It took three burnt dinners in a row before John finally gave up. What was the point? All that faffing around herbs and dusty things in bottles – one text from Sherlock and he was out the door, never mind that the cream would split and the chicken would dry up, or that the soup was bitter from too much reheating. Just enough time to call out to Mrs Hudson to turn the stove off: could you please yes again sorry thanks, and out he pelted into the dark.
Sherlock would be waiting for him, eyes watching the road for the taxi; John had to hit the ground running. The third night he took along the wraps he’d made – he was starving, had forgotten to eat all day they’d been that busy at the clinic. They could take five minutes to eat before they started crawling around on the floor looking for fish scales, surely.
“Fish, John.” Sherlock sounded incredulous. “Shelf life of approximately an hour if it’s fresh. Every bite of that,” he pointed at the bag of dinner John was holding, “robs us of another metric tonne of illegal catch.”
“Oh…. right. A whole metric tonne – really? Right. Sorry.” It was hard not to feel like he had his priorities all wrong, not with the ship’s captain glaring at him and Lestrade hamming it up. pursing his lips and shaking his head sorrowfully. John discreetly shoved two fingers up at him – Lestrade had a spot of brown sauce on his tie and smelt faintly of chips. He wasn’t contemplating murdering someone for a biscuit, the jammy bastard.
They finished six hours later. “…so,” John said, not able to appreciate the vindication because the black spots dancing in his vision were numbing all emotion, “so what you’re saying is: we could have lost the catch on a full stomach?” He’d had to throw the bag of food away when it became quite clear two hands were more useful than one when it came to vaulting over fences.
“Collateral damage, we got our man,” Sherlock said, waving it away. “God I’m starving. Let’s see if there’s a pub open somewhere that’ll do us a sandwich, shall we?”
-
The counterfeit ring a week later didn’t take Sherlock long to break, but tracking down the leader took forever. Harding had hopped trains, gone south, then east, then south again: “Horsham,” Sherlock said finally, tracing the route out on a map. They found him and a mate of his by a siding about half a mile away from the station; Harding saw them coming and was off like a flash.
John took the other one down, sat on him to keep him quiet and pinned his hands to his back. His jaw throbbed where the other man had found his mark, and there was blood dripping off his forehead.
He heard the train before he saw it and hauled them both off the line, but it was still going fast enough that he only caught a glimpse of Sherlock’s coat flashing past and the pale shine of Sherlock’s hands as they clung to the handholds.
The train didn’t stop – it had only slowed down. Which meant he was out here on this lonely stretch of railway line with – he patted his coat pocket with one hand – ah yes, no phone because Sherlock’s had died again and he’d borrowed John’s. Again.
“Brilliant,” John said to the night sky and the dim light of the station in the distance. “Absolutely magic.”
When Sherlock and Lestrade turned up four hours later, he was curled around the man, trying to stay warm; he’d had to knock him out first and then snuggle up to him. Graceless, but you did what you had to do.
“Excellent, he didn’t get away,” Sherlock said, and then, “come on, John, we’ve got just enough time to check on a couple of other sites they might have set up.” He strode away, shouting at Donovan to get him a car and a driver.
Not even a word to soothe the complete bloody … indignity of it. Lestrade had to help John lift a stiff, cold leg off the man. Sherlock’s coat steamed gently in the early morning sun. Oh nice for those of us with coats, John reflected sourly, nice to have a muffler around your neck and nice warm gloves and not having to restrain a man through the coldest hours of the morning by the side of a railway track, don’t mind me will you I’m sure bloodflow will be restored to all extremities shortly.
-
The Huntington case took a little longer, but Sherlock eventually found what he was looking for in the victim’s wardrobe.
“Oh yes.” Lestrade was leaning against the door, outside the yellow tape, clearly enjoying himself. “Lovely B&B, clear weather forecasted all weekend, bottle of champagne, and a little surprise waiting for him at the end of every day.”
“Look, please, will you just shut up,” said Sherlock.
“Well all right, not that little. Wouldn’t want you feeling sorry for him. He doesn’t know I’ve got anything planned,” Lestrade said, and then, suddenly urgent as Sherlock’s eyes gleamed, “you won’t say anything, will you?”
Sherlock smirked but John elbowed him hard in the ribs.
“He’ll start talking about sex soon,” Sherlock hissed at him, “and then we’ll all be sorry.”
“Not much chance of that,” John said to Lestrade. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed at all, but they’re not what you might call close.”
Lestrade brightened up a little. “Only it’s bloody hard to pull anything over on Mycroft. I’ve been planning it for ages. Bought us a special album to put the photos in and everything.”
“I will pay you to shut up,” Sherlock said. John laughed, not feeling even a little abashed when Sherlock glared at him.
“Who would have thought,” said Lestrade, “a year on Saturday. Tell you what,” he said, nudging Sherlock, “we’ve probably got you to thank. Gave us the best start we could have hoped for, having you in common. We’ve had that much to talk about.”
Sherlock looked at him with loathing. “If you’re quite finished nauseating me past the point of all return,” he said, “you’re looking for Mr Huntington, lives three floors up from this apartment. He’ll have a knife missing from the block in the kitchen, and exactly the same underwear as the murdered man.”
He whirled out. John shrugged at Lestrade. They’d perfected their body language over the years. You had to, if you worked with Sherlock Holmes. This shrug was of the just-go-with-it-it’s-less-work-in-the-end variety. Lestrade nodded.
“Have a good time with the other one,” said John, grinning. “Don’t wear him out.”
There was a loud, disgusted noise from the hallway. “I can actually hear it when he rolls his eyes now,” said Lestrade confidentially.
“Half your luck, just hearing it,” John said, holding up a hand in farewell, “I get to see it live every day,” and followed Sherlock out.
-
“To think I tolerated Lestrade once,” said Sherlock, in the twelfth variation of his initial complaint since they’d left the Yard. They were back at the flat, shuffling through their collection of takeaway menus, trying to decide on dinner.
Or at least, John thought, he was trying. Sherlock seemed determined to live off his own moaning.
“They’re in a relationship,” said John patiently. “It’s considered good manners to show that you like the other person, when you’re in a relationship. Stops them turning on you when the zombie apocalypse hits.” He held up the menu from Kowloon Magic. “Chinese?”
Sherlock waved an uninterested hand at it. “Don’t think for a minute Mycroft won’t use this if he needs to.” He made a face like a cat who’d been given an inferior brand of dinner. “I don’t spend half my life trying to avoid him only to have his boyfriend go on about him and what they get up to.”
“Oh I don’t know,” said John, returning the menu to the pile, “I quite like hearing about how they’re always doing things for each other. Gives me a good dose of secondhand appreciation.”
Sherlock scowled at him. “If this is your way of saying I don’t show my appreciation for you…”
“We’re not in a relationship,” John pointed out, quickly. Christ, how many bloody times did that make it now?
“No. But,” said Sherlock, sounding a little stiff, “if you’re desperate enough to parasitically feed off Lestrade and Mycroft’s shared emotions, you’re clearly in dire straits.”
John shrugged. There were days when he looked wistfully at Sarah and thought about how she represented everything sane and stable missing from his life, and he’d be stone dead if he didn’t occasionally wish he pulled just a little more than he currently did.
But on the whole, he thought, none of it could compare to what he had now: paintings of supernova and wearing his own death while pool lights flickered around him.
And Sherlock. Brilliant, shocking Sherlock and the defibrillating energy of him that had brought John back to life.
That being said: “little things,” John said, thoughtfully. “I know it’s a cliché, but I miss the little things. Like them knowing where your last clean shirt is, when you think you’ve run out. Or coming along to the football to support your team even though theirs needs to beat yours if it wants to get anywhere in the League this year.”
He stopped, a little self-conscious, because Sherlock was staring at him, baffled. “Shirts? Football?”
“Well, yeah,” said John. “They’re sort of …romantic, the little things. Or they are to me, anyway.”
“Romantic,” said Sherlock, sounding like he was doing the oral equivalent of dipping his toes into a cold bath.
“Yes,” said John, hesitant now for very different reasons. “Romance. Er. It’s when a person does nice things for the object of their… “ Sherlock was giving him one of his more withering looks, the one that tightened the skin across his cheekbones and made his eyes look like pieces of glass. “Right, just thought I’d check.”
“I’m well aware of the theory,” said Sherlock and, here we go, John thought, human beings and their frail emotions and why can’t we all just and if we would all take a minute to – Sherlock suddenly stopped and looked suspiciously at him. “You don’t believe me.”
“No,” John said, with conviction. “No, I’m fairly sure you do know the theory inside out. Korean?” The menu promised sizzling dumplings delivered in ten minutes. “How do you think they make the dumplings sizzle in a delivery box? Presumably there’s a non-sizzle downtime period they’d forgotten to factor in. Very-recently-sizzling dumplings.”
Sherlock stared blandly at him. John sighed. “There’s a bit more to it than theory, isn’t there? Not everyone likes flowers, a Cadbury box from the corner shop isn’t the relationship clincher everyone seems to think it is, no-one dedicates songs on the radio anymore – thank god – and balloons – I don’t know, do people do balloons? Was that your whole list?”
“I’ve…. I’ve read about rubbing people’s feet.” Sherlock was frowning.
“Mm, maybe. I’ve always put that under straight physical therapy myself, but it does seem to get consistently genuine appreciation.” He looked at Sherlock, who was deep in thought now. “Anyway, it’s probably best staying theoretical for you, isn’t it?”
“Oh? Whatever do you mean?” said Sherlock. That particular tone in his voice usually had John bracing himself, but hunger and the picture of the dumplings – tenminutestenminutes – made him reckless.
“Well, I mean. It’s not like you’d ever bother, is it? It’s not as if you need to bother.” He dimly realised, through the haze of his plummeting blood sugar, that he’d made a left turn into some place angels probably marked as a dead zone on their flight maps.
“Very fiddly work, romance. You have to care about people’s feelings and things. Surprise them with how much you care about their feelings. It just goes on and on. You’re well clear of it, really.”
“Oh yes. I see. Well clear.” Sherlock was looking at him thoughtfully.
John seized the moment. “Mexican?”
-
He was more or less resigned to what came next. It would have been like waving a red flag at a bull and if Sherlock had a weakness, it was that anything purposely designed to irritate him, did. It was how Irene had marked him, and how Mycroft continually managed to penetrate that iron armour of contempt.
The scale of it though, when he waked into the sitting room the next morning, was admittedly a surprise. The room was writhing with flowers, and were those – ah, they were: rose petals scattered artfully all over the floor, though most had already been ground to a sort of slime, probably under Sherlock’s boots. A box of some dusty packaged thing that was just asking to be picked up and rattled, and a whole – what was the collective noun for thirty novelty balloons? A flotilla? A pod?
Sherlock was in the kitchen, pouring something bubbly out of a cheap bottle. “Ah John, just the man. Hand me a strawberry, would you?”
John rubbed a thumb along an eyebrow. Now, he felt, was the moment to clear up all factual errors. “Sherlock, the thing is… well, the thing is: all this— it’s to woo someone with. Er. Isn’t it? I mean to say, it’s wooing behaviour.” It had seemed like such a well-defined argument in his head. Sherlock was looking baffled. “I mean, when you decide to—“
“—if it’s all the same to you, John, I don’t think we need to hear the word woo again.” Sherlock looked about as delicately contemptuous as John had ever seen him. “An exercise in seeing whether I can do something Mycroft’s capable of hardly qualifies for the kind of breakdown of all meaningful cognitive function you’re thinking of.”
£3 wine and strawberries, roses and petrol station chocolate, all at 8 in the morning. Sherlock must have been up at daybreak, god love him.
He really only had himself to blame, John thought, and handed Sherlock the whole punnet.
-
Half an hour later they were giggling over some ancient case and he was on his fourth flute of strawberry-flavoured liquid. It wasn’t exactly wine, but it came close enough. He’d also managed to demolish the box of slimy, slightly rancid chocolates.
Sherlock leaned across and tapped him on the knee. “Well?”
“Gmphh,” John said, around a mouthful of caramel flavoured something. He hadn’t meant for it to be four flutes and those chocolates had been unbelievably horrible, but here they were.
He looked blearily at the balloons. “Why’s that one say ‘Get Well Soon’? And that one says,” he peered a little closer, “that you miss me. While I’m having my appendix out.”
Sherlock looked scornful. “Hospital gift shops. You’d think people would show a little taste when their loved ones need them the most, but no. It’s just as well I bought them all.” He sniffed. “Probably did everyone in the wards a favour.”
John blinked. “You bought out all the balloons in a hospital gift shop?”
“Mm? Yes, and all their flowers. And everything floral I could find in the next five petrol stations. Not to mention snagging the last box of Cadbury’s from the sixth place. Look, is any of this any good? At all?”
“..notinarelationship,” John said automatically, but then he caught sight of the clock. “Christ, is that the time? I’m on at the clinic in half an hour.”
The room spun a little when he got up and suddenly the early morning combination of alcohol and sugar and the thick scent of the roomful of flowers was all too much, and his stomach roiled.
He broke out into a cold sweat. “Gmphh,” he said again, and had to run for the toilet.
It was almost twenty minutes before he staggered out again, still sweating. Sherlock was standing outside the door, writing in a little book. He shut it with a snap.
“Flowers, chocolate, wine, balloons,” he said. “Baseline data, you’ll understand. There’s no use saying you already told me, either. Facts really do need to be determined independently before I can work properly.”
John sagged against the door frame, trying not to whimper.
Sherlock eyed him up and down, and nodded. “Oh and I’d advise against turning Radio One today. Especially around ten this morning.”
-
John hid most of his shirts, trying to stave off the inevitable, but it was no use – Sherlock found them all. Oh, he was brilliant at covering up his tracks but clothing didn’t grow mysterious fungal stains overnight.
Or at least, he had to concede, not unless they were left in the vicinity of the kitchen table. Or the corner of the sitting room currently covered in white netting. Or the left side of the mantelpi – the point stood; he’d been in the army for god’s sake – not in a wardrobe, and not overnight.
“It’s the damp in your room,” Sherlock said kindly. “I did warn you when you moved in.”
“It’s blue.” John sighed. Why fight the inevitable? “Don’t suppose you happen to know where I could find a clean one?”
“Ah. As it happens…” Sherlock said, looking so pleased that John had to give in with reluctant good grace when he immediately produced a rumpled shirt.
-
“You’re quite sure the client said Upton Park?” John tried to keep a straight face but it was hard to keep the solemn look pinned on, not with the streams of people coming off the train with them, flags waving and the chanting already starting. West Ham were playing Fulham tonight – the match had been sold out for weeks; Sherlock must have pulled some very big strings.
“Upton Park,” Sherlock said, firmly.
“All clues lead to the stadium? John guessed. The corner of his mouth was twitching.
Sherlock said, offhandedly, “to the upper tier, as a matter of fact. The trajectory of the bottle suggests seats 17 to 45 and the size of the crowd’s about the same as today’s, but we’d really have to spend some time in them before I could offer a definitive opinion.”
“I’ll just keep an eye on the game while you’re doing that.” John hid his smile behind his hand. They got pushed along with the crowd to the entrance, and then they were in their seats – brilliant ones, right in the middle.
It didn’t technically count for list purposes – Sherlock spent the whole game texting, but when it was over he stood up, muttered something under his breath about parabolas and acute angles and – to John’s horror – pulled a bottle out from under his seat and threw it onto the pitch.
The crowd around them went mad; three men leaped for Sherlock and the rest started screaming for the coppers around them. They only got away because Sherlock had pre-planned some sort of escape route; he’d grabbed John by the scruff of his jacket and almost bodily hurled him over a row.
It was only when they were finally on a train, panting and heaving for breath, that John could finally get a word in. “You bloody f*cking insane LUNATIC. They just about string you up for that sort of thing now.”
He had to be quiet, the carriage was packed and they already stood out like sore thumbs – Sherlock was the most dishevelled he’d ever seen him – but he managed to pack a satisfying amount of hiss into it. “You didn’t tell me it was a real case.”
Sherlock looked surprised. “Why on earth wouldn’t it have been a real case?”
“I thought… well, I suppose I thought you..” He wanted to swallow the feeble, half-sentence down as soon as it was out of his mouth. And wasn’t this typical – risk life and limb for the great git and he ended up the one feeling like a fool. He might have known Sherlock’s ruthless sense of the practical held sway over any imagined surprise gift he thought he was getting.
Sherlock was frowning. “It does put Fulham back into ninth on the table.”
John stared at him. “You don’t follow Premier League football.”
Sherlock, strangely, seemed to avoid his eye at that. “I don’t,” he said. “I … didn’t.”
And oh there it was again, the bastard, and now John felt like even more of a fool for doubting him.
-
It was pelting down with rain the next evening when he stepped out the clinic door. He turned his collar up and was getting ready to make a run for it when a voice said, “no, let me,” and a hand appeared in front of him, holding an umbrella. John turned and there was Sherlock standing in the rain, looking smug.
“Walking … in the rain!” John grinned. “That’s not bad, actually.”
Sherlock smirked, clearly delighted, but then he snapped his fingers and said, “come on, Lestrade called. He’s got an empty car in Croydon and an attic full of fertiliser.”
John chuckled. “Go on, you smooth talker.” But it really was the best way to end the limp, flat day he’d had and he’d accepted some time ago that he was powerless to resist the lure of it all. They ran for the Tube – useless trying to catch a cab in stationary London traffic – trying to dodge the inevitable puddles, the umbrellas that always found the corner of your eye and tangled with your own, the usual two strides of his to every one of Sherlock’s.
Of course, it turned out that running under the cover of an umbrella held by his ridiculously tall flatmate with the wind pushing rain at him sideways didn’t actually mean John stayed dry. Not dry, as such. More the opposite, which was to say: wet. Soaking, sodden, squelching wet right down to the toes of his socks and in a steady trickle down his back that both itched at and froze his skin.
Sherlock on the other hand was holding the umbrella and was doing the thing all umbrella holders do when it’s pelting rain and they’re sharing it with a shorter person – and that is to basically slowly forget to share it, until it ultimately reverts to covering only them.
It meant, when they finally sat down on the Tube, that John was a soggy, steaming mess while Sherlock still looked dry and impeccable – which was just bloody typical, wasn’t it? By the time they got to Croydon, John was weighed down with the clammy feel of wet wool and shivering from it.
Lestrade was apologetic, but at least the car was under cover. “Wasn’t planning on calling you out tonight, lads, but anything with even a hint of explosives now and everyone goes on high alert. Better be safe, etcetera.”
It was less than twenty minutes before Sherlock was reciting a list of details he’d got off the car -- female, farmer or farmer’s wife, came into town once a month to see a medical person of some kind – he paused there and looked over at John, who was taking his shoes off. “She’s in her mid fifties, give or take.”
“Hm.” John wrung his socks out and ran through the options in his head. Cancer? Hip replacement? Sherlock was watching him; shaking his head almost before John suggested each thing. When had they learned to do that with each other? “HRT, then, given the frequency of the visits and her age. DNA could confirm it.”
It took a minute for Lestrade to call through and tell the lab what to look for. John shivered a little more and it took another minute to register that Sherlock was leaning on the car next to him, bending down and slipping his feet out of his shoes, bare toes wriggling for a minute before he slipped them back in.
He nudged John with his shoulder. “Come on,” he said, and shoved the socks he’d just taken off into John’s hand. “There’s a taxi rank round the corner. Lestrade won’t need us anymore tonight. Even Anderson can follow through on that much.”
“Oh.” It was a little surprising – living in the army had done away with most of his personal boundaries, but Sherlock was as fastidious as a cat about some things. John put the socks on; they were still warm from Sherlock’s body. “Thanks.”
-
He woke up the next morning with a thick tongue and a rattle in his chest. It felt like he was still frozen in some places, but his feet and hands were warm and when he swung himself up to sit on the side of the bed, he saw he was still wearing Sherlock’s socks.
It took a blisteringly hot shower and a rough scrub with his towel before he shook the chill off. When he went into the Sherlock was perched on his armchair like a great lanky bird, looking gloomy and scornful.
Only one thing ever inspired that look in Sherlock Holmes. “Mycroft’s been in touch, I take it,” John said, putting the kettle on and rummaging around for breakfast.
Sherlock scowled and looked darker. “Official business, and a case that he can’t give to anyone else. I’d ignore him except it’d mean he couldn’t go away on this bloody weekend with bloody Lestrade.”
“Oh.” John blinked and tried to work out the alternate angles, but it was very early in the morning. “That’s… well, that’s very nice of you.”
Sherlock made a strangled sound. “My god, not that. I’d donate a kidney to not have that happen. No,” he stood up, “I need to get it out of the way so Mycroft leaves me alone this weekend.”
He pulled his little black book out and shook it at John. “Walking in the rain, check.”
“You might put down bronchitis next to it,” said John, rubbing his chest. It was starting to feel bad again, after the short relief of the steamy shower.
“No, you absolutely cannot be ill.” Sherlock strode to him and grabbed him by the arms. “It’s imperative that you not be ill this weekend. Do you understand, John?”
“Oh it’s all very well to talk now, Mr Umbrella Hogger. It’s definitely bronchitis. Actually, probably more like pneumonia. Or, in my clinical opinion, the death rattle of – “
Sherlock kissed him.
It wasn’t like anything else he’d ever done with another person’s mouth, even in primary school when he’d kissed Amelia Miller by the side of the rugby sheds and she’d accidentally bitten him hard enough to draw blood.
Sherlock was holding him lightly by the arms. Both their eyes were open; John could smell something milky on Sherlock’s breath, and there was the faintest taste of jam on his mouth. Sherlock rubbed his lips back and forth against John’s, a little experimentally, and then he stopped and they stood there, one closed mouth pressed against the other.
It felt like whole hours passed, but it must have been seconds. John pulled away and stepped back. “ – a lung infection. What in sweet christ,” he said conversationally, “was that?” He’d thought he was more or less inured to the range of things Sherlock could throw at him, but this one was in a category of its own.
Sherlock was writing something down in the book. He flicked a look at John that was part impatience and part something else, something bright and speculative that John had never seen before. It travelled up and down his body like a warm hand over cold skin.
“Spontaneous physical demonstrations of affection.” He looked thoughtful. “Although, admittedly, the research suggests a less forceful approach to begin with.”
“Research,” John repeated, but of course, research. “Sherlock, you can’t kiss me and we can’t be romantic with each other because We’re Not In A Relationship. I really can’t emphasise enough how important that last part is.”
He said it as forcefully as he could, but for a minute he felt Sherlock’s mouth on him again, warm, searching, as if he’d been trying to find the right way to fit their lips together, as if the need to work it out had surprised him.
Sherlock shrugged. “Oh, I’m not expecting reciprocity.” His phone buzzed. He looked thunderous, but wound his scarf around his neck and put his coat on. “You’d better stay in,” he said, frowning at John. “I meant what I said about not being ill. You’ll ruin everything if you’re ill.”
“If this is about Molly getting something fresh in for you at the morgue, I’d just like to point out I do have hobbies. Ones that don’t involve corpses.” John wasn’t on at the clinic today, and the thought of lying around while Sherlock ran down something alone was unbearable. “No, really, I’m fine. Just give me a second.”
He fished around in what he’d optimistically thought of as the first-aid drawer when he’d moved in. It had been a narrow escape from death by strychnine poisoning the first time he’d trusted something that came out of it; it was only by way of Mrs Hudson throwing a spoon at him from halfway across the room that he’d dropped the tablets.
The lethal neurotoxins were in the sugar bowl now – they couldn’t let visitors make their own tea anymore. John downed two of the Paracetamol tabs he kept in the drawer, out of sheer defiance. “Come on, let’s go.”
It was testament to a friendship that accepted all forms of self-analysis, misguided or not, that Sherlock nodded after a moment, opened the door without another word and ushered John out.
-
“An MI6 agent on the run,” said Mycroft, leaning back in his chair. “And on the run for precisely the reason I need you, and not the Yard, or the secret service.”
It was very comfortable in Mycroft’s office after the grey, quiet cold outside. John took off his jacket, grateful that Mycroft was only in a shirt, without a tie and the top button undone. It was bad enough how drab he felt next to Sherlock’s lithe elegance without factoring in Mycroft’s perfectly pressed wardrobe.
Sherlock rolled his eyes. “A bad seed in MI6,” he said, “an agent out in the cold, and the overweight god of cake in charge of it all. Poor old Home Office, caught in a cheap screenplay.” He shrugged his coat off and smirked at his brother.
Mycroft pursed his lips. “How it happened isn’t any of your concern. Just find him.”
More than comfortable, if he were honest. Downright warm. John tried to fan himself as discreetly as he could. Even Sherlock was looking a little pink, but John chalked it up to the flush of confrontation he always got around Mycroft.
Mycroft tossed a file across the table. Sherlock snatched it up. “Not anyone in the Yard?” he asked, but that was cruel even for Sherlock. John said, as evenly as he could, “really not good,” without turning his head to look, and felt Sherlock grumble and subside beside him.
Mycroft dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief. “Not that it’s any of your business,” he said, “but I don’t want Gregory involved for personal reasons.”
He smiled, and it had the first true warmth in it that John had ever seen in Mycroft. “We have plans for the coming week, you see.”
“Mm,” John said, as politely as he could while he wrestled his jumper off. Maybe Mycroft was trying to overheat Sherlock into affection.
“You’re keeping Lestrade off the case because you have plans?” Sherlock had a film of sweat on his upper lip and sounded genuinely astounded, but it wiped the smile off Mycroft’s face. The absence of that momentary glow was strange; he looked hollow without it.
John’s patience snapped. “So not good it’s bordering on arsehole. Have you finished? Because if you have we could, oh I don’t know, take a look at the file.”
Sherlock looked at him for a long minute, and there was that look again, clear and surprised. He cleared his throat and wiped at his forehead. “I … apologise, Mycroft. I’m quite sure you and Lestrade deserve …” – his jaw looked like it was about to break – “…a holiday.”
The silence in the room stretched so thin John thought he could hear it vibrating.
Mycroft’s mouth had fallen very slightly open. He was bright red and his hair was limp and plastered to his scalp with sweat. “Well, ah, yes. We do hope we’ll get to have. I’m very much looking forward. To..” He cleared his throat. Sherlock twitched. John would have laughed, except he was sure it would turn into a coughing fit.
“All right, come on then lets have that file,” he said, unbuttoning his shirt a little and rolling up his sleeves for whatever relief that could give him from the infernal heat.
Mycroft said hurriedly, “and if you in any way let slip to Greg that I know about his plans, I will make sure you regret it, Sherlock.”
“Oh please,” Sherlock said, but they both sounded so completely destroyed that John couldn’t stop the laughter in the end. It turned out he was right and the coughing shook him ragged, but Mycroft and Sherlock seized it for the lifeline it was and the next five minutes were a flurry of glasses of water, strong, sweaty thumps to the back and an unmistakeable sense of relief hanging over it all.
-
Given all that, it was surprising that Sherlock hung back in Mycroft’s office for a minute or two while John went to hail a cab. He fled the boiling hellfire with his arms full of his stripped-off clothes and breathed in the cold air outside. Common sense finally kicked in when he realised how chilled he was now his sweat was drying off him.
By the time Sherlock came out he was a tangle of limbs and jumper arms and cold fingers and his temper was frayed all over again. “Well?”
Sherlock was thumbing at his phone and muttering. John caught the words, Vauxhall, no taxi rank, South heading east, Greenwich, until Sherlock finally looked up, eyes slightly unfocused. “We’ll start at Southwark. This one’s the type to stay put till the last minute.” He scanned John and hesitated. “Are you up to it?”
“I was just a little warm. Which, incidentally,” John struggled into his jacket, “was because Mycroft’s office is the temperature of the sun. Does he know he’s slowly boiling to death in there?”
“Like a frog in a pot.” Sherlock said it with some relish, but his attention was on his phone; he was texting again. John nudged him.
“Hm? Yes yes I called him earlier and told him turn up the heat to help with your chill. The weather report said fog later on.” He reared back at something on the screen. “There! You can practically see the footprints. Come on, John.”
He bounded away and John watched him go for a minute before he was pulled along, something soft and unknown unfurling inside him. His chest did feel better for the heat; he was warm – warm right down to that puzzled, faint part of him, and he followed Sherlock – what else could he do but follow Sherlock?
The world’s only consulting detective’s coat flapped and caught the wind; Sherlock called back, impatiently, John! And John followed as quick as he could, feeling pushed and pulled and hardly knowing what he was thinking anymore, like Sherlock was a force of nature, like Sherlock was a lodestone.
-
It took them the better part of a day and there was a bad moment when even Sherlock was stumped, kicking irritably at an empty metal locker in Paddington. It was three cups of coffee and half an hour of hard muttering before they found the trail again.
It took them to Southend. The wind was howling round the pier and there were construction works near the beach, opening up some road or the other. The place was deserted except for a couple of chippies doing a grim trade in the freezing cold. They passed by one; the lights were on and the smell of hot fat curled around the door and out onto the pavement. The still, silent people inside were all watching the news.
“What’s here again?” John asked, as they walked a little way down the beach. “Was this one of Farrier’s stops?” It hadn’t been entirely clear when they’d jumped on the train. He squinted into the wind, eyes watering, and back at Sherlock who’d wrapped his coat around him tightly and was burrowed into his scarf.
The wind threw little eddies of sand up into the air and pale grey breakers foamed onto the shore. Big grey gulls dove off the empty pier. They arrowed into the water, throwing plumes of green water into the air.
Sherlock pulled his scarf down from his mouth a little to speak; his lips were pale.
“Under the circ*mstances,” he said, his teeth chattering a little, “perhaps we could call it a short walk on the beach?” He took his little book out of a pocket and waved it quickly at John before pushing his hands back into his coat.
John stopped, stupefied. “Oh my god. You’re not saying this is – it’s for the list? For christ’s sake, Sherlock.”
Sherlock scowled. “It’s traditional.”
“It’s 2 degrees!” John shouted, but the wind whipped into his mouth and blew the words away; he doubled over, breathless and coughing.
“Lestrade was especially enthusiastic about it!” Sherlock shouted back, but it was because they were talking into a gale now, and they hurried back to the relative shelter of the train station.
Sherlock looked strained when John leaned against the ticket office wall and put his face into his hands, making small choking noises. “He kept waxing on and on about beaches, so I thought I may as well use the drivel for something and we’ve had a whole afternoon to kill so it seemed – oh. Oh, you’re laughing.”
John wiped his eyes. “He might have meant for it to happen in a season that wasn’t winter, you know. You’re mad, mad. My god you’re mad.”
“That’s one less, anyway.” Sherlock was scribbling in the book. He looked up. “Any good yet?”
His cheeks were flushed from the wind, and his hair was tossed and tumbled from it. He was grinning and standing quite close to John, and he smelt very faintly of the sea.
John sighed. “Well,” he said, “I’m freezing, we’re on an exposed beach in winter, and there’s a man from the secret service to be found yet. And you need a handkerchief.” He dug one out of his pocket and handed it to Sherlock.
Sherlock swiped at his nose, looking delighted. “That’s a yes, then?”
“You know,” John said, wanting something and not knowing what it was, “I think it is.”
-
They found Officer Samuel Farrier in a bedsit in Ipswich. His body had the look of old rubber; rigor mortis had set in a while ago, and there was a greasy feel to the air in the room. Not bad enough to set off the gag reflex, so John squatted down next to the bed and looked him over, careful not to touch.
“About a day too late, but that’s a rough guess,” he said, when Sherlock co*cked an eyebrow at him. “Poor bastard.”
Death was an old, faded exercise now; he’d run through too many fires to really mourn its showing up. But here was a body lying in the anonymous daylight, and it could have been anyone’s. Could have meant as little or as much to the world as John Watson had back when he’d sat alone on the edge of a bed himself, co*cking the revolver this way and that, watching little lights glint off the cylinder.
Mycroft’s people turned up in ten minutes; they must have been on standby. To John’s surprise, Mycroft was with them. He looked even more tired than usual. “A good officer,” he said. “The Home Office regrets losing someone of his calibre.” Which must have meant Officer Farrier had been exceptional – Mycroft was choosing his words with some effort.
John went downstairs, to see if there was a medic who needed any more information. A tall woman was waiting outside the door. She was very pale.
“Colleague?” John asked sympathetically. She froze, and her voice was carefully blank when she answered him. “Officer Farrier was my partner, sir.”
“I’m sorry.” John felt a surge of empathy; he’d seen that look on too many soldiers’ faces, the numb containment, duty overriding the grief.
She said, politely, “thank you, sir.”
Sherlock had been right, there was a fog coming in. It curled around the tops of the streetlights, slowly sliding down to the pavement. A bus trundled by, the loud hiss of its brakes jarring in the cold, heavy air.
There was a dull thud on the landing above. It echoed in John’s head like the boom of distant shot. You could hide the light of gunfire, but your body always knew the sound of artillery; it shook up the blood, pushed something into your throat. You started running before sight could confirm or deny – which way was all up to the soldier in you.
He clenched his hands. “You don’t need to call me – “ – sir, he wanted to say, when there was a clatter of feet on the stairs, and they brought Farrier’s body down. Sherlock and Mycroft were behind them.
“All done,” Sherlock said, “Mycroft’s car’s dropping us home. Curry for dinner?”
-
It wasn’t that Sherlock didn’t care. It was just that Sherlock wasn’t interested in personalising anything. Sherlock stuck everything important to everyone else in a giant box and opened it – or didn’t – as it suited him.
John knew all that, knew it as surely as he knew himself; it had started as an instinct and now it was as deep in him as marrow. He’d known it that first day, that first hour, when Molly had flinched at the awful thing Sherlock had said about her mouth – John had flinched along with her, and yet even then he’d known that Sherlock hadn’t made a choice about saying it.
The truth of the world was all that Sherlock really saw, ugly or not, and it channelled through him and out of him like breath did out of everyone else. And then Sherlock had turned that truth on him, and John had had to face the life he hadn’t wanted to, and start living it.
He knew all this, as much as he could know anything. But Sherlock started bickering about the biryani when they got home, like it was any other night, like they hadn’t just seen a dead man lying abandoned and alone in a horrible little room.
Farrier had had no-one to find him but a wild-eyed man and a broken ex-army doctor.
John said, “I wonder if he was really married.”
Sherlock looked surprised for a moment. “Oh, Farrier. No, just posing undercover as it. Pass me the samosas, will you?”
“Any family at all?” John asked, passing them over.
“A sister,” Sherlock said, and John looked up quickly; Sherlock was watching him with sharp eyes.
“Younger sister,” Sherlock said, picking up a samosa. He bit into it, mouth muffled with food. “The bedsit was very like your old flat, wasn’t it? And Farrier had your colouring and build. He’ll get a quiet funeral; looking at his watch and his shoes I’d say a group of about, oh, eight people. Nine, with the priest.”
“Ah. I’m not religious,” John said. He wouldn’t even get that one extra body at his. His hands felt numb. He flexed them, watching his skin alternately pale and darken with blood when the tendons stretched.
Something suddenly flew at him; he had a second to see it peripherally – something small and rectangular – before reflex took over and he threw his arms up and batted it away. Sherlock had thrown it at him.
“Christ,” John said, putting his arms down. “What the f*ck are you playing at?” Sherlock frowned and went to where the thing lay, on the floor next to the sofa. It was a box; the lid had fallen open and something glinted out of it.
“Mycroft said it was something he gave Lestrade,” Sherlock said, “in the beginning.”. He picked it up and thrust it out at John.
It was a pen. It had thin gold stripes running down it, and a ballpoint tip. The box it had come in had a thick navy ribbon running around it, and a little card tucked into one of the corners.
“The research said jewellery,” Sherlock said, “but Mycroft was particularly insistent about the appropriateness of this.” There was a look on his face that John couldn’t place; he thought he’d seen it on other people, but never on Sherlock. The unfamiliarity of it made him look odd, new.
“Oh traditional, really? I – thank you,” John said, more taken aback than he had ever been; Sherlock would have had to actually seek out Mycroft. Voluntarily. “It’s very – well, thank you. I like it very much, Sherlock.”
“He bought it for me.” Sherlock’s eyes were very bright. “I, ah, I wouldn’t have known how to choose, so we arranged for him to get it. He gave it to me earlier. I have it on good authority he bought it himself, not Anthea.”
The wash of emotion had died away, leaving him drained. “Right, okay,” said John, clutching the pen, slightly bewildered by it all, and then he realised that the look he couldn’t place was Sherlock actually being uncertain – that Sherlock was babbling – and he felt a little spasm go through him.
Sherlock saw the look on his face and misread it. “Not in a relationship, yes,” he said quickly. He pulled his little book out. “Gifts that were almost jewellery, check,” he said.
“Yes, all right, you get that one.” John said, mocking, but it felt wrong somehow. The little pen lay in his hand, small and solid.
Nine with a priest, nine with a priest. Over and over again, a distorted echo. Nine with a, nine with a.
Sherlock’s mouth did something strange, twisted into a grimace John had never seen before. “You would have had about fifty,” he said. “At your funeral. And that’s not counting your American cousins. Or the naval officers you met on that joint training exercise in Gibraltar.”
When had Sherlock learned to do that? “Fifty,” John said, disbelieving. “There aren’t fifty people in the world who know I’m alive.” It didn’t bear thinking about.
“Fifty,” Sherlock said. “If Harry was on a budget. Seventy if she wasn’t.” John looked down and saw Sherlock’s hands were clenched into fists.
It should have been ludicrous but it was Sherlock Holmes saying it, and the past that had been a memory of loneliness and despair suddenly lightened and lifted off his shoulders a little.
Seventy people. Seventy people who would have come together to remember whatever good he’d done in this life; John knew there’d been some. He’d been a good doctor, a good listener. To be remembered for that, and not for being the shaken man alone in his bedsit turning the barrel of the gun round and round, the clickclick of it the only sound in the room.
Sherlock nodded, seeing his face. It was, John thought later, the most ridiculous moment of his life – imagining his own funeral, what an idiot – and, possibly, one of the best.
It was suddenly terribly important Farrier get that too – that he, too, should have the good remembered. He’d waited just the same as John had, for something, someone to find him; he’d looked down the barrel of a gun too, in the end. Poor bastard.
“Farrier. Was Mycroft…” John began, not sure how to say it, not sure how much Mycroft had made Sherlock privy to or how much Sherlock had bothered with finding out. There was a fragile sort of feel in the air that he didn’t want to break with Sherlock’s contempt for his brother’s secret life.
“He’s flying the sister and her family down. Farrier’s nephews and nieces will have an education fund ‘left’ to them by their uncle – courtesy of the HO – for them to draw on when they’re older.” Sherlock stood up, stretching with a yawn. His shirt strained a little at the buttons; John could see the muscles in his chest flex and move underneath.
He’d never known Sherlock to make post-case inquiries about domestic details. “Mycroft told you that?” he asked, surprised.
Sherlock looked down at him, one eyebrow raised. “I made sure I asked him. You were clearly interested in what happened to Farrier.”
He hesitated. “I’ve been eliminating the obvious ones first, clearly,” he said, finally, clearing his throat.
John blinked. “The obvious – oh, the list.” He was uncomfortably aware that the uncertainty on Sherlock’s face was starting to look like it was settling in. Since when had Sherlock Holmes ever been uncertain about anything? John wasn’t having it – he’d shot the cabbie for putting that hesitation in Sherlock’s eyes; this new threat would just have to go back where it came from.
“You’ve been doing brilliantly,” he said. “Look,” he held his arms open, “I feel appreciated all over. Feel that, that’s an appreciated arm.” He held it out to Sherlock, grinning.
Sherlock looked at him, eyes bright and unfathomable, and stepped in. His fingers curled around John’s arm; John could feel the imprint of them through his clothes and skin.
The warmth of Sherlock’s hand travelled all the way down to the soft new thing that was unfolding inside him. It was almost impossible not to step into that heat, but to do that – well, he’d said it himself, hadn’t he – Not In A Relationship Not In A Relationship, like the punchline to a joke no-one had really been listening to.
Possibly even Sherlock had believed it at first.
Sherlock dropped his hand and said, a little too quickly, “right. Tomorrow evening at seven. Don’t be late, will you,” and swept out of the room.
John looked down at the pen in his hand. The box was still on the floor; he picked up the little card. To John Watson, it read, With Kind Regards, Sherlock Holmes.
-
It took going into the clinic as the emergency locum on a Saturday to put it out of his mind. Two broken arms, an abscess that needed draining, a hysterical toddler who got in a couple of very decent kicks and then the whole system went down and they had to start looking around for paper files.
The nurse in charge shook her head at him, “second Saturday you’ve done this month. You’re mad, you are.” John sighed. At least he wasn’t at home trying not to think about what he was trying not to think about.
He was exhausted by the time the clock ticked over at five that evening. The idea of the real work to come was almost too much to think about, so he stopped into the pub he and Greg sometimes had a beer in. It was dark and almost empty, which he hadn’t wanted, but after a couple of drinks it righted itself.
When he finally looked up at the clock on the wall it said 6.30. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Nothing else for it but to brace himself and hope for the best.
-
221B was on fire.
He rounded the corner and everything drained out of him but: run, run, god god god Sherlock.
Smoke poured out of the flat windows; the front door was open, and a cloud of it hung about the street.
He ran into Mrs Hudson in the hallway. She batted at him feebly through the haze. “John! Oh for heaven’s sakes, do something, do something!”
“Get out! Onto the stree – wait – Sherlock!” he shouted back at her, crouching a little to get under the smoke. His heart was sounding in his ears like thunder; he could barely hear her above the thudding of his own terror. “Sherlock – did he – never mind!” He took the stairs two at a time, shouting Sherlock’s name into the smoke curling out of the flat. It caught at his throat before he remembered to duck down again and he crawled into the flat with his eyes streaming, coughing and choking. “Sherlock! Christ, Sherlock!”
Sherlock was lying on his stomach next to the fireplace, his face turned away. “Sherlock! Oh my god.” He was about to launch himself on the still body when it suddenly struck him that for all the smoke, there were no actual flames to be seen anywhere. At that exact moment Sherlock moved and John saw the fire extinguisher by his side; everything else fled from his mind. Thank god, thank god.
Sherlock turned on his side to face him. His face was streaked with soot and ash and singed bits of his hair stood out from his face. “Ah, John,” he said, calmly. “Apologies. I have to say it looks like dinner might be a little late.”
-
Mrs Hudson wailed about her ruined curtains, and the firemen wouldn’t leave until someone at the Met could confirm Sherlock was unlikely to have been attempting to hide a murder trail. It took all of John’s powers of persuasion – and quite a bit of grovelling – before they agreed to take the charred and blackened body away.
John only waited for Mrs Hudson to leave, muttering about how some of her life debts might have been better left unpaid, before he rounded on Sherlock.
“A spit roast? Cooked on the fireplace?”
It had been, humiliatingly, Donovan who’d taken the call. John had stiffened, thinking the night was just about to take a turn for the worse – if that was even remotely possible – but she’d surprised him.
“The fireplace? He might be a psycho but there’s nothing wrong with his memory. I said 180°C on fan bak— oh for god’s sakes, just put the Fire Officer on.”
Sherlock had the nerve to look offended. “It wasn’t a recipe. More like a guideline. Pheasants don’t fit into conventional home ovens, any fool could tell you that.”
John rubbed the back of his head. The adrenalin rush had deserted him. He was limp and tired and the smell of smoke in the room was nauseating. He looked at Sherlock and realised how much smoke he must have inhaled; his eyes were bloodshot and his voice was thick and ragged.
John sighed. “Come on, we need to get you out into some fresh air.”
It was cold outside, but the air tasted clear and sweet and they took in great lungfuls of it before Sherlock said, “it wasn’t just dinner, you know.”
The pheasant had been reduced to the size of a basketball. What had he planned for veg? John felt his mouth start to tremble. “I know, I caught the last bits of the show.”
And then they were both doubled over, giggling so hard Sherlock got breathless and had to be thumped on the back. He alternated between coughing, hysteria, and wheezing out, “… curled … up … together … in front of …a roaring FIRE.”
John clutched at him and croaked, “It’s okay, it’s okay. I can’t stand rare pheasant, you’re tasting it for days afterwards.”
“Oh god,” he said finally, straightening up and wiping his eyes, “please tell me that’s the last of it. Any more appreciating might kill me.”
And that was true, any longer and he’d make such a fool of himself. It was bad enough already; parts of him felt like they were dying from trying to deny it. He kept his smile fixed, held onto it like a talisman, stepped in and kissed Sherlock.
It was almost like the last time, for a minute. All he could taste was smoke – Sherlock’s lips were dry from the fire and his hair smelt terrible; he fisted his hands in Sherlock’s shirt and pulled him in closer. What did any of it matter? He’d seen Sherlock’s body in front of that fire and all he’d been able to think of was that damn pen – the look on Sherlock’s face when he’d given him that pen, like he still wasn’t expecting reciprocity.
“John,” murmured Sherlock, “this is so unexpected. Are you quite sure you..?” John pulled back for a minute to look; the world’s only consulting detective’s mouth was red and slightly chapped and quirking at the corner. Of course Sherlock knew, the smug bastard; John pulled him back in and they chuckled into each other’s mouths again, but the laughter quickly drained away because then everything was so blindingly sweet, tasted so sweet, Sherlock’s tongue licking into his, hot and urgent and slick.
Whatever John had been holding down came roaring to the surface; he rubbed himself slowly against Sherlock, panting – of course he did, of course he would, christ probably out here if they went on much longer – Sherlock made a sound into his mouth that he tried to cut off and John could have sunk to his knees right there.
“Your room,” Sherlock said, in between sucking on John’s lower lip and tiny bites to his jawline, “no smoke, all adjoining doors closed. Ah,” when John nipped back, dazed and drunk with it. Somehow Sherlock manhandled them upstairs and into John’s room; they pulled on each other’s clothes, trying to get to skin. When they were finally naked, they slid against each other and groaned at how it felt: muscled edges, the brush of wiry hair against bellies. Underneath the tang of smoke, Sherlock’s skin smelt like soap and, inexplicably, lemons – John licked long and slow up his neck to be sure.
Sherlock’s breath was coming fast, but he managed, “stuffing. Lemon, thyme, breadcrumbs, parsley.” He walked John to the wall. “A less forceful approach to begin with, you’ll remember,” and dropped to his knees and god, god. His lips curled around John’s co*ck and the heat of it, the lap of his tongue, the slow wet sucksuck sound he made as he dreamily swallowed John down again and again. Sherlock’s lips were stretched tight around him, very red, very slow – so slow he could hear the throb of his pulse in his ears; John could have killed him. His blood was thrumming desperately under his skin, he could feel everything in him tightening, ready to implode. “Sherlock. Please.”
Sherlock made a hungry sound, put a little teeth into it; it made John hiss, lift his hips without meaning to and push in. It took one deep thrust into that slick, hot place and it was over. He came, gasping, chest heaving, his body almost crumpling from the force of it. Sherlock put a hand on John’s hips and propped him up, licking everything away.
John looked down, hazy and sated but still wanting to touch him and saw Sherlock had his other hand on himself, and was about to come. He looked up at John, eyes glazed, mouth red and swollen; John sank down and wrapped one hand around Sherlock’s, and the other around his neck to pull him in for a kiss. He bit down on Sherlock’s lower lip. “Gorgeous. f*ck, look at you.” It took two hot, hard strokes; Sherlock came with a little whine and his body shuddered and rippled against John. John held him, took his weight, held him tighter than he’d held anything else before. When their knees eventually gave out Sherlock turned his face into John’s neck and nipped at his ear. “Bed.”
-
Which was all very well and they did need to lie down after the madness after the long couple of hours, but it didn’t take more than ten minutes before they were both looking at each other, desperate.
“Now I come to think of it, I’m sure there were edible bits on that pheasant,” Sherlock said. He thumped his head against John’s shoulder. “There were onions in the dripping tray. I’m starving. To death.”
Which sort of answered the question about veg. John heard his stomach rumble.
“Dinner,” he agreed. “Or I die under you.”
Sherlock perked up a little. “Under?” He leered at John.
John grinned. “Less force, more finesse.” He pressed a quick kiss to Sherlock’s temple. “Come on, you pyromaniac, let’s get you fed.”
-
It took them hours; they’d run all over London in their years together – shackled, maimed, limping, bleeding – once, notably, taking turns carrying a mummified cat, but they walked slowly and took the occasional cab, and John made sure they both ate.
An American hot dog on Regent St, where Scrimshaw had come at them with a cosh and Sherlock had let John deal with it while he defused the bomb.
“Scrimshaw broke your wrist,” Sherlock said, frowning. John shrugged. It had been the second case he’d come along on – Sherlock had had no reason to trust he’d be able to hold Scrimshaw at bay. “But you did,” John said. “You said ‘Yours, John’ and didn’t look up again till you’d cut the wires.”
John had dodged the blow, gone under Scrimshaw and got him in the kidneys from the other side. It was a lucky swing that cracked his wrist, but it didn’t matter. Sherlock nodded, remembering.
-
A pie from a cart next to the Renoir Cinema. Sherlock looked up at the billboard. “The Camberwell case.”
“Yes.” Janet Camberwell had slipped a knife into Sherlock, soft and quick, like slicing through butter. Just a penknife, not long enough or thrust deep enough to do any real damage, but Sherlock had turned white and made a sound John had never heard before. Everything froze; John had seen himself reach over and knock her down. She fell hard, and twitched as she lay on the floor. He would have killed her, could have killed her.
“I seem to keep wanting to do that for you,” he said, twisting his lips.
Sherlock looked at him. “Not something you could say to just anyone.”
John said, “no-one else in the world, I shouldn’t think.”
-
Coffee at Paddington Station. They stood in front of the screens and John read out departure times.
Sherlock had got the hang of it by now and pushed him aside. “10.57 Didcot Parkway, 11.20 Great Malvern, 11.45 Greenford. Oh you’re not still rabbiting on about that?”
“It took me hours to get back to you. They were expresses,” John said.
Sherlock leaned back against a railing, scowling. “If they hadn’t been, I’d never have been able to shake the tail Moriarty put on you.”
“And because you did, the ones tailing you beat you into the ground.” And yes, that bit of the story was still raw.
They stood in mutinous silence for a minute before John grabbed Sherlock and kissed him. “Yes,” Sherlock said against his mouth, warm and rueful. “Yes, all right. I’m sorry, John.”
-
It ended, as it had to, at St Barts. Sherlock dusted the doughnut sugar off his hands and leaned against a table. John handed him his phone.
Sherlock grinned, and tossed it from hand to hand.
“You’re an army doctor invalided home from Afghanistan. You’ve got a sister who’s got her suspicions about you and your flatmate, and you can run without stopping for approximately thirteen minutes. You hate wet feet, cold rooms and loose ends. You think West Ham’s going to win this year – you’re wrong – and the next time I shag you, you’re going to go technically black out for about, oh, two seconds.”
“They’re not spontaneous displays of affection if I know they’re coming,” John pointed out. He wanted to kiss Sherlock and realised, with a sudden rush of awe, that he could now. Sherlock hadn’t waited for him to catch up, though, because he was reaching for John already.
“Oh didn’t I say? There’s a new list,” Sherlock said, mouth on his. “I’ve had to hand the other one in.”
-
The End.
