She nodded toward the carrier. “My…my husband, Paul, he’s terribly excited. Already came over to see her and he’s getting everything ready for when we return.” There was a notable absence of enthusiasm in her voice.

“Mmm.”

“Bit ironic, things turning out like this. You see Paul wanted children all along, but I wasn’t sure. Didn’t know if I wanted to settle down. It turned into the type of thing where it stood for everything we’d ever fought about in our entire relationship. Why we took a bit of a break, separate overseas assignments. I thought it would help to clear my head. I was probably hoping my biological clock would run out, to be honest—I rather thought it already had, but look what happened.”

“But now you’ve changed your mind?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I said I’d give it a go. Certainly I felt quite differently once it happened than I thought I would, and even more now she’s here, but I don’t know if that will last. I’ll have to take a desk job.” She wrinkled her nose and he couldn’t help smiling. “I’ve decided to give it five years. They say things get better once they’re in school, and if not, well, I’ll reassess.”

Sherlock nodded; this seemed perfectly reasonable to him, aside from the obvious fact that he wouldn’t be able to stand parenthood for five minutes himself. “Good luck.”

“Thanks. I don’t think John ever wants to see me again, but will you keep in touch?”

“Long-distance relationships, not really my area,” Sherlock said drily. “As you know.”

Mary smiled, but there was a sadness in it. “I know.”

“But I might have occasion to seek advice of a professional nature,” Sherlock offered. “Email me at my website and I promise I’ll respond.”

The smile reached her eyes this time. “I’ll do that. Make sure John updates the blog, will you? I’ve got to live vicariously if I’m to have a desk job.”

“He might find that suspicious,” Sherlock warned. “But I’ll do my best.” Mary put down her nearly-empty cup with an air of finality and Sherlock leaned forward: “Before you go, would you mind? I’ll keep a healthy distance.”

“Oh,” Mary said, sounding surprised. “Of course.” She lifted the blanket off the carrier and Sherlock tipped his head to see. The baby was fast asleep, only her frowning little face visible. The frown did make her look a bit like John, but aside from that she was indistinguishable from any other Caucasian newborn Sherlock had been unable to avoid encountering. Still: Mary Morstan’s daughter. Sherlock thought, unexpectedly, of Hobbes. Run the world, he told the little sleeping face silently. Run this mother. Make a better job of it than we did.

Sherlock sat back and gave his patently insincere smile. “Beautiful.”

“You know I see through that,” Mary said, but she was smiling again. “Take care of yourself, all right? And Sherlock—keep him in trouble.”

“I will,” Sherlock said.

Sherlock wasn’t the type to sit around dwelling on things, so he didn’t: he got right back to his book. But when John came home and came to give Sherlock a kiss, Sherlock startled both of them by wrapping his arms tightly around John and burying his face in his hair. He felt John take a breath—no doubt to say something asinine like I wasn’t gone that long!--but then he let it out again without speaking and hugged Sherlock back.

Next day John was railing at Sherlock about the shower (“I should be able to fit one bottle of shampoo in here, Sherlock, there’s no reason any human male needs this much product”) when he abruptly stopped mid-rant and said, “Did someone just come in the front door?”

“Oh, that’ll be Hobbes,” Sherlock said, glancing at his watch. “It’s Wednesday.”

“What?” John asked, but Sherlock had already co*cked his head to listen. Wittering of female voices: Mrs. Hudson receiving her flowers, the usual fussing, but the voices continued up the stairs: oh, Sally Donovan had come along.

“Bit late today, aren’t you?” he remarked as Hobbes trudged in lugging a carrier bag.

“Shopping,” Hobbes said, dropping her bag onto the table. Donovan, who had one as well, set hers down next to it and began pulling things out.

“I told her, you wouldn’t need her to get your shopping anymore now Dr. Watson’s moved back in,” Donovan explained. “So she decided to get all your favorites as a welcome-home present. Bought them all herself.” She held up a double handful of Flake bars and passed them to Hobbes to put away. “And this is from me.” She tossed him a box of nicotine patches. “Heard you’ve given up the fa*gs since you had pneumonia. The boss’s given them up too now, so thanks for that.”

“Don’t worry, he won’t last,” Sherlock said.

“I’m going to tell him you said that,” Donovan said. “I know the only reason he’s doing it is because he’s so bloody competitive, so that should keep him going a bit longer.”

Sherlock suddenly remembered John, who was still standing in the doorway apparently stunned into silence by the sight of an adolescent girl stocking their kitchen with sweets. “John, this is Hobbes. Hobbes was my all-purpose dogsbody whilst I was on house arrest and she’s still on the payroll to bring Mrs. Hudson flowers on Wednesdays until she goes to school. Hobbes, Dr. Watson.”

Hobbes gave John the sort of flat side-eye she might have used on a new teacher and said to Sherlock, “Mrs. Hudson’s on her way out. Shall I make tea then?”

“Certainly not,” John said, jolted into action and moving to shake her hand. “Maya, isn’t it? You’re not a dogsbody today, you’re an honored guest! We owe you a huge debt of thanks. Please have a seat and…” He must have caught something in her face because, swiftly changing tack, he added, “Unless you’d care to lend a hand? I don’t know quite where everything is yet and I saw you’ve brought some of those biscuits Sherlock likes, perhaps you could put them on a plate?”

Hobbes narrowed her eyes at him and then said grudgingly, “Yeah, all right.”

When they’d all got settled with their tea and dispensed with John’s effusive praise of Hobbes, Donovan said to Sherlock, “I had a call from your mum. She’s coming up to take us to tea Saturday.”

“Yes, I spoke to her last week,” Sherlock said. “My mother is on the board of governors of the Swanburne Academy, which was founded in the nineteenth century to provide intelligent but impoverished young women with a top-notch education, and which still maintains an active scholarship scheme.” He looked at Hobbes. “My mother herself was at school there, and went on to read mathematics at Cambridge. I think you’ll like her.”

“Are you interested in maths too?” John asked Hobbes. “Or do you plan to be a detective?”

Hobbes shook her head definitely. “I don’t want to be a detective. I’m going to read philosophy.”

“How very interesting,” John said politely.

“Waste of talent,” Sherlock said.

“Sherlock!” John gasped, shocked, but Hobbes caught Sherlock’s eye behind Donovan’s back and grinned. He winked at her. Maybe someday Auntie Sal would hear of Hobbes’ secret talent for covert surveillance, but it certainly wouldn’t be from him.

Sherlock endured the polite chitchat until he’d finished his second biscuit and then began coughing and drooping in his chair, at which point Donovan decided they should let him rest. Pneumonia had its uses. John saw them to the door and returned to find Sherlock back on his laptop. “Were you faking that?”

“Polite company, not really my area,” Sherlock said, not looking up.

“Fine then,” John said, whisking the laptop away. “You can bloody well get in the bathroom and make room for my shampoo bottle.”

Sherlock seemed to have exhausted his pool of acquaintances who would appear for surprise visits—to his relief—so he spent the next few days lying around, coughing, reading the papers, daydreaming about John, and scheming for opportunities to read Unending. (These were rare.) He ate more. He curled up against John on the sofa and napped. He discovered the joy of having his scalp scratched. The kisses grew longer and deeper and began to morph into outright snogging sessions. This was new territory for Sherlock and he loved it, being held and caressed; the exquisite feelof John's hands on his back, his neck, his face was almost, almostenough.

The unacknowledged scale in Sherlock’s mind palace tipped farther from fear toward arousal. He began to think aboutmore.

Sliding down on the sofa he found himself under John and it was all right, John's weight wonderful and perfect and grounding. Pressing against John in the doorway he felt John's hardness against his thigh and remembered the feel of it against his skin; he thought about slipping his hands under John's shirt, of unfastening his trousers...but the anxiety fluttered in his chest and he wrapped his arms more firmly around John's back and moaned as John's lips moved over the hollow of his throat. More, Sherlock thought, tangled and breathless in John’s arms, more contact, more touching, more please more, take me to bed; but he didn’t say it out loud, not yet, and John didn’t.

Chapter 16

Chapter Text

Saturday morning, as was his new habit, Sherlock stripped off and inspected himself in the bathroom mirror. John had tried to persuade him that the overdose and the medication he’d gotten in the hospital shouldn’t count, and Sherlock saw his point—it wasn’t as though he’d enjoyed any of it—but Sherlock was a stickler and so counted from the last dose. Unfortunately John wasn’t sure of the last dose, so he actually counted from the day he’d first woken properly. So: three weeks and one day clean. Still skinny. His arms were marked up and down with fading bruises and needlemarks and there were even some on the upper part of his chest, but he hadn’t made them, so that was all right. No sores. Even his fingertips had healed. Not bad, Sherlock thought; if the occasion should arise when stripping down would be appropriate—the thought made his stomach flutter--he needn’t be ashamed of his appearance.

“Sherlock!” John banged irritably at the door. “Did you fall into your mind palace or something? I need the loo.”

Later that afternoon John announced he was “popping out for a few things”. He had a strange half-secretive, half-excited look on his face, which Sherlock didn’t bother to deduce—not because his mind shied away from what it might mean but because he was too eager to finally get back to his book. He was so close to the end! Of course, as soon as the front door closed his mother rang from the station.

“What a delightful child!” Mummy said. “Frightfully clever. We had a lovely conversation. There shouldn’t be any trouble at all arranging a scholarship; she can start next term.”

“Excellent,” Sherlock said, relieved everything had been sorted so efficiently and in a hurry to get back to his book.

“Her aunt’s worried about costs but I’ve settled all that as well. I’ve convinced her she’ll be doing me the most enormous favor to let me get all the uniforms and books and so on. Well, it’s no more than the truth really; I can’t imagine you or Mycroft are going to give me a granddaughter I can kit out for Swanburne.”

“Unlikely,” Sherlock agreed.

“And of course she’ll come to us for a few weeks on her summer holidays.”

“What? Why?”

“I told you, she’s charming—“

“Hobbes isn’t charming.”

“She’s a sight more charming than you were at that age,” Mummy informed him.

“She hums!”

“Well, so does your father. We’ll just have to make sure they settle on the same tune,” Mummy said briskly. “Oh, there’s my train. We’ll expect you for a weekend whilst she’s there!”

“Only if Mycroft has to come too,” Sherlock shouted, but Mummy had already rung off. Hmpf, Sherlock thought sulkily, though he had the vague sense that he was being a little ridiculous. It wasn’t as though he were going to miss Hobbes, and surely it was better that she transfer her affections to his far-more-appropriate parents, who could provide her with uniforms and a garden to read in instead of overdosing in front of her. Still…Sherlock thumped the phone down rather hard, suddenly remembered his book, and turned back to it with relief.

Sherlock was so engrossed he didn’t register John had returned until a hand waved between Sherlock’s face and his book. “Sherlock!”

Sherlock batted the hand away in irritation. “Hang on, I’m nearly finished!” He had only a handful of pages to go—why couldn’t the rest of the world just shut up?

Ten minutes later Sherlock shut the book with great satisfaction and looked up to find John grinning at him from his chair. Oh hell, he’d been caught red-handed. “Don’t say a word,” Sherlock warned.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” John was still grinning. “Now come on and get dressed, we’re going out.”

“Out? Where?”

“On a date.”

“A date.”

“Yeah. You know, where two people who like each other go out and—“

“I know what a date is, I just thought we were rather beyond that.”

“Nope, we’re starting over, remember? Now chop chop, I know how long you take.”

Sherlock chop chopped. Just to be contrary he rushed his usual routine a bit to prove he could be quick, but…he showered rapidly but thoroughly, whilst simultaneously not thinking about what might be implied by date.

When he strolled out of his room, buttoning his jacket nonchalantly, he found John waiting with his coat on and Sherlock’s held out as though he were proffering a grand lady’s fur. Sherlock rolled his eyes a little but turned, letting John slip the coat on his shoulders and then loop his scarf around his neck. It made him feel simultaneously silly and cherished.

On the walk to Angelo’s Sherlock told John about his mother’s phone call.

John was enthusiastic. “Fantastic,” he said. “That school sounds perfect for her; I think she’ll really land on her feet there. And it’s lovely your mother’s taking such an interest.”

“My mother is practically adopting her,” Sherlock said a bit sourly.

John glanced over at him and walked on in silence for a moment before he said, “Sherlock, that kid adores you. No one’s ever going to take your place with her; you saved her, and she’ll never forget that.”

“Mmmm…rather the other way round, wasn’t it?”

“No.” John shook his head. “She was alone, and you were her friend. Sometimes that means more than you know. Sometimes it means everything.”

Sherlock considered this. He found himself thinking of Donovan, staying late to send him a case; of Greg Lestrade, of Mrs. Hudson, of his meddling brother.

“Besides, it might be fun to go for a weekend.” John said.

“Well….not the whole weekend. But perhaps an afternoon.” Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. He imagined himself sitting in the garden, watching Hobbes follow his father around with the garden tools, patiently retrieving his glasses every time he absently set them down. Mummy quizzing John about something in the kitchen. “Two hours. You’ll be dying to leave by then, trust me.”

They arrived at Angelo’s and Sherlock’s nerves threatened to return, especially when John said a little too loudly, “And bring a candle for the table.” Then he caught Sherlock’s eye with a suddenly nervous expression, as though worried he’d overstepped. That made Sherlock feel much better.

“And a bottle of wine,” Sherlock added. “Something special. The best you’ve got.”

“Surprise us,” John said, and he smiled.

When they’d got seated and ordered and tried the wine—John said it was excellent, which Sherlock hoped was true—John said, “All right, tell me about this case that had to do with those books.”

Sherlock was only too delighted. He told John all about Tyler Austin, the bottle with no fingerprints, Aimee Lister and all the rest, explaining as an afterthought about DI MacDougall sending him the book as a thank-you present. John was just as appreciative as he had ever been and Sherlock found himself relaxing, enjoying the wine and tucking into his food when it arrived.

“And then there were some more, weren’t there? Greg said you’d managed to solve all sorts of stuff whilst you were on house arrest.”

And Sherlock was off again. He wasn’t a natural storyteller, the way John was, but the phone with the stalker pictures, Regal Florist, the insurance frauds, the attractive young lady—these were interesting enough that even Sherlock’s pedantic rendition couldn’t make them dull. He even made John laugh when he described Hobbes demonstrating her covert photo technique.

“And you sat on those whilst you were setting up Anthea—do the police have them now?”

“Yes, I turned them all over after Anthea was taken into custody. Well, all but one. There was a woman who arranged her own disappearance, clearly a victim of domestic violence; I let that particular sleeping dog lie.”

The merriment dimmed in John’s face and he looked down at his plate briefly, fiddling with his fork. “Er. Sherlock. There was something I forgot to say, back when you were in hospital…”

Oh God, Sherlock realized: Lestrade. “It’s fine,” he said quickly.

John looked up. “No, it isn’t.”

“It is. It’s in the past. A fresh start, isn’t that what you said? “

John smiled, though his eyes were still sad. “So that was in another country, you mean? Wait, is that how it goes?”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s a quote, or I think it’s a quote—‘that was in another country, and besides the wench is dead’—that’s Mary, I suppose. Still…I should never have done that to you, Sherlock, not for any reason. I am sorry. And it will never happen again, I promise you that.”

Sherlock wanted to brush it off again, but he didn’t. He held John’s gaze. “No. You shouldn’t have. But I understand why you did. And I will endeavor never to give you cause.”

John shook his head, the sadness still in his eyes, but he smiled again. “Anyway, you’re right, we’re looking forward. The undiscovered country! That’s the future, right?”

Sherlock frowned at him. “No it isn’t.”

John frowned back. “That’s what they said in Star Trek.”

“John, the undiscovered country is death.”

“Are you sure?”

“I didn’t delete Shakespeare!”

“Well.” John said, laughing now, “I suppose I did. All right then, to looking forward.” He lifted his glass to Sherlock and Sherlock, feeling a little silly, touched it with his. John drank and then set his glass down and said, “So what was the story with the snow? When you were in hospital you kept talking about a case that involved snow, of all things.”

“Oh, the man who drowned on dry land.” Sherlock seized on this diversion with relief. “There was a body found in Kent…”

John listened, growing progressively more incredulous, until he finally said, “He murdered a man by dumping a lorryful of snow on him just to get your attention?”

“Well…yes. More or less.”

“That bloody Wiggins. He’s worse than Moriarty! I should have broken his arm when I had the chance.”

“Might have helped,” Sherlock agreed.

John laid his hand over Sherlock’s. His eyes were warm, freighted with some meaning Sherlock could not fully identify but which made his heart squeeze in his chest. “Want to skip dessert?”

When they were almost back to Baker Street, John pulled Sherlock’s arm through his and tucked it against his side as though to keep it warm, or safe. Sherlock felt the blush rising in his face and looked down at the street to hide his smile. When they reached the house John gallantly unlocked the door and held it open, and Sherlock gave him a regal little tip of his head as he swept through. Date, he thought. A date implied…something, surely, more than a kiss, they’d already done kissing? He recognized his cue when they reached the landing and said, “Care to come in for a drink?”

John’s eyes crinkled. “I’d love to.”

In the flat, John took Sherlock’s coat and then went to the kitchen whilst Sherlock got the fire going. He came out carrying a glass of whisky and crossed to where Sherlock was standing in front of the fire, turning to warm his back. “Just one?”

“I thought we’d share. We had rather a lot of wine.” John handed the glass to Sherlock, who took a sip and handed it back; John drank, set it down, and then took Sherlock into his arms and kissed him.

Sherlock felt the sensation of John’s mouth on his as heat, joining with the fire and the glow of the whisky to spread warmth through his body. John’s arms encircled him. He was melting: every cold and rigid part of him was loosening and liquefying like molten chocolate. He wanted to take off his jacket. He wanted to kiss John forever. He wanted not to let go.

John dropped his head to kiss along Sherlock’s neck and the angle of his jaw, which made a whole new heat flare, and then rubbed his lips against Sherlock’s ear. “Sherlock,” he whispered. “I’m staying.”

“Yes,” Sherlock said, trying to turn his head to catch John’s mouth again before he caught his meaning. Oh. Oh. Yes. Yes? Yes. He put his own lips to John’s ear. “Is that my cue to slip into something more comfortable?”

He felt John’s mouth curve against his check and then John pulled back, still smiling, and lifted the glass of whisky again to take a long drink. “How about I give you a hand with that?” He handed the glass to Sherlock and Sherlock took a drink and then turned for his bedroom, still holding the whisky.

When they’d got inside and shut the door—Mrs. Hudson’s hearing was uncannily good, and Sherlock found himself hoping she wasn’t right underneath them at this moment—Sherlock took another drink and passed the whisky back to John so he could unbutton his jacket. “Let me,” John said, a bit of a question in it, and Sherlock sensed again that hesitancy, the feeling that John too was proceeding without a map. He lifted his hands and John slid the jacket from his shoulders, kissed him again, and sent to work on his buttons. John moved slowly, as though worried Sherlock was going to stop him again. Sherlock was not going to stop him. He had made this choice when he led John to his room.

John tugged his sleeves free and dropped the shirt to the floor and then exhaled, looking at Sherlock’s bare torso as though it were something miraculous. “Beautiful,” he said softly. He ran his hands over Sherlock’s shoulders and pressed his palms flat to his chest. It felt good.

John reached for Sherlock’s trousers but Sherlock stopped his hands. “I want you to touch me everywhere,” he said. “All over my skin. If I were a crime scene, I would want every inch of me to be covered with your fingerprints.”

“I probably shouldn’t find that as romantic as I do,” John said. He rested his hands on Sherlock’s shoulders again and ran them down his arms, all the way to Sherlock’s fingertips. Sherlock closed his eyes as John stroked the underside of his forearms, his collarbones, his chest, his sides. He shivered in surprise when John’s fingertips brushed a ticklish spot at his waist and tangled his fingers in John’s hair and breathed hard as John’s lips closed over his nipples, one after the other. John slid his hands over Sherlock’s back and shoulder blades as he kissed over Sherlock’s chest. Sherlock gripped at John’s shoulders to keep from falling and John hummed encouragingly, so Sherlock pushed off his jacket and reached to unbutton John’s shirt as well.

Once they’d got their trousers off it became obvious that they needed to move to the bed for John to continue mapping Sherlock’s legs, but that proved distracting: they ended in a tangle of arms and legs and kisses. Sherlock pressed against John’s naked body as though trying to meld them together. John felt fantastic: strong and warm and slightly scratchy with hair, his thick sturdy co*ck pressing up against Sherlock’s hip, and Sherlock could not get enough of him.

John moved his hands lower and cupped Sherlock’s arse, which made Sherlock whimper right out loud. “Need to get down here now,” John whispered, moving lower. Every place John touched with his hands or mouth or tongue seemed to light up in Sherlock’s mind, marked forever until the glow faded as John moved to the next spot. John’s touch was light on his thighs and groin, firm on his ticklish knees and feet, perfect everywhere, and as he touched Sherlock’s skin he closed his mouth gently over his longer, slimmer co*ck and sucked. Sherlock had to clench his hands in the sheets to keep from bucking right up off the bed. His brain sparkled on the verge of overload: so many glorious sensations warring for his attention.

John slid back up the bed to take him in his arms again, pressing his strong grounding body against Sherlock’s quivering one, and rolled them so Sherlock was on top. He ran his fingers down Sherlock’s spine and cupped his buttocks again, spreading them as he ground Sherlock down against him. “I really want to make love to you,” he whispered. “But only if you want that too.”

Sherlock, who had assumed they were on that path already, understood he was being given a last chance to turn back. He did not hesitate. “Yes.”

“You sure? We could--”

“Sure.”

John kissed him fiercely, grinding up into him and rolled them onto their sides so he could reach down to his jacket. Of course: the mysterious afternoon’s shopping. Sherlock knew that John would have wanted to buy all new supplies, even if he’d had sufficient stores at his old house or upstairs or even tucked into his wallet for all Sherlock knew. He pictured John at the shop: looking over the lubricant, considering Sherlock’s sensitive skin and dislike of strong fragrances, inspecting the condoms. He heard John blowing into his curled palm, why? Oh, warming the lubricant. This small consideration made Sherlock’s eyes prickle.

Then John was back, pulling him into his strong embrace as his other hand moved between Sherlock’s legs. “I’ll take care of you,” he whispered, smoothing Sherlock’s hair tenderly. Sherlock tensed automatically, breathing slowly into John’s hair as John coaxed Sherlock’s body to accept him, one finger at a time. When Sherlock had finally relaxed around him John kissed him and moved lower again, shifting Sherlock onto his back. Sherlock had gone soft whilst John opened him, but John took him into his mouth again whilst stroking with his fingers and Sherlock felt himself thickening almost immediately. It felt good. He focused on that, on the pure blissful sensation, and felt his mind’s iron grip slacken as his body loosened and dissolved cloud-light into pleasure.

“Okay?” John said, and Sherlock jolted abruptly back to himself. He nodded and John pushed his legs up to position himself between them. “Bear down,” he said.

Sherlock exhaled, pushed down, exhaled again, again, again and felt the tip of John’s co*ck slip inside. His legs were shaking and he was growing light-headed. He tried to breathe deeply, but there was a pressure growing in his chest and the trembling in his legs was getting worse. “Jesus,” John gasped, pushing deeper, all the way in.

It was fine. Sherlock was fine. This was not some sort of invasion, violation, conquest: Sherlock had invited this, it was his own free choice. A tiny part of John’s body—what, two percent?—was in close contact with two percent of Sherlock’s body for the purpose of sexual pleasure. A tight ring of muscle, a smooth sheath of mucosa: an ideal location for John’s glans penis to rub against, repetitive friction that would result in org*sm. His body was only transport, transport that would take John where he wanted to go. It was fine. The shaking receded and Sherlock felt himself drifting, floating away as John moved inside him.

John paused, adjusting their position and shifting Sherlock’s hips before he moved again. Sherlock felt a ripple of pleasure move up his spine and remembered, with a small jolt of shock, that this was supposed to feel good to him as well. John heard him gasp and thrust again, careful to keep their alignment steady. OH. Sherlock’s eyes opened wide in involuntary surprise and John gave a small breathless laugh—“Is that good? Is it?”—and rolled his hips, making Sherlock arch his back and moan. John braced himself with one hand and reached for Sherlock with his lube-slicked hand, bringing him back to full hardness with a few expert strokes.

“Okay, you now, I can’t,” John panted, letting go to take his weight back on both arms again. Sherlock obeyed without thinking, eyes falling closed as he closed his hand around himself. He hesitated, self-consciousness threatening, but when John pushed inside him again, sending sparks skittering along his nerves and igniting the growing heat in his co*ck, his hand moved almost of its own volition. “God, yeah. Do it. God. So beautiful. Go on, go on, I love you, God,” John was chanting, a background counterpoint to his own frantic panting as Sherlock’s hand flew faster, the tingling in his groin spreading outward like a supernova until it engulfed him in a shuddering, explosive climax.

The intensity of Sherlock’s org*sm--magnified by the sense of being exploded from within by John—shattered him. His mind seemed to be all pinwheeling fragments, disconnected from his body. He was distantly aware of John’s groans, his thrusts growing deeper and more urgent, but it seemed unimportant; John’s weight collapsing onto him seemed as though it were happening to someone else. The only thing tethering him to himself was John’s fingers tightly laced in his.

After some unknown time Sherlock was vaguely aware of John moving, lifting himself up and away; a sharp spike of burning that sent the shards of his awareness tumbling loose again. Then John lay down beside him and gathered Sherlock to him. Sherlock was surrounded by John’s strength. He did not know that his face was wet until John pressed it into his shoulder.

Sherlock’s breathing slowed. He understood that he had been shaking, and that the shaking had eased, and finally stopped. He could feel John stroking his hair, hear his occasional soft nonsense murmur: shh, shh, shh. The pieces of himself began to knit themselves together. He was fine. Everything was fine. They had both achieved org*sm; a mutually satisfactory sexual encounter.

Sherlock gave it up. The logical thoughts no longer seemed to fit: it was like trying to pull on a shirt that had shrunk in the wash.

When Sherlock stirred John let go immediately, backing off as though Sherlock had announced a need for space. The cool air on his skin felt simultaneously like a loss and a relief. He made himself open his eyes. John was looking at him with an expression Sherlock couldn’t immediately identify, but then he smiled, and Sherlock realized that his look was one of infinite tenderness.

John seemed about to speak, hesitated, and then said, “Fancy a cup of tea?”

Sherlock nodded wordlessly.

“Okay. I’ll just have a quick wash, then, and you can have the bathroom.”

When Sherlock heard John go out the other door he got up and went to the shower. The temptation to flee—to scrub hard, to push the new memories down and away—was strong, but he ignored it. His arse ached. He wanted to revel in the sensation--to luxuriate in the knowledge that John had touched him there, had been inside him, wanted him—but the feeling was on the other side of the numb whiteness in his mind, out of reach.

Sherlock suddenly stood stock still, soap dripping forgotten in his hand. Turn and face it. Was it possible, now he’d stopped running, that he could come out the other side of the numbness? Of the darkness? The thought made him feel weightless and dizzy, hope and fear crowding the air from his chest. Could he? Could he?

Sherlock realized that the soap was turning to mush in his hand and the water was growing cold. He rinsed quickly and toweled off, pulling on his softest pyjamas and dressing gown. Turn and face it.

Out in the lounge, John was just settling into his chair, mugs set out for both of them. He smiled and Sherlock tried to smile back, but his face felt stiff. He took a drink of hot sweet tea and then set the mug down.

“You asked me a question once,” he said, looking directly at John. “Well, you started to ask me a question. About the past. I cut you off.”

John nodded, his face calm. “I remember.”

Sherlock looked down at his tea. His heartbeat was loud and fast in his ears, and he was not sure if he was breathing. He made himself look up into John’s eyes. “Yes.”

“But you don’t--”

“Yes.”

John lowered his own mug. His eyes had gone sad, so sad that Sherlock had to look away. “I know, Sherlock. I think I’ve always known.”

Sherlock stared at the fire. There was a thickness in his throat too large to swallow away.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Might help to know where the land mines are.”

Would it? Sherlock didn’t know. He took a deep breath. “I tried to put them away,” he said. “All those memories. I put them in a trunk and locked the trunk in the cellar of my mind palace. Rather a dungeon really. But I’d put desire in there as well, and when I tried to let it out, it was a bit like Pandora’s box, I suppose.”

John nodded as though he understood this. He took a drink of tea and looked at the fire for a long meditative moment before he spoke again. “You know, Sherlock, everyone has a trunk like that. I’m not saying it’s the same, but everyone who’s been with someone, or even fancied someone—we all have memories that are painful, or frightening, or shameful, or guilty, or even just embarrassing. You know some of mine—you might know all of them for all I know. And we have other boxes too. I was all snarled up with what had happened with Sholto, and Mary, but also my family as well.”

“Yes, but you’ve unsnarled it now, that’s clear enough. I want to untangle mine as well.” Talking about this was making Sherlock feel as though his skin were too tight, but he had to muddle on, because he needed John to understand this. “I want you to shag me through the mattress every night. I do.”

“I’m still going to stay,” John said softly.

“Yes, that would be appreciated,” Sherlock snapped.

“What—oh. Yeah, Sherlock, of course, I didn’t want to be, er, but I quite like that bit, the, you know, after—I just meant I would stay no matter what, but of course, yeah, as long as you want, I’d be only delighted to stay with you the whole night, the next day, the whole week, until we have to go forage for food, whatever.”

Sherlock felt the tension in his spine relax a little. “Thank you.”

“And if—you probably know them all already anyway, but I could tell you some of the things I put away, if it would, you know, make it easier for you. To tell me. If you want to. Someday.”

Sherlock turned this over. Perhaps it would help…besides, now of course he was curious. “Perhaps someday,” he said. “And perhaps someday I will tell you. But it was long ago. It was in another country, and besides, the bastard’s dead. Mycroft saw to that.”

John blinked, stared a minute, blinked again as though clearing his head, and visibly decided to let it go. “The other thing—I learned, thanks to you, that when you take those things out of the box and hold them up to the light of day, they lose a lot of their power.”

Sherlock looked back at him for the first time, frowning. “How?”

John shrugged a little awkwardly. “That thing you deduced about Sholto. That—I’m still not proud of how I acted, back then, but I realized what I’d been afraid of was other people finding out that I’d been with a man, that I’d liked it, that I’d cared about him, even if not the way I should have. And then I thought, so what? I’m in love with a man now, and I don’t care who knows. The only person whose opinion matters to me is you. And just so we’re clear, there is nothing, nothing you could tell me that would make me love you any less. It’s in the past.”

“In another country,” Sherlock said. “We live here now.” He did not know if he would ever want to speak to anyone, even John, about the things that had happened back then, but it didn’t matter. For the first time, he had hope that he could go forward.

“Yes. Maybe we brought some baggage with us—both of us—but we live here now.”

Sherlock considered this. He was feeling considerably lighter, and he picked up his mug of tea and drank deeply. “John?”

“Mmm?”

“I would prefer that you stay down here. I would….” Sherlock took a breath and said in a rush, “I want to sleep with you.” I want to sleep in your arms. I want to wake up and have sex with you again in some form and then I would like to fall asleep with you again and know you will be there in the morning. I want you never to leave.

John’s face broke into a grin. “That sounds like an absolute genius idea.”

“Of course it is, it’s my idea.”

“You do have a nice bed. Bigger than mine, so plenty of room for us both. Now I sleep on my back, so I don’t favor a particular side of the bed, but sometimes I snore. And if it’s a bad night I can be a bit, er, restless.” Sherlock just looked at him and John laughed: “Right, you knew all that already. Probably know what I dreamed about. But, you know, potential bedmates should know the worse about each other.”

“Ah,” Sherlock said. “I think I sleep rather quietly, but it’s hard to be sure as I’ve no witnesses.”

“Yeah, you sleep like the dead once you’re finally down. I used to go in and check you were still breathing.”

“Really?” Sherlock was delighted.

John shrugged, grinning sheepishly. “Not all the time.”

“Mycroft always said I talked in my sleep though.”

“Well, I’ll definitely look forward to hearing that,” John said. He stood and held out his hand and Sherlock took it, letting himself be pulled to his feet.

“So that’s it? We’ve known each other five years and we’re going to go sleep in a bed?”

“Enough to be getting on with, don't you think?” John said. He wrapped his arms around Sherlock and Sherlock put a hand to his cheek and kissed him, putting everything he felt into it: all the love and joy and hope, all the pain and fear as well. “The name of the man I love is Sherlock Holmes, and the address is 221B Baker Street, and I’m never leaving either of them again.”

Sherlock squeezed his hand, feeling suddenly buoyant with happiness. “Let’s go to bed.”

John smiled at him, such a beautiful crinkle-eyed smile, and turned to lead the way to the bedroom. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, Sherlock thought, because of course he hadn’t deleted Shakespeare; all their yesterdays were in the past, and all their tomorrows lay ahead. He followed John down the corridor to their room and closed the door.