Archive of Our Own ^beta

   A black-tipped fin slashed the unbroken line of saltwater.

   Knower of secrets. 

   Whorls of sandpaper dragged against the back of his hand. Grainy, rough - like fingerprints of sharkskin. 

   Keeper of secrets. 

  White linens whispered at the edge of his vision, and the sharp smell of antiseptic curled beneath his nose. 

     The weight of morphine tugged at his limbs. 

   Somewhere distant, something chirped. Tick, tick, teep. 

   A pinch and the warmth of a pulse-ox machine clipped on the right index finger. An itch on his nose from the oxygen nubs resting above his lip. The scent of rotting flowers. Heaviness on his chest, like water in his lungs. When his eyelids flickered weakly, bright whiteness blinded him; the open spaces; the quiet mutter of disconnected, distant voices. 

   Damp fingers traced the line of a blue vein on the back of his hand. 

   “I covet your hands, Mister Holmes.”

   Now, someone spoke with a tone nearly loving. It was drenched in honey, a gnarled, moist sound, borne of venomous desire. Seaglass-blue eyes bored darkly out from behind the sheen of Magnussen’s glasses, his face a length away from Sherlock’s. His expression - quiet, a quirk of the mouth, knowing - overtook the room, filling Sherlock’s watery vision from end to end, and nothing existed but a secret held in delicate balance. Ghosting across the tips of each finger, Magnussen’s touch ran light, skirting Sherlock’s awareness, the sensation blunted by the morphine. “A musician’s hands. An artist’s.”

   Magnussen leaned forward, and pressed his wet mouth to the back of Sherlock’s knuckles, long enough to feel each sickening twitch of his lips. 

   “A woman’s.”

   Killer of secrets. 

   “Wouldn’t you agree?” Hot, sour breath fanned over Sherlock’s cheek. Magnussen stood without towering, his chest nearly flush with Sherlock’s bare form, the frames of his glasses brushing Sherlock’s brow in a parody of intimacy… 

   Panic flooded his form, and hands lashed out, clutching at his collar. Jerking bolt upright, a startled gasp ripped itself out of Sherlock’s throat, catching in his mouth. In one swift movement, he ripped the duvet off of his body, violently kicking it away, assurance of his movement; a distant thud sounded against the floorboards, and he lurched away from the beside, where a sunken-faced figure would surely be leering over his paralyzed form, dragging cold fingers across his skin, peeling the O2 monitor from his index finger, pressing wet kisses to his hand, lowering his morphine dose and stealing away any semblance of relief that unconsciousness could bring— 

   No shadow lingered beside him. The absence stunned him for a heartbeat, some void, a deception meant to lull him into a false blanket of security. Chest heaving, his spine shivering with wariness, Sherlock took inventory, every nerve alert. There were no glass paned walls through which he saw a nurse’s station, there was no light pouring in from the hall, no singing alarms or painful pricks of morphine lines at his elbow, and no grey hospital chair propped beside his bed. 

   “Sherlock?”  

   Baker Street. 

   The room held in a hush, blissfully dark, save for the few shafts of streetlight filtering in between the curtains of his bedroom window. Baker Street. His bedroom. As he’d been for weeks, sequestered and healing. Nowhere else. 

   Breath uneven, Sherlock recounted the familiar voice. John. Here. Had he made a sound? The sudden end to his slumber blurred into his first waking seconds, smearing the line between memory and reality. He’d flung something on his bed across the room. It couldn’t have been enough to wake John upstairs, light sleeper though he was. 

   His thoughts dallied, unfocused, obscured by the remains of fear that pulsed through his limbs. John had taken to sleeping on the sofa, to the complaint of his bad shoulder, since Sherlock had returned from hospital nearly six weeks ago. In the mornings, John would shuffle in from the sitting room, would mumble in the kitchen around the rim of a mug of tea, bleary-eyed and sleep-sore, frustrated to be awake at Sherlock’s beck and call. He shouldn’t be awake. Not at this early hour. Not here to witness such a moment of weakness, where Sherlock’s joints ached as though he’d slept with every portion of his body tense, and his waterline stung suspiciously. 

   A rap of knuckles on the bedroom door followed the call of his name, gentle yet urgent. Sherlock swallowed, parting dry lips to reject the intrusion, but the words died in his mouth as the handle turned and his hindbrain crashed to life again. If he lay straight back down, staring at the ceiling to feign sleep, there had to be a chance he’d be unable to move again; a chance that it was not John outside this room, that he was not awake; a chance that Magnussen had returned for him. 

   A chance that it was truly John at the door, and he would see what Magnussen had. 

   ‘A woman’s hands.’ 

   The cloying scent of wilting get-well and die bouquets clung to the inside of his throat.

   Sherlock slipped his hands beneath the edge of his sheet tangled at his thigh, his own touch cold.

   A sliver of darkness from the kitchen split the door from floor to frame. John, revealed in the half-light, did not enter uninvited. Instead, he lingered in the doorway, and the straight length of his back lent his silhouette a sturdy, solid form, cementing Sherlock’s decision that this was not the murky waters of his dreams. The door opened wider, John’s hand fixed on the curved handle like he was ready to draw it closed again. 

   Darkness stole the intricacies of John’s expression, but the silver light that filtered through the room from outside tousled his hair with grey, and even in the dim Sherlock watched his eyes scan the room, clear, before landing on the detective in bed. 

   “Sherlock,” John repeated, clear and awake, “You all right?”

   The tension slipped from Sherlock, the fear uncoiled. His muscles slackened, puppet strings cut, and finally he could breathe evenly again, and at last his nervous system registered the chill of cooling sweat at his lower back. 

   Resisting the urge to wave a hand in dismissal, Sherlock shrugged a shoulder clad in his sleeping tee shirt. “Yes, fine.” Foolish, was all. Hot with shame. Tricked by his own mind, led astray by panicked, half-asleep memories. 

   John shifted his weight - not due to his leg’s protests, but with caution, unsure of himself. For a heartbeat it seemed like he would tread into the room, might sit at Sherlock’s desk or at the foot of his bed, dip the mattress, and press with worried questions. Sherlock hung in that suspense. No movement came.

   Quietly, John went on, “Is it your bandage?”

   “No—”

   “How long have you been awake? I’ll fetch some paracetamol—“ 

   “The bandages are fine. I woke up. That’s it.”

   John glanced back into the kitchen, his brow creased. “Just now?”

   For John to ask, the hour must be strange. Likely too early for Sherlock to be in bed. He’d retreated to his bedroom yesterday afternoon, and though it was unclear when sleep had claimed him, it had been long dark already. A sidelong glance to the window confirmed that the early hours of the morning and the sun had both yet to arrive. 

   Despite this, John had not been asleep. His hair was distressed, yes, but there were rivets at his scalp where he had been pressing his hands into it, a gesture that often betrayed that he was stuck in some quandary. His clothes, a tee shirt and soft trousers, were rumpled into lines where he’d laid down and turned repeatedly. Discomfort on the sofa, as usual. Why he didn’t choose to return to his room upstairs was beyond Sherlock.

   “I do sleep. I am human.” 

   Once, John might’ve snorted if you say so and offered an excuse as to why he wouldn’t retreat back upstairs, why he had to stay up in the sitting room with Sherlock at the early hours, why he’d made two mugs of tea before London was awake, while the world consisted only of the two of them. 

   There was none of that now. Since the hospital, since Mary, all John’s strikefast answers had slipped into oblivion. It wasn’t as if the ease between them had never existed, but it had been replaced by festering quiet. In the daylight, Sherlock could forget, could pretend they shared the easy domesticity they’d once enjoyed, punctuated as the days were by their usual (but mostly benign, per John’s current medical instruction) cases.

   In the dark, all there was to hear was that quiet admission of guilt. At least here, cloaked in the night, John’s eyes would not fall to Sherlock’s hands, that betrayal of all things secret. 

   Mouth dry, Sherlock clipped, “A dream.”

   “A dream, is all?” John ventured.

   “It was nothing.”

   “You’ve thrown an encyclopaedia across your room. Your doctor would be saying you shouldn’t try that while you’re awake, let alone dreaming.” 

   Sherlock frowned in the direction of the book on the floor, shadowed pages crumpled beneath the hardcover, failing to remember what title it had actually been. That had been the thud. He turned back to John, chin tipped in challenge. “It’s been thirty-nine days. I was discharged. I’ve been about London a dozen times since. I am fine.” 

   Once, he may have added, in a low voice that brought a flush to John’s cheeks, that he had a doctor at home, and he preferred that one to any moron in a lab coat at Bart’s. Sherlock’s stomach felt hollow for want of it, hollow for the hope that John would turn back into the sitting room and leave this be, and hollow for the hope that he wouldn’t. 

   It appalled him that fear, a making of his own mind and the ghost of a drugged memory, had reduced him to something so base as to seek comfort in John’s presence. 

   “You’ve got another three weeks to go before you’re allowed to do much else than—” John gestured to where Sherlock sat in bed. 

   The movement caught Sherlock’s attention, drawing his focus to John’s hands. Weathered, where they’d been tan those years ago.

   They’d been what first turned the intrigued gears in Sherlock’s head. Capable. The index finger of John’s right hand had curled around the trigger of his Sig, and Sherlock pictured that thumb wiping a victim’s blood, sheathed behind a barrier of latex at a crime scene. 

   Tonight, as had been the case for five weeks, there was no gleam of a ring. 

   “Sherlock.”

   Where they hid beneath the sheets, Sherlock pinched the skin on the back of one hand as if checking for signs of dehydration, attempting to sharpen his delirious mind. He needed acute concentration, distractions and diversions. He lifted his head, meeting John’s gaze from under his brow. 

   Unwavering from his sentry post at the door, John straightened, determined to outlast Sherlock’s glare. He would not be deterred. His steady presence pulled at something knotted tight around Sherlock’s bones, some desperate longing for a return to their definition of normalcy. It twisted the wound at his chest, shoving the air from his lungs.

   Sherlock cleared his throat. “A nightmare. You understand.” There, that reference to John’s past ought to push John from the room, to keep him from asking questions. Anything to allow Sherlock to ignore the differences between them, and that awful quiet.

   In the dim, John’s head tilted, his mouth pressing into a thin line. There was no pity in his face, but a solemn empathy. A soldier’s expression, facing some battlefield and a long-familiar enemy. “A nightmare,” John repeated. 

   “Am I speaking English?” 

   “What was it?” 

   Surprise jolted down Sherlock’s arms. He’d expected John to retreat from any mention of the machinations in Sherlock’s head, not run towards them. 

   “Was it,” John’s voice tightened, and his eyes, cobalt blue against the dark, dipped to Sherlock’s chest. 

    Logically, Sherlock should tell him nothing. Leave, he should say, go back to sleep, go upstairs, I don’t want you, I don’t need you. Should his anger go unchecked, should he lash out, should he blame his distress, already an emotion so unlike him, on the forming scar over his pectoral, John would never return. 

   Yet still, that bone-deep desire for their friendship to reach equilibrium, for their connection to re-establish itself, to stutter out into a semblance of what it had been, made irrational thoughts pool in Sherlock's head. Belief that things could be mended - that John could learn more than he’d known before. He was still here, wasn’t he, after all that had transpired, after all Sherlock had done? Mycroft would sneer if he were privy to Sherlock’s thoughts, something so pathetic and wanting. 

   His teeth clicked together as he shut his mouth, acquiescing to the impulse to reject John’s implication. It would have been easier, perhaps John would understand, if Sherlock had dreamt of a bullet, of his wife’s face and her wedding dress, and of the breathless burn of a punctured lung. “No.”

   Hinges protested as John edged the door open wider, pushing away the shadows cast across his face. Sherlock’s breath caught, a half-hitching remnant from his waking outburst of alarm. 

   John stepped softly into the room, watching Sherlock, until he carefully sat on the edge of Sherlock’s mattress. His bare feet pressed flat to the floor, his focus on the room before him, faced away from Sherlock. Restless fatigue wrote itself in the softened hunch of his body, and the remnants of fear within Sherlock’s chest longed to curl into John. John leaned forward, balancing his elbows on his knees, letting his forearms drop between them.

   Sherlock had never done this for John: entered and remained. On nights long ago, before the worst of Sherlock’s transgressions and when he heard the telltale sounds of John in a familiar pace, woken by dreams of gunfire and sand, Sherlock sought out his violin. He’d made his presence known through long and low notes drawn out with his bow. John lamented the screeching sounds when Sherlock tore at the strings in fits of low mood, but he’d never mentioned those midnight performances. 

   Was it a mistake, to never have ventured upstairs, when things had been so uncomplicated? 

   A length away, the dip of the mattress below John’s thighs betrayed how near they were to Sherlock’s legs, outstretched down the length of his mattress, and yet the distance seemed to widen.

   From behind John, the promise of proximity weakened Sherlock’s restraint. His body ached to sway towards the other man, to press his forehead to the hard bone of John’s scapula, to breathe in the warmth of his skin, to collapse into exhaustion against him, to refocus on reality and be assured of John’s existence. 

   It was that which weakened him. His mouth formed the name of its own volition, “Magnussen.”

   From the corner of his eye, John’s shoulder twitched - he’d skipped a breath, surprised. 

   It was of the utmost importance to soften the story for John. If he told John exactly what had been said, how Magnussen’s fingers had trailed down each ridge of Sherlock’s knuckles, how wet his mouth had been at the back of Sherlock’s hand, John may be as disgusted at Sherlock as Sherlock was at himself. And if he relayed the threat underscoring Magnussen’s words, then Sherlock ran an incalculable risk: the risk of John asking Why?

   And how would he explain the truth? Why should he feel so compelled? John often deserved truths - but not this, not like this. Even in the deepest, most twisted pits of desire, John was not privy to all of Sherlock. It doesn’t matter. 

   Sherlock wet his lips, speaking clinically, “He visited while I was in hospital. I’d just come out of surgery. Some moron had set the morphine drip too high.” He’d never been able to think while his body processed morphine - it made him slow, reduced him, dulled the cutting edge of his genius. “He leaned over me.” And told me I’d get used to the dampness of his touch. “That was just before he told me the truth of Mary’s identity, and you know the outcome of that. I couldn’t move.”

     I could not move, I could not speak. He would tell everyone. 

   Beside him, John exhaled, tipping his head to one side, poised to listen further, as if he expected Sherlock to go on, to explain what the horrible part of this situation was. Sherlock flitted a glance towards him, his eyes catching on John’s face. Silver outlined John’s profile, from the point of his nose, to the curve of his lips pressed together in thought, to the dimple in his chin.
 
   Utter stillness, his expression unreadable in the dark. They did not do this, venture into each other's rooms, and yet John seemed unaffected. 

   It felt like a blow to the heart. Distress fluttered between Sherlock’s ribs, and he struggled to identify its source. John held such brilliant, righteous anger when defending the integrity of those whose company he enjoyed. He’d come to blows over something as petty as an insult when it came to Sherlock.

   It was strangely disappointing to see none of that now - no flush of resentment in his cheeks, no flex of his jaw that betrayed the grind of molars, nothing other than a spark of penitence at the mention of Mary. 

   No, John was correct in his lack of a reaction. This was nothing, and Sherlock was a fool to let it instil a sense of sickened dread in him. 

   “The morphine obscured the mundanity of the scenario,” Sherlock dismissed, “I am fine.” 

   “I’m sorry,” John said. “It—” he shook his head. “I—” His eyes flitted between Sherlock and the door, as if he was battling the impulse to say more. “I see why you woke up the way you did.” 

   Unexpected disappointment constricted Sherlock’s throat.

   A swath of firm warmth covered Sherlock’s deltoid. John had twisted, reaching back to touch him. Sherlock stilled, afraid to break his silence and startle John. John’s hand, his thumb curled close to the edge of Sherlock’s collarbone, his fingers gently soothing away the winter chill of the room. Heavy, present, here. 

   To say the least, it was unexpected. Since John’s return, they did not brush up against each other, even when they both occupied the sofa. They sat a seat apart in cabs. John appeared to prefer his armchair to the desk when Sherlock utilised it, and Sherlock always watched him from across the room. 

   “It was only a dream.”

   A heartbeat. 

   Defences died on his tongue. A mass of disinterest shuttered in Sherlock’s expression, a careful construction. “Of course,” Sherlock agreed, his words devoid of inflection. 

   Before he stood, John gave a last squeeze on his upper arm. Firm, steady, masculine.

   Everything, apparently, that Sherlock was failing to be. 

   “I’ll fetch that paracetamol.”

-/-

   Sherlock woke, and scrubbed his hands raw, until his cuticles bled. 

    -/-

   In youth, there had been another name that belonged to him but did not. 

   He had played the violin since he was young. The tips of his fingers and the heel of his palm had calloused from pressing into the smooth wooden neck. On excursions to the seashore, wading into frigid English waters, he wore shapeless shirts and a frown, and traced the outline of seashells against his thin wrists. His university flat held sharps containers and intramuscular injections, a practised thumb deftly depressing each measured plunger. Everything, largely, was settled, and there had never been the need or the barest temptation to turn his secrets out for anyone.

   Not before John.

   Now it simmered low, a viscous fog of resentment clinging to his ankles, yet another thing he'd kept from John for too long to be excused. Two years, he could hear John force out, you let me grieve, hm? For two years.

   John would see it before long.

   In bed, Sherlock's teeth clenched together. John had just returned. The idea that he would disappear once more from Baker Street was abhorrent, even as stilted as their lives now were, hung like a canopy from moments where Sherlock forgot what schism existed between them. 

   He removed his hands from where they were tucked beneath his pillow. The sensation of Magnussen’s mouth against his fingers remained forefront in his awareness, and he stifled a resounding wave of nausea.

   His hands contrasted against his dark silk sheets, each ridge of his fingerprints its own sign of the knowledge that Magnussen held over his head like some fateful umbrella. 

   Outwardly, there was nothing to give him away. The vast majority of the world had two hands with five fingers. The pale shade of his skin was no different than the rest of his body. Their shape was long and thin, skilled at pickpocketing and a variety of martial arts. His wrists were narrow, stretched taunt over the rise of his ulna. A mole dotted here and there. He was never partial to rings or jewellery. 

   Carpals, metacarpals, phalanges. Blood vessels and bone, volar plates and joints. 

   No. There should be no guilt in his head, keeping this from John. This line of thinking was incorrect. He was unknowable; private. John had no space in this area of his life. Sherlock had conceded rationality to a veil of sentiment. 

   He'd been too vulnerable, and though John's misunderstanding was without fault, it allowed for Sherlock to correct his mistake. 

   Boredom peeled at his mind like moth-eaten lace, and he remained in his room until late evening the next day. Venturing from his bedroom to the kitchen felt as if he were trudging through thick water, something heavy against his legs.

   John was out, though no doubt he’d soon return from - which shoes had he worn? - the clinic. 

   He snagged his laptop from the sofa and deposited onto the desk in the sitting room. Winter light fell into the room from outside. The dust settled as Sherlock took a post by the window, staring down onto the street in thought. 

   Sherlock’s fingers itched, his mind turning over the pair of leather gloves stuffed deep into the Belstaff's pockets. It hung on its hook, just there beside the door, as if floating in Sherlock’s peripheral. It would be peculiar to put them on now, to cover his skin in the heat of the flat. If anyone else were to wear them, he’d pick apart an obsessive compulsive habit. 

   The city called to him, promising anonymity. It would be best to strike out onto the pavement, into the thrum and thrall of London and pace the chilly streets, where the air was crisp and frost prickled at exposed skin. Perhaps he could excuse himself all night, disappear into the alleyways he knew so well, and never have to confront himself again. 

   His chest ached.

   The room grew dark around him, and eventually, the kitchen light flicked on, warming the tone of the flat. John’s jacket rustled as he shucked it off, and he deposited something on the kitchen table with the sound of paper (takeaway, from the Thai place near Bart's, going by the fragrance of a particular ginger).

   There would be no slipping away tonight, or any night for the foreseeable future. 

   He was being watched. 

   It was there, burning behind him: all of John’s focus. Certainly, John was thorough, nearly enough to make up for his lack of subtlety. In the past weeks, his supervision had been sharp, veiled behind medical concern, as though John were determined not to let Sherlock from his sight. Such an idea was foul on Sherlock’s tongue now, like he were an untrustworthy child, or a maiden in need of protection.

   Did John think of him as such? As something so incapable? Sherlock steadied himself with a hand on the back of his desk chair, glancing over his shoulder into the kitchen. 

   “All right?”

   John paused in his sorting through the refrigerator, the glint of his blue eyes downcast to where Sherlock’s hand lay on his chair. 

   Don’t look. Sherlock curled the hand into a fist and resolutely faced the window once more. Pedestrians manoeuvred over icy pavement below, and envy pooled within him. Traffic ground on, slow and bright. The world turned, and here he was, not yet free from his own scrutiny.

   He crossed his arms, tucking in his sleeves and hiding away. Steeling his form straight and strong to deter John from more mindless questions, he replied, “Thinking.” 

   John’s voice went soft, and Sherlock could picture his expression with acute clarity, that sort of naked smile that came when the light was dim, when John thought Sherlock wasn’t paying attention. “Always are.”

   Sherlock narrowed his eyes at the streetlamps. 

   Something had to be done. 

 -/-

   "You can sleep in the bed."

   John looked up from his paper to Sherlock, where the detective lounged in his armchair across from him, a light touch of color to his face. "What?"

   "It's ridiculous to sleep on the sofa. You've already strained your shoulder." Sherlock cocked his head. 

   He had been staring at John for the better part of the afternoon, fixed on his face without registering it. In reality, he'd been sorting away decisions and deceptions in his mind palace, all pertaining to relieving himself of some level of guardianship. 

   John cleared his throat. "I—”

   "I have surpassed your medical expectations, haven't I?"

   "Yes, right," John said. "Right, then...?" 

   Sherlock stood, collecting his laptop from the desk and striding away to his bedroom. "Then sleep upstairs."

-/-

   Sherlock scrubbed his thumbnail against the knuckles of his right hand, where Magnussen's mouth had left its invisible mark. Logic itched at the back of his brain, calculating the amount of times he'd washed his hands since leaving the hospital (antibiotic-resistant bacterium, broken sterile fields, heavy breathing of medical students), and finding them inadequate.

   None of it was enough to override the memory of evaporated saliva and the way it had sunk into him. 

   "Why are you doing that?" 

   Sherlock stopped, letting the hot water run over his hands. They had reddened from his ministrations. He should have washed them in the bathroom.

   He turned his chin to his shoulder, finding John lingering at the other end of the kitchen table, a bag of shopping in his right hand. His left clenched against his thigh.

   "Contamination."

   "You've been doing it for two minutes."

   "Standard surgery procedure." 

   "A tabletop experiment is not surgery. You haven't cleaned any of your other tools."

   "Not yet," Sherlock retorted, his ears hot. A refusal to further engage ought to discourage John, or some other distraction would work well enough to spook him off.

   John scoffed, depositing the shopping on the table with the crinkle of thin plastic and moving to the sitting room, and Sherlock seized the opportunity. He pulled his hands from the sink, turning off the tap, and dried them on a paper towel. He plunked it into the bin and returned to his seat at the kitchen table, poised beside his microscope. 

   John sat in his armchair, the back of his head and the broad expanse of his shoulders visible over the rise.  

   Sherlock snapped on a pair of blue latex gloves.

   His hand burned, an invisible, itching outline spreading up his arm.

-/-

   Per the Levine cold case (2012), arrest Jacob Bremsby. SH

   you cant just tell me that without context

   why?

   sherlock

   Jacob Bremsby was the cleaner. He worked for the Levine family. Fell in love with the eldest daughter. Murdered her father when he refused to approve of their engagement. SH

   he didnt have daughters. four sons

   Three, and one daughter. SH

-/-

   Since Sherlock's stint in the hospital, Lestrade had visited in an unofficial capacity. 

   He'd offered a handful of cold cases as entertainment, and then dozens more when Sherlock showed no interest. He'd been permitted to leave the flat by John, accompanied, to attend several medical appointments, in which John sat just outside the windowless examination room and steadfastly pretended not to look at Sherlock during the cabride back to Baker Street. Briefly, John had flicked on some inane crime show to keep him entertained (same formula each time), but that foray had quickly ended, and the silence had spread. And still, John watched him. 

   Motionless, Sherlock poised on the sofa, wearing his pair of leather gloves. He'd refused John's offer to light a fire and warm the flat. 

   "Do you think you're going out?"

   Sherlock snapped, "I could sneak out my bedroom window every night while you slept. There's a fire escape. I could visit Kensington Gardens and be back by morning on foot. I could remove six high-class drug manufacturers from the streets following one physical confrontation before you made tea in the morning."

   One of John's eyebrows arched in question, calling Sherlock's bluff over the rim of his mug. "Seven by next week, then."

   But still, his gaze lingered on Sherlock.

   Apparently, John feared he'd sneak off again, disappear from the hospital like he had when he'd met with Magnussen at the café, and that meant that Sherlock could not be trusted on his own. The supervision had been mildly irritating, and since his nightmare, that reminder of all things he lacked, it was infuriating.

   Preposterous, who was there to sneak off to meet? Magnussen, the only shadow hovering over them, was out of his reach, silent until he wished to speak. To John's knowledge, he had no ammunition lacking the presence of Mary. 

   Visiting live crime scenes had been distinctly out of the question. John had been lucky thus far that an interesting case had not piqued Sherlock's interest.  

   It was past six in the evening and John had retired to cooking something stovetop when Lestrade arrived.

   The kettle flicked off, and the flat was humid. Outside, London was cloaked in early winter darkness. Tourists braved the cold, bundled up and crossing streets below. The door slammed downstairs, and John glanced over at Sherlock from the kitchen as someone bound up the steps to 221B. Missus Hudson was not so spry, clients rang the bell after a three-second delay on the pavement, and Mycroft did not appear at the flat without some amount of menacing presence that Sherlock could detect long before he stepped foot on the property.

   Thus, Lestrade. 

   Sherlock did not glance away from his laptop. "Come in," he called a heartbeat before Lestrade would have knocked. Predictable man. 

   Lestrade pushed into the flat, out of breath. The soles of his shoes stuck with bits of mud and bracken. He'd been outside, or mucking about somewhere dilapidated. His trousers and coat were dusted, and Sherlock detected the acrid smell of drywall. Construction site, possibly? 

  John stepped into the sitting room, ever the guardian. “If you’re here to pull him out of the flat, Greg, I—”

   Irritation flashed. Sherlock turned away from John, letting his words fall on deaf ears as he stared pointedly at Lestrade. No one needed to make decisions for him. “You wouldn’t come here for nothing.”

   “I wouldn’t,” Lestrade said, shooting John a contrite glance. Standing over his chair, John met it with a frown. “Really, I wouldn’t.”

   “Spit it out, Lestrade.”

   “There’s a body.”

   “Obvious.”

    Undeterred, Lestrade went on, “It’s in an old skip of a building. Used to be for corporate meetings and the like in the eighties, now it’s condemned. Sits next door to the Reyton, that fancy hotel on the edge of the city. Maintenance workers for the Reyton saw a hole in the roof, called the Yard. When we checked it out…” Lestrade dug into his pocket and pulled out his mobile, tapping to light up the screen and pull up a photograph. He offered it to Sherlock. “Found her, and it looks like she’s been there for a few weeks, at the very least.”

   Sherlock took the mobile from Lestrade, his leather gloves brushing the DI’s fingers. Against the blue glare, woman lay face-down over a blackened spot of carpet. Lestrade had a poor eye for photography, and there was no information about the exterior of the building.

   They would have to visit. 

   He handed the DI his mobile back, curbing his delight. There was no reason to hope for something that may be as simple as suicide in the end. Lestrade had merely come for a consult, he told himself.

   But if that were the case, he would have brought more photographs, perhaps a baggie of fresh evidence. “Heavy rain for this late in the year,” Sherlock noted. “Speeds decay. Your timeline is off. Has she been positively identified?”

   “Yes, name’s Kathleen Monforte. She’s been missing for about three weeks. Her sister reported her missing in Edinburgh, and there’s no record of her taking a flight or a train to London. She didn’t have a car, and didn’t rent one.”

   “Scotland?” John said, folding his arms. “Hitchhiker, coming to London for holiday?”

   “Perhaps,” Sherlock conceded. “The Reyton overlooks the roof of the building where she was found. Why don’t you think she jumped?”

   A moment of silence passed between the three of them, awkward in its length. 

   Lestrade shot a glance at John. “The Reyton’s windows don’t open wide enough for anyone to get through.”

   “The roof?”

   John shifted his weight, his left hand clenching at his thigh. Lestrade cleared his throat. “It’s not accessible by the public, or patrons. You’d have to be maintenance for the Reyton. Not even the housekeepers or the general manager can go up, it’s corporate only.”

   “And?” Sherlock urged. “Why am I being called upon? Is this not simple enough for you?”

   “The hole doesn’t match up. If by some chance she could get up there, there’s no way she could have fallen that far from the Reyton. If you threw forty-five kilograms off the Reyton, it wouldn’t travel so far as to land where the entry hole is. Far as I know, no parachuting planes fly over London and drop people, either.”

   Thus, she did not fall from the Reyton. “She may not have fallen at all. Interesting. John?”

   At his name, John met Sherlock's gaze. A muscle at the corner of John’s jaw jumped.

   Sherlock turned back to Lestrade. “We’ll follow in a cab. Where are we?”

   "Meet me at the Reyton. I'll text you the address."

   "No."

   "Alright!" Lestrade grinned. "It's good to have you back."

    Excitement thrummed in his veins. The moment that Lestrade exited the front door, Sherlock leapt up from the sofa, seizing the Belstaff from its lonely hook. He'd missed the feel of the wool over his arms, the familiar weight pressing into him. "Come along," Sherlock quipped to John.

   Without a word, John turned off the stove and collected his jacket, following Sherlock down the stairs. 

   In the outside air, Sherlock's breath clouded, the cold gripping his exposed neck. He raised an arm and a cab pulled out of the slow flow of traffic, pulling up beside them. Sherlock opened the door and slipped inside, waiting for John to shuffle in before giving the cabbie the address. The middle seat sat empty between them. 

   For a portion, they rode in silence, and Sherlock did not let John's disapproval poison the steady pulse of his mind, turning over what little detail the poor photograph had provided. 

   Sherlock leaned to the side, pulling up his coat where it was tucked beneath him to access his pocket and remove his mobile. Rainfall from the last week had exceeded the normal amount for this late in the year, even by London's standards, and he'd need an accurate account of how much had fallen in order to estimate the rate of decay of the woman's body and her time of death.

   The black screen greeted him. His gloves wouldn't tap the screen, and John was watching him. 

   Again. 

   John didn't pretend to look away.

   The scrutiny intensified as Sherlock tucked his mobile into his inner coat. The device pressed cold against his ribs as he meshed his fingers together in his lap, pointedly not meeting John's gaze. If John was going to insist on making his frustration known through every twitch of his body without verbalizing it, then Sherlock needn't be expected to acknowledge it.

   The city lights blurred around them. "You've got something to say. Say it."

   “I just,” John said finally, “don’t think it’s necessary.”

   “Should I be expected to read your mind?”

   John drew in a long breath. How bothered he must be to provide Sherlock with an adequate answer, or perhaps John was kerbing his temper. “I don’t think it's necessary for you to go. If you really think it’s a suicide, that she jumped, why bother going? It would be shit to stress your wound, when you’re nearly done.” 

   “When Scotland Yard cannot rule on a case as pedestrian as a suicide, there must be a piece of information that they're missing. They adore closing cases that should remain open," he scoffed. "Did you hear what Lestrade said?"

   "That the entry hole doesn't match up with where she could have fallen? Yeah." John's shoulder pressed into the car door, fixed on Sherlock's face with his lips pressed tightly together. "I can remember twenty minutes past, thanks." 

   "You needn't accompany me if you're going to refuse to think," Sherlock snapped in reply. 

   There, that telltale flare of John's nostrils as the doctor straightened - Sherlock had angered him. "If I don't accompany you, you'll go running off and fucking pull a stitch for no damned good reason."

   Any stitch in Sherlock's flesh had dissolved by now. Once again, John attempted to overrule him, to decide what he should or should not do without regard to Sherlock's opinion. It was as blatant as if John had blocked him in the flat, physically sequestering him at Baker Street. 

    'A woman's.'

   "I don't require a keeper," Sherlock ground out through his teeth.

   The cab slowed, the tires bumping into shallow potholes. "No, what you need is a nanny," John answered. "We're here."

    Sherlock opened the door, leaving it for John to exit out of. The cold pressed against him like a body, and the dark state of the city outside central London shocked something at the back of his mind.

    He’d have to leave any argument with John behind, in the cab or at the flat, somewhere distinctly not here. It chewed at the frayed corners of his mind, narrowed his field of vision until he could only see the disappointment in John’s expression. 

   The Reyton hotel towered above them, darkening the pavement, squares of light pouring from its rooms. In the dark, clouds shuttered overhead, obscuring what little of the night sky that London allowed to survive, rushed by the brisk wind that funnelled through the alleyway between the hotel and a shorter, brick building that seemed to crouch and settle over a large patch of greenery.

   It had a flat top, and several large windows, so crusted with dust from the interior that Sherlock saw only vague shapes inside. Overgrown gardens, once carefully-tended and landscaped, waited to trip an unwary ankle. Spiky hedges spilled over the concrete slabs, and ivy roots choked the broad exterior walls like slender brown snakes.  

   Had snow fallen, and ignoring the lights and sounds of human civilization around them, it might have looked like some picturesque, wooded manor, waiting and shadowed. As it stood, Sherlock saw its flaws. A slanted roof, a ladder propped up against the siding, and several policemen atop the building with torches, scanning the tiles.  

   Officers crawled around its perimeter like insects in the night. Yellow police tape blocked out the building for several metres. Several patrol cars were parked at the kerb, their lights flashing to deter the odd evening passerby, and ahead, Anderson carried a bin of biohazard bags and sampling supplies. He caught sight of Sherlock and visibly sneered, even from a distance, the police lights bouncing off his dark jacket. 

   Sherlock focused on the roofing, just two stories high. From a distance, the sides of the building appeared structurally sound, but there was a slight curve to them, as if it were slowly sinking into the ground below.  Boarded windows pasted to its side, and rubbish spilled out of the gutters. 

   To their left, a car door slammed - John turned his head, but Sherlock registered the heavy fall of Lestrade's footsteps on the sidewalk, and a moment later he joined them at the police tape. Sherlock surveyed the scene, ignoring Lestrade's greeting and John's reply. 

  “Hey, John,” Lestrade murmured, his voice uncharacteristically apologetic, “I didn’t want to call you in at all, given the, er, circumstances, but…” 

   “It’s fine, Greg. Yeah…”

   Their voices went low to keep Sherlock from listening, or perhaps to prevent distraction. Impossible. Did they think no one could hear them? Exchanging pleasantries at a crime scene, where secrets remained to be divulged?

   "... but come in. You're going to want one of these." Lestrade pulled a plastic package from his pocket, and removed a blue surgery mask by the elastic, handing it off to John. He tilted the package to Sherlock, who ignored the offer. 

   John grimaced at Lestrade, pinching the mask over the bridge of his nose. "That bad?"

   "Decomposing in a pool of bodily fluids and rainwater from the roof in an already-rotting building for approximately seventeen days," Sherlock said absently, ducking beneath the police tape. 

   "Right." 

   Behind him, Lestrade lifted the tape for John, and followed.    

   As they approached, Sherlock tuned out Lestrade's mindless prattle, opting instead to examine the ornate red brickwork. He stepped away from the door and into the weeds, opting to run a gloved finger along the old mortar. Bracken thickets tangled at his shins, and nettles clung to his trousers. The rough lines between each stone chipped at his touch, evidence of cheap and quick construction consistent with early London architecture, when the city expanded at a high rate.

  Such a demolition project would take a fair bit of labour, going by the approximate year it was built and the variety of stone basements it was sure to have in labyrinths beneath the mud-crusted floorboards. All would need to be cleared and filled in before any demolition could begin, and no doubt the Reyton would appreciate a car park, but the demolition would be inconvenient to its patrons and employees in the meantime. It was more lucrative to let the building, and its dead occupant, rot. 

  Years of twigs crackled and snapped beneath Sherlock's feet. He avoided disturbing an empty bird's nest in the overgrown hedges, sticking close to the wall as he picked his way back through the garden. He joined Lestrade and John at the main glass doors, where Lestrade waved a hand to signal to an officer to let them through. The woman pulled back from the door, and Sherlock pushed inside. Golden paint from the handle flaked off in his glove. 

   "Disused conference centre," Lestrade explained again, "It's fine from the outside, so the city hasn't condemned it, but inside--"

   "--inside it's a wreck," John finished.

   The entrance opened up into a disused lobby, with a high, curved ceiling and Grecian pillars, lit by several standing police-issued LEDs. The scent of wet wood, moulded carpet and faded wallpaper glue greeted him as he surveyed the ancient hearth, where businessmen might have once rested between meetings, the soot and ash spread like riverbed mud over the cracked tile flooring. Debris littered a marble concierge desk off to one side, and several decorative armchairs, once brightly-patterned, sat demurely, faded and sodden, their stuffing poking out of seams. 

   It was just as cold in here as it was outside, sharp and sticking to his lungs. It made the back of his nose ache. 

   "Electricity's been off for decades." Lestrade handed John a heavy torch. "Bit of a haunted house. We've gone through the first few rooms and the scene, but the place was locked up tight. Not even a broken window."

   Sherlock neglected to pull his mobile from his coat and use its light to guide his investigation. He'd have to remove his gloves to turn it on, and wasn't in the mood to steal away from the crime for a private moment to do so. First interesting thing he'd been allowed to attend in ages, and he did not intend to waste a heartbeat.

   Using the police lights, standing in the corners of the lobby and bathing the place in cold, white light, Sherlock examined the room. Fourteen... sixteen years of water damage, going by the state of the ceiling, where yellowed rings betrayed the location of leaks in the concrete, the same colour as the stains creeping up the age-dusted walls. Burst pipes, brick exterior, poor insulation, and time. Missus Hudson would have a fit at the state of a place in London looking so poorly. 

   Forty-five kilograms, Lestrade had mentioned at Baker Street. Contrary to his original opinion, the victim's body weight may have been enough to break into the building from a high enough point like the Reyton, given its weakness. But it was unlikely.

   He sniffed, identifying the smell of rot further down the narrow halls. He strode away from John and Lestrade, leaving them to follow.

   From behind him, Lestrade called out, "It's to your - oh, nevermind, he'll figure it." 

    A pair of young officers stepped out of his way as Sherlock made his way deeper into the dark corridor. Everyone moved so slowly, impeded by their blue shoe covers and masks. What were they doing at this glacial pace, besides failing to solve the case? Or, rather, any case at all? Askew paintings lined the walls, their subjects shadows, their outlines imprinted by the reach of the sun on peeling wallpaper. 

   Sherlock turned into the last room at the end of the hallway. 

   The smell of death made his stomach curl.

   In a large, nearly empty room, two of Lestrade's men were setting up a portable standing LED to overlook a body positioned, face-down, in the centre of it. The light clicked into place, and they hesitated to adjust the brightness, having noticed Sherlock in the doorway. It appeared that little work had been done on the scene as of yet, and the Yard were preparing for a long night of investigation. Perfect. Less contamination. 

   Bootprints littered the dark, spongy carpet covering the floor, several sizes and brands, evidence of the Yard having made its initial appearance, imprinted into the damp carpet at every step. The paths every person who had entered the room had taken were clear. Several closet doors lined the far walls, and there was a pile of rusted folding chairs in one corner, but the woman's supposed entry point was clear - 

   Directly above the body, a hole gaped in the ceiling. Broken slats of wood and corroded metal punctuated the image of the night sky. From outside, beams of torchlight cast down through at irregular intervals - Yarders, walking on the roof above them, annoying. He stepped closer, face tilted to stare up at the jagged hole. The shattered bits of infrastructure poked inwards, electrical wiring hanging down like vines. Insulation, flattened and sopping, leaned down, and several chunks of it littered the floor near the body. If not Kathleen Monforte, then something else had penetrated the centre from above. 

   His focus dropped to the victim at his feet.

  Briefly, Sherlock regretted foregoing the mask. 

  Her hair, once a dusty brown, was loose, and it had dried, tacky with bodily fluids, to what was left of her skin, pulled taunt over her bones. Nondescript clothes, a blouse and trousers, concealed her thin frame. Slack in death, her arms lay at her sides, palm up, skinny fingers bent unnaturally. Beside the dead woman, around her head like a black oil spill, the floor was wet and rancid. The whole abandoned ballroom reeked of water and wet, rotten carpet, but below the body, the old material had soaked up weeks of congealed blood and rainwater. 

   Her position reminded him of another victim, long ago, dressed all in pink and missing her suitcase.

   Stooping low to the body, Sherlock held his breath against the sweet-rot scent of decay, letting his lungs burn. He flipped the small microscope out of his pocket and, with gloved fingers, pried it open to inspect a festering laceration on the woman’s ankle. As he'd suspected, splinters edged the scratchy wounds, consistent with the darkened wood from the hole in the ceiling above her. Strangely, no fragments of wood stuck under her epidermis.

   “… how long she’s been here.” John's voice, directed at Lestrade, drifted into the room as the two finally entered. Sherlock tilted his head, tuning in. Gathering information, good, focusing on the task at hand. Sherlock could do that just as well. Better. It was the one task wherein he could excel.  

   “The hotel next door,” Sherlock said. “No one saw the hole in the roof of this building before the maintenance crew because there are no windows on the Reyton facing this direction."

   John hummed. “She was pushed, you think?”

   “No one's got access to the Reyton's roof.” Lestrade repeated. “Even if she got up there, we had a physics professor take a look at the measurements. She can't have fallen so far from the ledge.” Lestrade said. Simple enough formula. Height, length, terminal velocity on impact. 

   Sherlock snapped his pocket magnifier together with a plastic click. He stood. "By your assumption, she was led up there by someone who does have access, if they didn’t report a breach in their employee card systems. The Reyton requires an ID card to open every restricted door inside, including the stairwells leading to the roof." He'd been inside several times at the call of the odd client. He stared pointedly at the two officers, who had finished setting up another portable light that illuminated the rest of the area. "Get out."

   Exasperated, Lestrade sighed, a bit tetchy, "Just do as he says."

   The officers skittered from the scene.

   Sherlock went on, "Where was she staying?"

   “Never checked into the Reyton, so she wasn't a guest.”

   “Or she travelled under a false name,” John said. 

   Sherlock asked, "Her wallet?"

   "Didn't have one on her. Her sister ID'd her from missing persons over video, she's on a train down from Edinburgh." The DI nodded, and reached up to scratch at the grey stubble crawling over his neck, his voice slightly muffled by the mask over the lower half of his face. Even with it, his eyes watered from the stench in the room. “The roof maintenance was last done three weeks ago. Crew didn’t report seeing the hole. Next maintenance crew reported the hole this evening...” Lestrade gestured to the body, palms up. 

   Sherlock stood, drawing in another sickly breath through his nose, cataloguing the array of sour fragrances that filled the room. Moist wood, rainwater, decaying carpet, fresh shoe polish… 

   He would have to check the Reyton’s system for himself, tonight. If staff were aware of the scatter of police downstairs, someone may have tampered with potentially useful security footage. There was no relying on the word of Lestrade’s team. "A three week window, and three weeks since she was reported missing. Dating of the body at this point is hardly easy with this level of decomposition." Precise measurements yielded the best results. "We'll have to decide whether she was dead before she entered the room, and whether she died from an impact at all.” 

   John shook his head, his eyes crinkled at the corners as though he could hardly manage the strength to speak. Was it the smell? John usually wasn’t bothered by a bit of rot. “A bit too far gone to tell that right here.”

   “Thoracic and pelvic fractures will be a guarantee. Molly will have to see how her bones broke to determine if she died from a fall, and even then, our killer could’ve done something to her pre-mortem."

   "Hang on," Lestrade said, his brow pinched. "Our killer? "

   "Don't be an idiot, you said it yourself: she could not have fallen here alone. If she’d been alive, she would have struggled while falling, tensed up, and we’d see shattering. Without that, from this height,” Sherlock leaned over the body, peering up through the hole in the ceiling, “she’d likely experience more compound fractures." He stepped back. "In either case, she cannot have jumped, or been thrown, from the Reyton's roof to the point where we now stand. Additionally, if the roof can hold the weight of several of your officers,” Sherlock pointed to the ceiling, "then it is less likely that Kathleen would have easily broken through, even from that height." 

   Displeasure curled in his mouth as Lestrade's eyes darted between John and the body.

   With the distinct sense that he stood outside of some secret, excluded, Sherlock pushed his hands into his pockets. Were they listening to him? Questioning what he was suggesting, in some language entirely secret to him? Why? “Since you doubt my word, I’ll go up to the Reyton to have a look.” 

   “No,” John said, one hand over his chin, fingers pressed tightly to his mouth over the mask. 

   Lestrade started towards John, “Listen, mate…”

   John’s cobalt eyes met Sherlock’s, something indeterminable clashing fiercely behind them. 

   Annoyance flared in Sherlock, as if he were missing something important. That wasn’t what he did. He didn’t miss things. Other people did. He clenched his teeth together. 

   “I’ll have a look at her, if that’s all right.” John nodded to Lestrade. 

   “Pointless,” Sherlock said. 

   John sharply glanced back up at Sherlock. “Then you can have Molly come down instead.” 

   “She'd take too long.” Sherlock peered through the hole in the roof again, examining the broken beams and old slats of plywood. 

   John muttered something about the ease of sending a fucking text, and then stepped to Sherlock’s side, avoiding the flare of the Belstaff as he stood over the corpse. Lestrade tossed him a pair of latex gloves, and John snapped one on. 

   Through the hole, the Reyton loomed, a black shape against the night sky. The size of the hole lined up with the victim's general height and weight, both small numbers, but there was no calculation that Sherlock could run in his head that allowed her, with assistance or not, to somehow pierce the roof of the conference centre. She could conceivably break through the wiring, insulation, and even the moist wood, but the pipes would have been more difficult, their edges jagged and less forgiving. He breathed deeply, resisting the nausea, and located the faint scent of pine. Wet rot, brown rot, white rot, threats to structural timber... It would have been better to build with cedar, supplemented by stone, but the place was clearly cheaply constructed. 

   Beside him, John crouched, his dark jacket stretching over his shoulders and his attentions drawn elsewhere than Sherlock and Lestrade.

   Balanced off his heels, John worked methodically, as he always did. He pressed into the woman's oblique, feeling the sickening give of her flesh where there should have been tight muscle, and then scanned her limbs. He ran a gloved hand across her back, and lifted it to inspect his fingers, rubbing them together. There was no point in attempting to discern the degree of rigour mortis by folding a joint, and John did not waste his time. He palpated her elbow, however, feeling for bone fragments. 

   "It's been too cold for insects," John said.

   "Thank Christ," said Lestrade, his arms crossed over his chest. "I can't imagine this in summer."

   John poised carefully, examining a section of flooring beside the dead woman’s hip. He paused, his form growing still, his hands paused over Monforte's hip. A few bright crimson drops dotted the carpet, just outside the perimeter of the puddle of rot below Kathleen Monforte. 

   “This blood is newer,” John said, his brows drawn together. He looked up, adding, “It can’t be hers.” 

   “No,” said Lestrade, his head tilted to follow John’s direction as he stepped up to the other side of the body. “Would have clotted and decomposed by now like the rest of it. It’d be black.” 

   “Any number of animals could have crawled in through the roof.” Sherlock nodded towards the broken slats in the ceiling directly above the woman’s body. It was a fine enough explanation, and fairly likely. “The metal there is sharp, bent from where she supposedly fell through.”

   “She’s in active decomp, and the only way in besides the locked front door is the broken ceiling,” Lestrade muttered, sympathetically as he could muster over the mask, “Ravens? Can’t imagine what kind of London wildlife is looking for her. A fox isn’t getting up there.”

   Sherlock ignored Lestrade, opting to filter through what he knew of the scene so far. Motive may be easier to determine if they knew how she was killed… Violence betrayed crimes of passion, yet many of her injuries could have come from the impact, just as well. The advanced stage of decomposition, aided by the heavy rainfall of weeks past, obscured too many facts, and irrational excitement flushed through Sherlock like a cloud - the idea that there was more to know, and that it was hidden from him. 

   John wasn’t looking at the floor anymore. He turned his face towards Sherlock, still crouched beside the dead woman, an accusation in his eyes. His breath fanned out in the cold, a cloud of heat and humidity, and he spoke flatly, “You're quick to dismiss it.”

   “What is there to see?” Sherlock bristled, nerves alight at once. Would John have questioned Lestrade, had he said the same? “You’ve found a spot of blood beside a dead woman in a room with no roof.”

   Indignancy pulsed from John. He peeled off the latex, slapping the gloves to the floor in irritation. “Are you joking? You wanted me to—”

   “To what? Regale me with information so obvious a child could have seen it?”

   John stood suddenly, reaching to rip off his mask, a muscle at the corner of his jaw working. He held it in a fist at his thigh. 

   Unwavering, maddened at the idea of being intimidated, Sherlock stepped forward, crowding into John’s space. The pulse of anger and confusion poured off of him, intoxicating and infuriating. 

   “Whoa, hey, Sherlock—" Lestrade reached out to take his upper arm, to placate, to pull him from the hard line of John’s unwavering figure, and even the abstract concept of an unwanted hand on his body enraged him. Sherlock jerked his shoulder back, snapping away from Lestrade, his blood thrumming at his ears. 

   Now he stood separate from Lestrade and John, squared off against them, the bright police lights in his face. He felt watched, perceived. Who were they to make demands of him? To question his intellect, after all this time? He bared his teeth, turning away, hungry for the shadowed halls. “I’m going to check the next room.” 

   “Sherlock—” John began. 

   “You’re not to leave the building,” Lestrade cautioned. “I’ll post an officer at the Reyton. I don’t want you going up there to look for anything until my team’s been through.” 

   “Don’t think I owe you compliance,” Sherlock spat. He would check the Reyton’s roof if he so deigned. If he thought it pertinent to the case, he would investigate anything necessary. He was careful to skirt the regulations of Lestrade’s department, he didn’t need to be warned about basic dangers or safety. It was a lecture given to someone lesser . 

   He whirled, a furious headache pounding at his temples. It would be simpler if the Yard and John alike evacuated the entire building and left him to work. 

   It used to be like that, before John: Lestrade an intermittent figure and the work eternal. There would be no one to answer to, no one to peel back his habits and turn out his secrets for. It surprised Sherlock, this wrath that cloaked him, this desperation to be, at last, alone. 

   He stalked from the room, tucking his coat close to his body like a plate of armour, relieved to find the hallway empty, dark and cold. Voices carried from the crime scene behind him, but he pressed on, aiming to find his way back to the lobby and out onto the kerb, to ascend the stairs of the Reyton and see for himself how Monforte could have crashed through the roof, fuck what Lestrade and John ordered him to do, his eyes on the carpet below his shoes, mind spinning, his hands tucked away in his coat--

   A dark stain at his toe. 

   Sherlock stopped, breath caught. Nearly lost to the black shadows in the hall, illuminated only by the faint light pouring in from the lobby far ahead. With no one to witness him, Sherlock peeled off a leather glove and stuffed it into his pocket, retrieving his mobile and pointing the torch towards the carpet. 

   A few scant drops of something viscous, quashed into the patterned carpeting. 

   He lifted the mobile, directing the light upwards. 

   Another spot - further down the hall.

   A trail. His skin tingled, aware now of the sound of traffic outside, of creaks in the floorboards, of the officers on the roof, of his own breathing.

   "Sherlock!"

   John, in pursuit. Could he not have one moment to himself, where he was not being supervised? Being watched?

   There was no time to waste. His attention firmly on the blood trail, hardly cognizant of his own movement, Sherlock strode quickly down the corridor. Smears and drops. Small, light, barely-there, indistinct from the general rubble and debris littered about the building, but now that he searched for them, they were everywhere. The manufactured light of his mobile illuminated his way. 

   A line, dried in a dramatic arc, at the edge of one doorway - where Monforte's dead, outstretched fingers had skimmed the siding. A few wavy stains on the wall, where her hair had swayed as her killer walked these halls.  

   She'd been carried. Placed here. Planted.

    A fake suicide. 

   He rounded a corner, and the dim hallway ended in a set of wide French doors, the glass panes black and foreboding, obscuring all inside. A winter draft whistled in through the disused vents below the floor, and a chill shivered down his back. 

   At the handle, a smear of black, where someone had reached to close the door. 

   Footsteps fell on the carpet behind him. “Sherlock,” John sounded breathless, not for his pace but some other anxiety underlying his words. “I thought you’d—?” 

     A fake suicide. Sherlock marvelled, “She was carried to the scene, John, that hole was ripped post-mortem. It’s a fake.” 

   “A fake?” John repeated, coming to stand beside Sherlock at the doors. He carried tension in his joints, a soldier’s stance, an automatic march, and held tightly to the torch Lestrade had given him at their entry, though it was unlit. He must have run after Sherlock without turning it on.

   At Sherlock’s shoulder, his presence warmed the frigid hall, and Sherlock detested his body’s response to John’s mere existence. Irritation still crawled under his skin at John’s doubt, but excitement had begun to overtake it. 

   John cast a glance behind them, back from where they’d come, as though he’d expected Sherlock to have gone somewhere else. 

   “There.”

   Wordlessly, John grimaced. No other words passed; John knew, instinctively, where to look, and what it meant. The black smear on chipped white paint and dusted panes. John went on quietly, “We should get Lestrade. No one’s been down this way. They’re meant to do a sweep once Donovan arrives.” 

   On the wall to his right, a black streak scuffed the baseboard moulding by the floor. Sherlock narrowed his eyes.

   A section of the patterned wallpaper had torn, but the area around it had not peeled away with time, and nor was the wall exposed behind it yellowed for lack of sunlight. This was a new tear, not eaten by mice or flayed by drafts. The Yard wore protection: puffy blue shoe covers, and no one from the Yard had yet to enter this room. 

   Someone else had been inside this building - someone unaccounted for - and John wanted him to step away? To concede this to the Yard and wait?

   Anger seeped up between each thought. “Someone’s been here.”

   With his gloved hand, Sherlock reached for the handle, pressing it down. It gave, and clicked.

   "Sherlock," John warned. 

   The door edged outward with a long, high creak. 

   Movement flickered in Sherlock’s peripheral, a flash of wallpapered panelling and the abrupt squeal of a broken hinge— 

   — the black scuff on the wall, the cherry-red colour of fresh blood, the absence of another exit, the obsessive habits of killers who visit their dump sites — 

   He’d missed it. 

   A shape lunged towards him from behind the panes of glass, viciously banging the edge of the door into his forehead - a nova of pain, and Sherlock flashed up an arm, his elbow a shield, too late - weight crashed into him, slamming his back to the floor amidst the obscene crackle of shattering glass, and shoving the air from his lungs. The centre of his chest exploded with pain on impact, a spear digging into the cartilage between his ribs - the body was gone a heartbeat later, lifted, and there was a distant slam as it hit the ground again with furious force. 

   His eyes watered, his head pounding, but the constriction of his throat stole his focus, a foreign numbness spread over his sternum as someone down the hall shouted, spat, and twisted against a sudden barrage of officers and flashing torchlight.

   The scent of cigarette smoke flooded his mouth as he gasped— he choked - couldn’t gasp, couldn’t draw in another breath, his diaphragm refusing the pull. Coordination beyond him, Sherlock reached a hand to his chest, unable to compare the sensation to the collapse of his lung when Mary—

   Fear. He could not breathe, and the darkness of the hallway, punctuated by the shouts of officers, spun around him. Anxiety prickled at his skin, and then - John. 

   For a wretched half-second, Sherlock battled the urge to shove him away, remembering only Magnussen's face stretching above him, so close, eye-to-eye. Panic spread, his heart pounding, his lungs still refusing to function.

   "Get him the fuck out of here," Lestrade ordered someone, footsteps, and then, "Is he alright? I’ll phone an ambulance—”

   “It’s his wound,” John snapped, his face briefly lit by Lestrade's torch, his focus never leaving Sherlock's, “Sherlock, it's your injury, you can breathe—”

   Shadows flitted at Sherlock's peripheral, threatening to overwhelm his vision, and his naked hand lashed upwards, twisting desperately into the collar of John’s jacket.

   Obediently, John swayed closer, his eyes fixed on Sherlock’s face, a focused and determined pleat over his brow. A bloody cut marred John's cheek, cloaked in a fresh gleam of red.
 
   Warmth spread over Sherlock's neck, just as it had when John had comforted him in bed those nights ago - two points of contact pressed to the curve of Sherlock's jaw, John's thumb brushing the column of his throat and his fingers counting Sherlock's pulse. Competent. Careful. Steady. 

   John was clever. John would not look at his face if something else needed medical attention. Sherlock coughed, a dry wrench, drawing in a sharp hiss of air through his teeth. He pushed it out, hard, shaking. It stretched the new scar tissue at his chest, but this was no bullet.

   His hand at John's throat uncurled and flattened, weakly pushing John away. Don't look. The hand at his neck retracted. Undeterred, a strong arm cradled his upper back, helping him sit up without too much of a prolonged struggle. Each breath tore into his lungs, and as the panic subsided, horror seeped in. He'd missed it. Missed it. 

   "Who—?" He ground out, his voice strangled into a rough cough. John pat his back, and Sherlock grappled with his mind to find the gesture patronizing and reject it.

   A leg appeared before Sherlock. Lestrade, standing beside where John crouched, his hair askew and jacket rumpled. Physical combat, wrestling with whoever had tackled Sherlock. Following Sherlock's exit, he, too, must have pursued Sherlock, delayed after John by only a few minutes.

   Did everyone need follow him? Or was Lestrade's pursuit more to the point of following the pair of them, and ensuring they did not venture into the Reyton and cause trouble? "It's him. Not sure who he is, yet, but we're taking him in. He's mad, been hiding out in the storage room."

   John scowled, though his eyes stayed soft, and Sherlock knew the frustrated expression was not meant for him. "Let's get you standing," he said. 

   Not only did John have to remind him to breathe, he had to remind him to sit and stand. Sherlock was abhorrent, helpless. "I can—" he began. The breath twisted into a cough again, wracking his shoulders. Further from the pain of being winded so forcefully, cuts along his exposed skin began to sting, and he reached up to touch his hair, where a thick wetness dripped from his scalp down to his ear. 

   "Don't," John started, catching Sherlock's bare hand in his. 

   It was worse than being thrown to the ground by a murderer. 

   Sherlock reacted, jolting away from John and stuttering to his feet. The lightning-quick ascension shadowed his vision in a bloodrush, but he battled through it, gripping the wall for support. Behind John, the panes of glass of one door had blown out, shattered when the frame collided with Sherlock's skull. Pressure built in his head, though now that his lungs functioned properly, his vision no longer swam. 

   John stared. 

   "I'm fine," he managed. "Lestrade, you have what you needed." 

   "Jesus," Lestrade said, his mouth open with surprise. "I don't know if you're all right to go home."

   "I'm not going anywhere else." There would be no return to a hospital bed. No one would force him into it, flood his system with morphine and pin him down again. With a glare towards Lestrade, an open challenge, Sherlock smoothed his coat down, ignoring the pinch in his palm as it caught on a sliver of glass embedded in the Belstaff. "I'm returning to Baker Street. John will give you the details you need. Scuff," Sherlock pointed towards the black mark on the wall beside the broken French door, "trail," the smear of old blood on the handle, and then he gestured somewhere behind them in the scene's general direction, "body. Goodnight."

   Lestrade looked to John, "He all right?"

   Any camaraderie Lestrade expected to find in John's face was absent, as John shot the DI with a dangerous glare from where he still knelt on the floor.

   Sherlock had seen enough. He turned, pushing past another officer and making his way towards the lobby, forcing his steps to fall evenly. His waterline stung. As he walked, Sherlock flipped up the collar of his coat.

   From his pocket he withdrew his other glove and pulled it on, stretching out his injured fingers.

   His skull pounded, his abdomen ached, and various points of his body sang their qualms to his nervous system.

   A paracetamol, his darkened bedroom, a pair of tweezers to pick the glass out of his skin, and no one to command him.

-/-

   At Baker Street, Sherlock rummaged through the first aid kit beneath the kitchen sink. He ran his hands beneath the stream cold water, his gloves slapped down on the countertop. The freezing temperature shocked his system, and he groaned in relief as though it were the unshakeable heat of adrenaline that disappeared down the drain. Nothing stuck in his skin, but the sharp edge of glass had cut his bare hand while the other had been cloaked, hidden and protected by a shield of leather. It was further vindication. 

   Cupping a hand, Sherlock collected tap water and tipped his head over the sink, scrubbing it into his hair where he felt for the telltale small lump.

   The skin split there, impacted by the door, but his balance was fine and his vision clear. If he'd suffered from a concussion, it was mild. Head wounds bled excessively. After gently scrubbing handfuls of water through his hair several times, the water ran clear, and Sherlock turned off the tap, slumping against the counter and letting his hair drip into the sink. He pulled a clean dishtowel out of a drawer (Missus Hudson's folding work) and blotted it gently against his sore scalp, cringing at the sting. 

   It was what he deserved, leaping from the flat like that. His hands shook.

   Anger and guilt swam in head, clashing against each other, each refusing to cower to the other. He'd been wrong to jump at the opportunity to leave the flat, when John had taken such care to ensure his safety, and yet the fury did not acquiesce. However, it wasn't John who'd wronged him - the feeling was directed at himself. 

    He'd missed it. A killer, squatting at the site of a dumped body, a faked suicide, and he'd missed it. If he hadn't stalked off from John and Lestrade, he may never have noticed the bloodstained trail or ventured into another room. If he'd been patient, if he'd not jumped in a cab immediately at the call of the Yard, Lestrade might have swept the place and discovered the killer himself, and perhaps John might not be sporting that cut to his face, and Sherlock might not have been humiliated, gasping and breathless on the floor: helpless.

   Sherlock's fault. Always. He hadn't looked close enough. He was slow, weak, idiotic; a fraud, and his body betrayed him with its failures.

   A familiar itch burned away at the back of one hand. 

   Enough. Sherlock reached for the kit, popping it open with a metallic click. John kept it well-stocked, familiar with Sherlock's antics and their line of work. He pulled out a roll of white gauze and ripped off the sterile plastic, winding it around his palm and down his wrist. He would not be subjected to stare at himself and see these faults any longer. After tucking the edge into itself, Sherlock reached for a gauze pad and pressed it to his head wound, then pulled it away to examine the blood. It was no longer dripping, thanks to the twenty-minute cab ride, but the pattern of blood and extracellular fluid seemed awful. His head certainly ached to match it. 

   "A cab took you? Like that?"

   He turned, water dripping down the back of his neck and soaking the collar of his button-down. "John."

  From the sitting room, John examined Sherlock. As John drank him in, those eyes darkened, shadowed by John's brow, and though the cut on his cheekbone had been cleaned, it remained raw and angry, slightly inflamed.

   “It was an old boyfriend,” John said. “Got in through the basement window and cracked the hole in the ceiling.”

    For a moment, Sherlock did not respond.

   Was it accusation, that John regarded him with now? Fury, with having been attacked, or left behind? 

   John shook his head. “Figured you’d want to know.” 

   John’s eyes slipped low to Sherlock’s bandaged hand. 

   Sherlock’s throat went dry, vice-tight and sore. “A cut,” he dismissed, turning again towards the counter. “I took care of it.”

   “Where else?” 

   Guilt wrote itself in the set of John's shoulder. Ah. John was worried he’d missed something, worried that he ultimately hadn’t been able to spare Sherlock from extreme harm. Worried he wasn’t useful. Worried he was unneeded. 

   No, Sherlock couldn’t make him think that, not in his most hateful moments. Focusing on the culture dish before him, blotted with splotchy orange mould, Sherlock said, “Nothing concerning."

   “There was glass everywhere, Sherlock, did you even look at it? He hit you on the head, for fuck's sake. Those wound are concerning, I—” 

   “This one isn’t.”

   “You shouldn’t wrap them tightly.”

   His heart stuttered, fearful now of the lie he’d spun. The air felt different than the other moments that John had noticed Sherlock's aversion to his hands, or his ceaseless scrubbing, his long showers, or his sudden fondness for latex. Now, it felt like John was not only seeing, but observing. 

   There must’ve be a distraction he could utilize, something to tear John’s thoughts away from his stupid gloves and the treacherous nature of his body beneath the gauze.

   But what of him was not traitorous?

   John should be allowed nowhere near him. 

   "I'm sorry," John said quietly. What did he apologize for? "I shouldn't have grabbed you, I didn't realize your hand was hurt. I was focused on your head." 

   Casually, John advanced, and oh, Sherlock had been wanting this, craving it, that easy movement that once surrounded them, when they could linger an inch apart all night, feeling the hum and the heat from the other’s skin - John rounded the kitchen table, and Sherlock’s breath shoved suddenly from his lungs like he’d been tackled again, as John reached for Sherlock’s covered hand, clutching the dish towel—

   Sherlock snapped his hand away. 

   John froze. 

   Then, he shifted, his body going rigid and hard. 

   “Fine. You want it that way?” 

   Sherlock stared. 

   “You haven’t been playing the violin for weeks. You don't type at your laptop when I'm in the room, you just watch the screen.”

   Push, push, push away. Distract, delay, disturb. Half his lip raised in a semblance of a snarl. “Now you’ll display the limits of your intellect,” Sherlock spat, “attempting to discern that which you know nothing about.”

   “Who do you think taught me that?”

   “You’re putting together pieces that don’t exist. If I wanted a nanny, I’d phone for one. I don’t need you.”

   Sherlock made to stalk away, to pace the edge of the kitchen and escape into his bedroom, but John knew him better. 

   John sidestepped the table, and Sherlock jerked away again - this time, John anticipated his move, and in a stride he covered the distance to the hallway, an arm extended out to the refrigerator in an impassable barricade, blocking Sherlock into the kitchen.

   John went on, his voice raised, "You wear your gloves outside, you've had Molly nick an entire package of disposables from the morgue. I'm afraid to ask you a question; you're snapping at everyone."

   Fine. He’d leave. Striking out onto London pavement would clear his mind, would give John ample opportunity to drop the subject in hopes of returning to even waters rather than the looming tides of anger.

   Nostrils flaring with agitation, Sherlock whirled - the instant he reached for the Belstaff, hanging beside the kitchen door, John pinned the thick fabric to the wall. Sherlock snatched the collar of his coat and pulled, but John didn’t let it go, curling a strong fist into the heavy wool.

   “You want me to be an idiot,” John accused, “you want me to notice things, and then you don’t.”

  “I don’t,” Sherlock protested childishly, teeth bared in furious, primal anger. He was something cornered, something feral and desperate for escape - it was no trouble to imagine why John felt determined to keep him inside the flat.

   He hadn't the slightest idea when he'd return if he left tonight.

   John hauled the Belstaff in to his chest, jerking Sherlock closer with it, refusing to let go. 

   “Here’s what I see,” John went on, “you weren’t fine after the hospital. You were shot. Who would be? But you weren’t like - like this.”

  “Like what?” Sherlock spat. 

   “You haven’t been fine, you’ve been cruel, and—”

  “All things I’ve always been!” Sherlock retorted. “Ask anyone.”

   “You’re not! I don’t care what Sally and Anderson or anyone fucking else says! You,” John snapped, “are better than anyone else. Anyone.”

   “I’m fine,” Sherlock insisted. 

   “You never would have done this, if you were fine! You never would have missed him!”

   With John distracted, Sherlock gave one last tremendous tug, failing to pull the Belstaff out of John's vice grip. He stepped back, chest heaving, mind a whirl. What was John saying?

   That he'd known what Sherlock had tried to make nondescript, that he'd been seeing, all this time, everything Sherlock failed to be? 

   “You’ve been doing this,” John snarled, throwing the coat to the floor, “Stop doing this.”

   Now the unsaid burned the atmosphere between them, a miasma of emotion. Something had long since boiled over, evident in the way one of John’s shoulders rolled back, the way he waited for some unseen killing blow.

   There remained one thing Sherlock could say to push John from that horrible habit of caring, to ensure he never intruded again, to remind him of who, exactly, had twisted them into this. And John waited, ready for Sherlock to spit it at him. 

   Without meaning for it to be, Sherlock’s silence was answer enough. 

   John’s chin dropped to his chest, and his cobalt eyes flickered to the cracks in the floorboards. “If you’re going to say it,” he growled, “then say it.”

   “I have nothing to say.”

   John’s left hand fidgeted by his thigh. 

   Sherlock said flatly, “You’re angry.”

   John’s voice dropped dangerously low, something tenor that Sherlock only heard when John threatened someone over Sherlock’s life. “You’re brave enough to jump off a fucking building, brave enough to get shot, brave enough to - to leave me behind for two years,” he shook, now, tremors wracking his arms, “but not brave enough to tell me that this is my fault?” 

   Immediately, Sherlock tried, “It’s not--” 

   “It is!” John shouted, his voice cracking at the volume, breaking the shell of anticipation, “You know exactly who did this to you, and you know exactly who put you in this position!” 

   There it was - all that festering quiet, that poison bubbling to the surface, that messy explosion of violent guilt. 

   His shoulders dropped, not prepared for a strike, but defeated. His face slackened, grief pooling in his eyes; the fight left John. "Mary shot you. You got shot, you died, Sherlock, because she wanted to keep herself a secret from me." 

   Desperation flooded Sherlock’s nervous system. He had not realised the strain his position had put on John, though it should have been obvious--

   John was right: Sherlock had been missing things. 

   Sherlock had to allow it. Right now, or else John would take it as his agreement, and he would leave. His entire career was a search for the truth, yet still his every survival instinct rebelled against itself as he fought through, wading against heavy opposition, to tell John the heart of the matter. 

   “It was never that. Never.”

   John ran a conflicted hand through his hair, looking away. Sherlock's heart lurched, his legs weak at the idea of John conceding the argument, packing his bags, and disappearing into obscurity. “Then what is it?” John begged. "Tell me.”

   Mouth dry, Sherlock parted his lips. Words escaped him. How would John accept any of it, having carried the idea that he was responsible for Sherlock's reclusiveness? That Mary was to blame, and by extension, John himself? What sentence could he construct to include everything? I'm sorry. Forgive me. For two years away. For never trusting you. For putting you through this. For hiding from you. I've taken you for granted. 

   Was it to be here, in the flat, standing in the darkened kitchen, bleeding, where Sherlock was to divulge his past for John? To relive his memory of Magnussen, crowding into his body, forcing his position? With blood matted in his wet hair, shoeless, aching and sore?

   At last, Sherlock settled upon the simple. “I didn’t want to see them.”

   Like worship, Sherlock stepped into John's space, offering his hands, palms up, to John. 

   Reverently, John took them in his own. Once more, that warmth of his skin greeted Sherlock, a shock from the cool air in the flat. For a moment, his attentions were clinical as he unwound the poorly-applied gauze from Sherlock's hand. The sensation smoothed away the memory of Magnussen's damp fingers, prying and taking and knowing. Sherlock blinked in surprise, as though John were healing him with just the barest of touches. Some woeful pride in the back of his head was appalled, but a larger part sagged in relief, released into nothingness. 

   The gauze fell away to join the Belstaff, revealing several superficial slits across his digits and the edge of his thumb. John sighed, moving to hold each of Sherlock's wrists, like he could keep them here, just a length apart. Sherlock let himself be held, captivated by John's hard-won attempt to understand. "Your... hands?”

   “Yes.” 

   “Why?”

   “You’d know.” Sherlock swallowed. “He knew.”

   The emphasis on some unknown figure. John was far from an idiot, as much as he thought Sherlock considered him one, and it was only a handful of seconds before it clicked. Air pushed against Sherlock’s wrist - John’s sharp exhale, his realisation, and a dawning horror. “It wasn’t a dream,” he said, “You were remembering, and I—”

   “Don’t.”

   “I didn’t see it, I’m sorry.”

   "Don't," Sherlock repeated. He wet his lips, gathering what remained of his courage. "I could not move or speak. He kissed my hand, and told me I had the hands of an artist. A woman's hands."

   Pressure tightened briefly over his hands, where they were held in John's. John frowned, cogs turning. 

   Anxiety rippled down Sherlock's figure. "It was a threat."

   "That wasn't just a threat, that was assault--"

   "It was the same threat he posed to Mary: exposure." Sherlock went on, his voice divorced from his body as if he spoke from very far away. If he didn't go on now, he never would, and he shivered. "I was assigned female at birth. Mummy was upset once she figured I was serious about my transition in grade school, but only for a short while." Sherlock struggled not to meet John's eye, to delay some imaginary rejection that hovered above the conversations. "Mycroft likes to say he always knew. I doubt anyone outside of my direct family members is aware of the situation. Except, now," Sherlock's eyes dropped to John, "you."

   "Sherlock, that's... 

   "I... didn't want him to tell you," Sherlock admitted, pressing on before John could pull away, could make a decision, "Tabloids, it wouldn't matter. People will believe what they want, be there truth to it or not, and I don't care what people think."

   John swallowed, audible in the quiet of the flat. "But it mattered, what I thought?"

   Bitterness welled inside of him, like blood from a shallow wound. “It shouldn’t matter.”

   “But it does.”

   And there was the thick of it. "Yes."

   John squeezed Sherlock's uninjured hand. With care, he lifted it to his mouth, and pressed his lips against the back of Sherlock's fingers. He spoke against Sherlock's skin, firm and determined, "It can matter. It does matter. To me. You matter to me." 

   Sherlock blinked, a warmth bursting at his sternum and something pricking suspiciously at his waterline, banishing all traces of dread. It was simple acceptance, a confirmation that the hope of normalcy was not lost between them, that neither of them had ruined anything. Just as always, John was saying, we'll go on. I know you. 

   "Now, let's have a look at your head."