Archive of Our Own

Anyone Else

“…Sherlock?”

Lestrade has to repeat the question; I wasn’t paying attention. “Hmm?” I nearly forgot he was there and look at him now, attempt to refocus on his face. “What?”

He gives me an irritated look. The nicotine withdrawal is partly to blame; the rest is simply my usual effect, it seems. “Sherlock. The body! Any thoughts, I said.”

I pull myself out of the crouch. I’m perfectly capable of deducing cause of death myself, but normally John is there to do it. Feel off-balance without him. (Hate it.) “Lead poisoning,” I say, out loud this time and hating the repetition. “Obvious.”

“S – ”

“Yes, I’m sure,” I say, cutting him off. Gesture at the corpse and rattle off several deductions based on evidence that Lestrade and his team could have found if they’d actually opened their eyes and looked, but that would be a larger miracle than the universe is prepared to grant today. “And finally,” I say, winding up, “he’s been sleeping with his wife’s sister.”

“Really?” Lestrade sounds dumbfounded. Amazing that he ever passed whatever examinations are required to become a regular police officer, much less a detective inspector. They must have simply rounded up a number of individuals off the streets and handed out the titles at random.

“Yes, really,” I say, the irritation extremely evident. “Question them; you’ll see.”

“But how – ”

“All the signs are there.” Have no patience for this, for the endless answering of pointless, obvious questions. Don’t feel like explaining it today. (Refuse to admit that this is only because I lack my usual audience of one. It’s only John for whom I ever perform, showing off the intellect he loves to admire, or used to, at any rate. Perhaps domestic joy has filled in this need on an ongoing and permanent basis.) “Infidelity,” I say, hoping that the five syllables won’t strain Lestrade’s feeble mind too much. “It’s patently obvious.” I point them out, enumerating indicators that could have been used in a murder mystery written by a thirteen-year-old. Lestrade boggles at them and is forced to agree, though he insists on quibbling over how I knew that the feminine perfume lingering in the corpse’s hair wasn’t that of his wife’s. I roll my eyes and ask if his eyes were even open while we inspected the bedroom or whether he’d actively tried to avoid taking in any of the available data. He says something defensive and sharp and I tune him out and wish again that John was here. He always buffers Lestrade’s stupider moments and heads the rest of them off (don’t even know their names, this new lot – am simply grateful that Donovan got herself promoted to desk work) before they can bother me too much.

He had to stay home with the baby; it’s Mary’s bridge night. Bridge is new; Mary never played before. Don’t know whether I’m supposed to be impressed by this new addition to her cover of being specifically English or what she’s trying to prove, but if I know anything about the woman it’s that there’s nothing she does without reason. Everything is calculated for effect somehow. Turning up the hems of her trousers rather than getting them properly tailored so that she’ll come across looking somehow “cute” in her un-put-togetherness. It’s meant to engender protectiveness, particularly in John. Something as small as that can work on him; I’ve seen its effectiveness. Letting the roots grow out in her hair so that she’ll look like the harried mother of a five-month-old baby rather than a killer for hire, wanted in over twelve countries, or so my brother tells me. Another bid for John’s sympathy and understanding.

I’ve no idea what John thinks of that at heart, but it’s certainly working on the surface, at least; he’s at home with the baby while she’s out, and I am on my own. I always knew this would happen, of course. Knew that once the baby arrived, everything would be permanently changed. It’s the twenty-first century; John could hardly have expected any woman to volunteer to stay home with the baby around the clock, and particularly not this woman. Mary is on maternity leave from the clinic, so she is home during the days, but the evenings John is expected to stay home with their child while Mary goes out. Am personally at a loss to explain how this is a logical division of labour when John works at the clinic all day. Children are expensive; they need the money. I’ve no doubt that Mary has considerably more salted away somewhere, but I haven’t been privy to their financial discussions. Presumably John would know by now had Mary volunteered this information at any point. My brother is still tracking her accounts, with little success thus far. Every paper trail goes cold at some point.

He’s been on precisely four cases with me since Christmas. I never see him unless I go to the flat, and then Mary is there even when she isn’t. Her presence is there with us. Nothing is the same. John is tired and cranky and preoccupied with his infant daughter, not that it seems to give him much joy. He is dutiful and careful and even smiles at her now and then, but he looks like a shell of himself, the infrequent smiles practically cracking the skin of his face. He needs to get out and run around and shoot at things or people. He needs to save someone. (Me being his first choice.) He needs the thrill of the chase again, his pulse spiking, adrenaline pounding in his ears. I don’t know whether or not he needs me for that. But Mary and her bridge nights don’t appear to be providing it.

Their marriage is not my concern. I’ve told myself that from the start. When John proposed, he changed alliances, reordering his priorities forever. I understand that. He has a wife and child now and his first duty and priority will always be them. There’s not much place left after that for anything else. Anyone else.

I watch them sometimes, during my infrequent visits, stifling in the suburbs, wearing my coat and shoes throughout, suffering through Mary’s flavourless cooking (too many carbohydrates; meats always overdone, vegetables always underdone) and wish for one of John’s meals, but apparently he isn’t permitted to cook when there’s company. I’m “company”, it seems, relegated to the formalities thereof and stripped of the privileges granted to friends and family. I watch them take the baby in turns, fussing over toys that make an obnoxious racket, the entire conversation suffused with the baby no matter how much anyone else tries to introduce a new subject. John will come up with something and we’ll be speaking and Mary will simply begin talking over me with something about their child to John, some all-important aside that couldn’t have waited for the end of a sentence. I’ve no particular objection to the baby and have even consented to hold her now and then. John asked once if I thought she looked like him. He’d kept the question so casual that I knew it was feigned, but was at a loss to understand the reason behind it. I’d shrugged and informed him that his daughter looked like a baby and likely would for some time yet before specific features would emerge. He seemed slightly deflated by my answer, so I’d changed my mind and speculated that Laura had his eyes, and refrained from adding that babies’ eyes apparently change, or so Mrs Hudson had informed me when I’d said as much to her, once. That seemed to please him, though, and he’d given me one of his rare, tired smiles and it somehow made the long subway trip and Mary’s over-boiled pasta or hard-as-nails home-baked bread feel worthwhile.

But I am an outsider among them now; that’s quite clear. It isn’t John’s fault. Some part of him wants this life. Or thinks he does. (What’s the difference? It’s what he thinks he wants that matters, in the end. I believe I know what would make him happier, but he doesn’t think that he wants that, our old life.)

Whereas I want it more than anything. Everything seems colourless and flat without him and the work is beginning to lose its appeal. One must do something, I suppose. This is as good as anything else, but without John, the idiocy of Scotland Yard’s “finest” is grating on my nerves to previously undiscovered extents. I miss John. No one else laughs at the things I say which are designed to be humorous; no one else breaks the rules with me. Without John, there’s simply no point. I feel like a rudderless boat cut adrift.

Lestrade is talking. Has been for some time, it seems. I refocus and listen to four words before catching his drift then interrupt him and excuse myself. I’ve done enough here; the rest can be done by his pack of fools. I suddenly need to not be with these people. He lets me go, sounding something between aggravated and disappointed (the latter is worse than the former) and find a taxi at the edge of the grotty development and direct the driver to take me back to the empty house that I still call home.

(How can it be home, when John isn’t there?)

***

Tesco’s is crowded. I loathe grocery shopping, but Mrs Hudson is in Devonshire visiting her sister and therefore I am forced to do my own shopping. The only times I never minded going was when John would trick me into going with him, usually on the way home from somewhere. I would put up a fuss on the outside, but secretly didn’t really mind it. The same indulgent smiles that people would give us as we bickered secretly pleased me as much as they annoyed John. I used to instigate arguments for that alone.

On my own, however, shopping for one holds less than zero appeal. Worse, I’m standing in the frozen vegetable aisle thinking of how John used to put peas in that thing he used to make, with chicken and potatoes, wondering if he used frozen peas or fresh for it, when I hear a familiar voice.

“Sherlock Holmes?” The voice is light-pitched but there’s steel under it; with this particular speaker, there always is.

I look up without turning my head. “Harriet.” My voice is stiff; she and I have never got on particularly well. John and I used to liken the relationship to that of himself and my annoying sibling. Though at least mine has his occasional uses, whereas…

“It’s Harry, damn it,” she says, annoyed.

I execute a quarter turn in her direction, close my eyes and issue a forced smile. “Of course. My apologies.” She’s with her partner, it seems. Perfect; I do so love being outnumbered. (Reminded of my perpetual singularity, now that John is gone.) I focus on the partner. Can’t remember her name. Margaret? Marilyn? Elizabeth? No, really no clue. “And you,” I say slowly, drawing it out, finger lifted as though that will help remember.

The pause becomes a little too long for social custom, evidently. “Patricia,” Harry says sharply.

I wasn’t even close. Well, traditional English name, full version – really not that bad, I revise. “Patricia,” I repeat. “Of course.” Am already bored of this interaction. “Well – ” I begin, but Harry interrupts.

“What are you doing out this way?” she asks, staring at me.

I notice that she speaks a lot more quickly when sober and further deduce that she is sober and has been for quite awhile. She looks better – paler skin, eyes less tired; even the lines beneath them seem to have disappeared. Her hair would be the same blond/silver mix as John’s but she’s coloured it a becoming shade of ash blond and it suits her. She’s lost weight, too. Patricia is skinny as an adolescent boy with sleek, dark hair that’s cut shorter than John’s. She’s about ten years younger, but they’re holding hands, each with a shopping basket draped over her free arm. Can’t remember how long they’ve been together. John used to drag me for dinner with Harry and her various girlfriends as they changed, but since my return, I suppose Mary has inherited this dubious honour. (It was an honour; I see that now. Resentment flares. Add it to the long list of that which I resent concerning Mary Morstan.)

“Sherlock?” Harry repeats, impatient.

I recall that she asked a question and grasp after it. “Oh – just stopping by, on the way home from a case.”

“You don’t live anywhere near here,” Harry reiterates, eyes narrowing suspiciously. “You’re not spying on us, are you?”

I gape at her. “Spying on you? Why on earth would I spy on you?”

This, inexplicably, makes her even angrier. “I don’t know why I bother talking to you,” she snaps. “Honestly!”

“No one invited you to do so,” I return, about to add that they don't live anywhere in the vicinity, either - last I checked, they lived in Westminster - but Patricia puts a hand on Harry’s arm and says something soothing. My version of a Patricia, the one who kept an eye on my behaviour in public, isn’t here. (I should up-end a display or something, just to punish him for having left me. As though it would make a difference.)

Harry turns back to me. “Sorry,” she says, Patricia’s slender arms woven about her left arm. “Look – have you seen my brother lately?”

(Is she trying to rub it in?) “No,” I tell her, a slight edge to my voice. “Not particularly recently. Have you?”

Harry’s cheeks darken. “What is that supposed to mean?”

She knows precisely what I mean. “His wedding?” I remind her, eyebrows lifting coolly. “Have you forgotten that you deliberately neglected to attend your own brother’s wedding?”

Her flush deepens but she doesn’t back down. “I didn’t ‘forget’,” Harry retorts. “I’d call that a boycott, actually.”

Patricia sighs and looks at the floor.

I haven’t heard this before. “You ‘boycotted’ John’s wedding?” I repeat. “Why would you do that?”

“She doesn’t like Mary,” Patricia volunteers.

I blink. This is surprising. Though perhaps it shouldn’t be, I think immediately. Can hardly see them getting along: Mary with her cutesy, patterned clothing and her smug, knowing-everything-about-John ways versus Harry with her homeless shelter volunteer nights and Oxfam reformed-grunge style. They both have tattoos, only Mary thinks that the butterfly at the base of her spine is a secret known only to John and presumably David, whereas Harry’s full-back exploding planet is in no way intended to be a secret and likely known to much of London. Queer, female London, at any rate.

“Do you?” Harry challenges me, into the silence of my non-response.

I lift my chin slightly, mouth tightening at the corners. “That’s neither here nor there.”

Her hand shoots out and grabs my wrist. “Do you or don’t you?” The steel is back again. “Tell me the truth, Sherlock.”

I look down at her hand instead of into her face. “I don’t see what my opinion matters.”

“I want to know.” Harry isn’t backing down, and Patricia is pointedly not running interference. Perhaps she wants to know, too.

I glance at Harry’s face. At this range, it’s impossible to miss how startlingly similar her eyes are to John’s, the grey-blue darkening in their intensity, just as John’s do. “Why?”

“You loved him. You loved John. I know you did.” Harry’s grip is firm. “So I want to know: are you happy with his choice of partner?”

In timely reminder, the bullet wound gives a throb. It’s healed, but still does this now and then. I can’t just open my mouth and say, She shot me in the heart. What do you think? Harry would raise petitions, go to the police, try to have Mary convicted. This is too big to involve her. “Not particularly,” I say, my mouth gone dry. I yank my wrist free. “Satisfied?”

“No,” Harry says flatly. “I don’t trust that woman. I don’t like the way she treats my brother. She manipulates him. Makes him change himself. I don’t like her and I don’t want John around her. But you know he’d never listen to me on the subject.”

“She strikes me as dangerous,” Patricia volunteers quietly. I look at her; she reaches for Harry’s hand and pulls her away from me now. “There are too many closed doors in her eyes.”

Despite the silly wording of this, it occurs to me that Patricia has seen Mary clearly and objectively. That’s precisely it: too many closed doors in her eyes, in her life. An entire pastiche of a past created for John’s benefit, not a hint of the truth there, just bits and pieces of other people’s lives stitched together like a quilt to hide her real past. I decide now that Patricia is all right. “But he’s your brother,” I remind Harry, my shoulders stiffening. “You still should have been there at his wedding. I’m hardly an expert on the subject, but I’m aware that loving someone means supporting them, even if you don’t agree with his choices.”

Harry’s mouth twists. “Maybe,” she concedes, but then returns doggedly to her point. “You have to get him away from her. If we’re talking about love, then for his sake, do something.”

I don’t ask what makes her think I loved (love) John. Some questions are so basic as to be insulting. “They have a child,” I say flatly. “He’ll never leave her.”

They exchange some sort of glance which I am at a loss to interpret, but Harry finally backs down. “She’s all right?” Harry asks. “My niece? You’ve seen her, I take it.”

I nod, remembering suddenly that the child is family for Harry, too. “Yes. She’s doing well. Healthy,” I add. It seems important.

Harry nods and suddenly looks a bit defeated. “Well, all right,” she says. “Maybe I’ll give John a call. Drop by sometime. I’d like to see the baby.”

“We have some things for her,” Patricia adds. “For Laura. We’ve only seen her twice… I don’t think Mary likes it when we come around.”

Ah: so the antipathy does indeed run both ways. Interesting. “Then find a time when it’s only John and the child,” I say firmly. “Most evenings would do.” I remember the peas, then suddenly decide I’m finished grocery shopping. I’ll just subsist on takeaway. “Good night.”

I leave their goodbyes trailing after me and abandon the trolley with its four apples and nothing else and leave the store. The thought of taking the tube back to Westminster is too depressing; all of that humanity exuding its problems and thoughts and noise. Opt for a taxi instead. The silence in the car is nearly as oppressive as the noise of the tube would have been.

***

Lestrade calls hours before I would have woken naturally, though the sun has just barely risen. I roll over in bed and reach for the phone, rubbing my eyes in the process. See his name on the screen and squint at it for a moment before waking up sufficiently to swipe my thumb over the screen to answer. “What?”

“Seen the papers yet?” He sounds grim.

“Of course not; I was asleep until now.”

“Go down and get one and call me back.”

He hangs up, which is uncharacteristically abrupt. Intrigued despite my lack of alertness, I pull a dressing gown over my arms and pad downstairs barefoot, tying it loosely in case Hudders is about. I suspect she isn’t; she usually brings the papers up with the tea, and neither were in evidence in the kitchen. I collect the two rolled papers from the floor below the mail slot and take them upstairs. The Times’ headline has it: MURDER OF TERRY WILKINSON followed by the subheading Convicted murderer found dead in own bedroom. There are no photographs. I pull the phone from my right pocket and press the button to speed-dial Lestrade. “When?” I ask when he picks up.

“Body was found yesterday evening,” Lestrade says grimly. “Coroner’s still working on time of death. He’s no John, I’ll tell you that. The two of you available?”

“I am,” I say, frowning at the phone. Surely he knows I wouldn’t have any idea, regarding John. “I’ll see if John is. He probably hasn’t left for the clinic yet.”

“Great,” Lestrade says in obvious relief. “Listen – I’ve got to go; it’s a zoo here. I’ll text the address.”

I click off and stand there, looking at the phone for a moment. What day is it? Tuesday? Wednesday? They all run together. A weekday, that much is certain. Will John want to come? I hope so. I press down on the button for him and wait. What time is it? Check: seventeen minutes to eight. Will he be sleeping? Or worse, still in bed, but not sleeping? (Shudder.) Will Mary answer his phone (hate it when she does that) and berate me for waking the infant? (Come on, John. Pick up.) He does on the fourth ring, sounding sleepy. (Good.)

“Sherlock?” He’s clearly only just woken, voice scratchy and thick.

“John,” I say briskly. “Listen, there’s been a rather grisly murder and Lestrade’s coroner is incompetent, like usual. He’s asked for us. Can you come?” Realise I’m holding my breath, but I can’t seem to release it without his answer.

There’s a moment as his thoughts shuffle themselves about, synapses forming between my words, his neural responses, and his mouth. “Where is it?” he asks at last, already sounding more awake.

The text pings in my ear as he asks. “Hold on,” I say, and look at Lestrade’s address. “St. Giles Avenue, number eight, in Dagenham.” I give him a moment to process this, then add, “It’s closer to you than Baker Street is, so I’ll meet you there?”

This is a gamble, as he’s not yet agreed to come, but there’s a short pause and then he says, “Yeah, all right. I’ll be there in an hour. I’ve got to have a shower first.”

“Fine, fine,” I say. “An hour, then. See you.”

He hangs up before me. I tear into action, making for the shower first, myself. We’re going on a case again! It’s been nearly five full weeks since the last, the month and a half between broken only by a listless visit featuring Mary’s cooking and placid dampening effort on John and I. I’ll finally see him again, without her! I shower efficiently, dress, and get downstairs and into a taxi, coat billowing behind me. With the morning traffic, John will almost certainly beat me there; with rush hour traffic I expect it will take close to forty-five minutes for me to get to Dagenham from Baker Street. I order the cabbie to step on it and he complies.

Nevertheless, I am there before John and disappointed not to see him. Lestrade is patently relieved to see me, though. He takes me into the house and orders the underlings away for a few minutes, showing me what’s left of the body. The victim has been viciously dismembered, body parts distributed everywhere. “But what actually killed him?” I ask aloud.

“Excellent question,” John says from behind us and we both turn, Lestrade slower than me.

He’s already wearing rubber gloves and is holding a left hand, looking troubled. (No matter how many gruesome crime scenes we’ve seen, he always looks troubled when he first sees the body. It makes me feel peculiarly sentimental toward him, every time. It seems that neither of us have become desensitised to either of those factors: John to the death, me to John’s response.) “John,” I say, my relief even more marked than Lestrade’s upon seeing me. “You made it.”

He lifts his brows and gives an almost-smile. “Clearly,” he says, walking over. “Who was he, then?”

“Terry Wilkinson,” Lestrade says. “You remember: murderer, killed another man in some kind of hand-to-hand fight. He was just released on parole two months ago.”

“How long ago?” John asks, frowning. He doesn’t remember.

“Eight years,” Lestrade says, confirming my thought that this was before our time. The name sounds only vaguely familiar to me.

“How did he commit the murder?” I ask. “Was it accidental?”

“Looked that way at first, though some on the jury weren’t convinced. Seemed like a fight with a friend gone wrong. There was never any evidence that it was premeditated, though.”

“Was there evidence that it was definitely an accident?” John presses. “I mean, if not, this could be revenge, couldn’t it?” He looks to me for confirmation. (Feel a touch of pride; he still looks to me for something, then.)

“It could,” I agree. “So we need to determine actual cause of death first.”

“Right,” Lestrade says. “I’ve got a coroner looking over the individual pieces as we bag and bring them over, but so far he’s out of luck. I’d love if you two could help him.”

John brightens internally, though externally it only shows as a tightening of his shoulders. He loves feeling needed, feeling useful. “Where?”

“That way.” Lestrade points. “Kitchen table. Seemed the best place for it. I’ll keep sending pieces over.”

“I want all the information from the trial,” I inform him, following John out of the room. “Get the file sent over.”

“It wasn’t my case, but I’ll get it,” Lestrade assures me.

In the kitchen, the coroner is huddled over a collection of body parts. Most are in decent condition, not hacked or mutilated so much as merely separated from the rest of the parts. The coroner appears to be in his early thirties at best. John introduces himself, then asks, nicely, “Tired?”

“Yeah. It was an early one.” The coroner offers a thin smile. “Looks like it’s going to be a late one, too.”

John claps him on the shoulder. “Take a break,” he says. “We’ve got this. Go and help Lestrade find the rest of him.”

“Sure thing, Dr Watson.” With evident relief, the coroner takes himself off, leaving John and I alone.

It immediately feels slightly constrained. It’s been nearly three weeks since I’ve seen him. I feel an unusual compulsion to attempt to make smalltalk, but past attempts have proven that John hates it when I do that, even when he isn’t actively angry with me. Don’t know what to say in that case. We never used to have trouble talking to one another, but we’ve drifted since Christmas and I feel it keenly. (Hate it.) “Well, that’s him dealt with,” I try, meaning the coroner, then wait to gauge John’s reaction.

He snorts lightly. “Bit out of his depth, I’d say at a guess.” He picks up the heart. “All right, where do you want to start? Do we just go at random?”

Right, yes: focusing on the work has always helped us before. “Internal organs first?” I suggest. “If it’s a puncture wound through the dermis, it’s likely that the skin will have already broken down given the dismemberment, whereas – ”

“ – a puncture wound would have punctured something else on the inside,” John says, cottoning on at once. He gives me a quick smile then. It’s been awhile since either of us finished the other’s sentence and at the moment I can feel that we’re both aware of the fact. “Right,” John said, breaking the spell. “I’ll start with this. Put some gloves on and have a look at the lungs, or lung, rather; seems we’ve only got one so far.”

This is one of the hard and fast rules of our work: in any other area, I give the orders, but when it comes to examining the remains, John’s word is law. I go to the box of rubber gloves and snap on a pair without objection, then pick up what appears to be the remains of Terry Wilkinson’s left lung. We work in silence. John finally finishes with the heart after I’ve located and examined the spleen and picks up a plastic bag containing both kidneys. The silence is comfortable, at least: this is familiar ground.

“So,” John says after a bit. “Revenge kill, you think?”

“We won’t know until we determine the cause of death,” I say, “and even then it would only be a likely theory. But it could be, yes.”

“Why? Because he was paroled so early?”

“Precisely,” I say. “The dismemberment could be a reference to something. Or else we have a murder founded on completely separate reasons: Wilkinson could have got himself into some new trouble while in prison, or after his release. I mean, he was a murderer; it suggests a certain inherent lack of mental stability.” John shoots me a wry glance then, and I add, “Present company excepted, of course,” meaning both of us.

He falls silent for a bit, obviously thinking, and scrawling notes in his little notepad regarding the state of the intestines in his left hand. “There’s a difference,” he says after a bit.

“Hmm?” I hold an eyeball up to the light.

“We’re not murderers, either of us. It’s not the same. There were reasons. There was forethought.”

“That generally makes it worse in the eyes of one’s typical jury,” I say dryly, “but I know what you mean.”

“Intent matters,” John insists. There’s a stubborn set to his jaw and mouth that I see when I glance over, and suddenly realise that he’s thinking of Mary. Best not to go there at all.

“Yes,” I agree quietly. “It does.” I leave it at that.

The silence becomes strained until John finally breaks it again. “All these are fine. Have you seen the liver?”

“Not as yet,” I say. “I’ll go and see how Lestrade’s getting on with the rest of it.” I go, hating that it’s a slight relief. Being with John never used to be a trial in any way at all.

***

The day does go long. The young coroner, evidently one Brian Wells, is currently napping on the victim’s sofa. John and I are sitting at the kitchen table, pouring through Wilkinson’s email correspondence. John pinpointed the cause of death after two hours of picking through body parts, finally discovering a puncture wound in the right ankle that led to his exasperated announcement that Wilkinson had been poisoned prior to having been dismembered. The body was gathered into a body bag and taken to the lab for processing. Time of death has yet to be determined, but that part is less important. The motive is all that matters.

“What’s this?” John asks, clicking on an email. The file is sitting open on the table next to me with Wilkinson’s complete phone records, but his email had been inaccessible at that point; his lawyer had managed to keep it out of the trial somehow. Luckily for us, he’d left his laptop on and the email logged in. John leans forward and squints tiredly at the screen. “What’s all this about a vase?”

I lean in and read. “An heirloom vase,” I repeat, staring at the message. “That never came up in the court case. Interesting.”

John yawns. “Mmm. Yeah. Interesting.”

I turn my head and look at him. It’s been a long day, but it’s not yet nine in the evening. (Think with a stab of vindictive pleasure at Mary having had to stay in with the baby for once, instead of going out.) I study John’s face, taking note of the heavy lines under his eyes, the greyish cast to his skin. Frown. “John. Why are you so tired? I know it’s been a long day, but…”

He shakes his head before I’ve finished speaking. “It’s nothing,” he says, in that tone that warns not to even start, as he would put it. He doesn’t want to talk about this and is already balking away from it. “I just didn’t get a very good sleep last night, that’s all. It was fine. Just short.”

He’s already revising his words. My frown deepens and I look at him properly for the first time all day. I’ve been so hesitant around him, not wanting to pry or offend or say the wrong thing, but now, observing him properly, several things strike me as slightly odd. “Your shirt is quite wrinkled. Were you wearing it yesterday?”

“It was the first shirt I saw,” John says, not denying it, and conveniently also not looking at me. “You called before I’d dressed and I was in a hurry. It was on the chair so I put it on. Sorry.”

I lean closer, inhaling. “It doesn’t smell like you.”

He twitches away, glaring – yet still not directly at me. “Of course it does. Who else would it smell like?” he wants to know, defensiveness spiking out on all sides.

I sniff again. Lightly floral, undertones of sandalwood. “Not you,” I repeat, underscoring the words. “And that’s hardly Claire-de-la-Lune, either.”

John’s eyes drop to the surface of the kitchen table. He doesn’t respond to this.

“John.” My voice is sharp, sharper than I intended it to be. “Would you mind telling me what’s going on?”

John’s fingers pinch at the edge of the table. “It’s none of your business,” he says stiffly.

“The hell it isn’t!”

My anger takes us both by surprise, shocking John into actually looking at me. The shock turns immediately into belligerence. “What concern is it of yours?” he demands, face reddening as his temper flares.

I turn on my chair, confrontational, gesticulate with my hands. “What concern is it of mine if you’re – ”

“If I’m what?” John cuts in, his voice dangerous.

“If you’re – sleeping around,” I finish, my own temper entirely unabated. “You’re my best friend!”

“So?” John shoots back, as though he believes this is honestly well beyond the limits of what I am granted clearance to know or question.

It hurts. “So it involves me!” His face takes on a stubborn look. I press the point. “So you are, then?” I ask. Silence. Lack of denial. I swallow. “John – why didn’t you tell me? And – why?”

He has the grace to look away, cheeks reddening further, and mumbles something unintelligible.

“What?” I ask.

He clears his throat. “No one was meant to know, all right.”

It’s not all right. I’m at a loss to explain to myself why this should make me angry. I loathe the thought of him with Mary, so why do I feel so – betrayed – about this? “How many times?”

He shrugs. “A few. Just – here and there.”

“More than once? With the same person?” I clarify. My heart is pounding unpleasantly in my chest.

He shakes his head. “No. Never. It’s always just – anonymous, sort of.”

“Except that people know who you are,” I point out. “You’ve had plenty of media coverage.”

John makes a derisive sound. “Tell Mary that. She would beg to differ. Anyway, I’m not famous. And my face blends in quite nicely, I’ve noticed.”

I don’t know what to say. “When did it start?” I feel numb.

John shrugs again, eyes on his hands, which are fidgeting with each other on the table. “January sometime. After Laura was born.”

He’s never been so taciturn with me before. Not when he wasn’t absolutely furious with me. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I repeat.

His shoulder jerks slightly. “I’ve barely seen you,” he mutters. “And when I have, Mary was there. And I didn’t think you’d understand. Somehow.”

This last is a shot and I feel it keenly. It lances into my flesh and ricochets around the inside of my rib cage. “I’m… it’s not up to me to tell you what to do,” I say, the words feeling and sounding completely inadequate and bearing no relation to anything I feel about this. It sounds as lame as it is. Try again. “I just… I didn’t realise you were so unhappy. With Mary.”

John’s shoulders are stiffer than I’ve ever seen them. “Can we talk about something else, please?” The words are as rigid as his frame.

I stare uncomprehendingly at his profile, closed off to me. “John…”

“Please,” John says, and it’s half plea and half snarl. He doesn’t look at me, but his voice softens as he says, after a short, awful moment has passed, “For me, Sh – ” He stops, unable to say my name, his voice breaking into a whisper.

My throat hurts, something invisible blocking it from within. “Of course,” I say woodenly. Suddenly I need to not be anywhere near him. I close the file and the laptop, unplugging it. “Why don’t we call it a night, then. I’ll go through all of this at h – at Baker Street.” Keep my voice brisk and completely devoid of inflection, on my feet and moving. “I’ll text you tomorrow about whatever I find. If you’re up for staying on the case with me, that is.”

John hasn’t looked up. “Yeah. Sure.” His voice sounds as dry and brittle as straw. “Do that. Text me.”

“All right.” It is simultaneously both a relief and a sharp pain to turn and walk out of the room, but staying in it is unthinkable at the moment. Lestrade has gone back to the Yard; there is no need to tell anyone where I’m going. I walk out to Siviter Lane and hail a taxi, the laptop and file under my arm.

All the way home, I can’t stop analysing this and trying to understand why I personally feel so betrayed by it. John is already married to someone other than me, to someone who has shot me, threatened me, been quite prepared to dispatch me again should I have failed to comply. Surely John cheating on that person should fill me with vindictive pleasure rather than the hollowness consuming me at the moment. Is it only that he didn’t confide in me? That I had no idea that his marriage was doing as badly as that? The last I heard, he forgave Mary at my parents’ house on Christmas Day, no less. They were holding hands on the tarmac when they came to see me off. Around the flat, they’ve just seemed… well. I reconsider. There wasn’t actually all that much contact, was there? They kept the conversation on the baby. Mary would touch him in passing, but did John ever return those touches? Did my imagination merely fill in those blanks, assuming? (Have my observational skills really become so biased by sentiment as to have misled me thus?) And I still cannot comprehend my own, sickeningly jealous reaction.

I suppose that some part of me had always hoped that if it ever fell apart with Mary, John would eventually come back to me. Not in any sort of romantic way, of course; he isn’t inclined that way. I tend to hold the same theory about John’s sexuality as I do about his lifestyle preferences, that he doesn’t actually know what he would or would not want if he knew how to be honest with himself about it, but what matters is what John thinks he wants – or doesn’t want, in the case of his sexuality in general. I never for a moment imagined he would ever feel (choose to feel? Allow himself to feel?) the same way about me as I do about him, that it would ever eventually develop into the sort of thing whose lack hollows me out with want. He would never have loved me. But I had thought he might eventually come home and resume a more or less monastic life and solves crimes and lead an otherwise pleasantly domestic life with me. I had not considered third parties. Other options.

He will never come back to me. This is, I realise, mechanically climbing the stairs to the flat, the bottom line. What’s actually bothering me: there will always be another useless direction to throw himself toward, another unlikely and unfulfilling lifeline. Anyone else but me. John is never going to come home.

***

He texts me first, in the end. I never went to bed, but eventually fell asleep on the sofa toward dawn. His text wakes me just after noon. It’s extremely short: Any progress with the file/emails?

I sit up, yawn, and remember the events of the previous night. It feels like the mental equivalent of having slept in a suit, which I did. There is a cold cup of tea on the coffee table, along with the newspapers. I text John back. Not yet. Will text later. Get up, pull off the twisted suit jacket and hang it over the back of a kitchen chair, then add the trousers. It will have to be cleaned and pressed. I leave the shirt there, too, then continue to the bedroom to remove what’s left before stepping into the shower. With my eyes closed under the hot water, some part of my brain that will never fully shut off helpfully suggests that what I particularly crave at this moment is a seven-percent solution of something quite specific. Shove negation toward this mental voice and inform it that it will have to make do with coffee. Very strong coffee, then, said voice responds dryly. Shut up. I shut off the water and decide to take myself in search of an espresso (or five) before I will even touch the case. Last night’s emotional setback is impeding the speed and clarity of my thoughts, and the one person who can help inspire them and set them to rights would only cloud everything further at the moment.

Nonetheless. There is work to be done. I shut off the shower and my mind and allow myself to think of nothing but the case. I wasted time last night, and besides which, the work itself will give me something else to think of other than the fact that John is sleeping around and couldn’t even bring himself to tell me about it. (Stop it. Even acknowledging the subject mentally is too much.) I ignore Hudders’ cold tea and wish she was about to fetch up several espressos from the café downstairs. Never mind. I dress and go down myself, then arrange everything at the desk, spreading the contents of the file over the surface.

It takes much of the afternoon to review, but close to four I send Lestrade a text with a very specific question. He calls back an hour later; I listen, then disconnect and call John. (Focus only on the case.) He answers at once, saying my name. “John,” I say in response, stupidly glad to hear his voice. (He’s there. Not off doing unspeakable things with strangers.) “It was revenge.”

“Tell me. Or should I come over?” John asks at once.

Hesitate. “Can you come?”

“I’ll get a cab,” he promises, and hangs up.

His speed pleases me despite myself. He does still want to be part of this, then. Do this with me. Our work. (The “our” has felt more honorary than practical of late.) I spend the interlude waiting for him by arranging everything so that he’ll see it clearly and come to the same conclusion in his slower, more round-about way. It used to shame me to admit, but he would occasionally catch some small detail of something I had passed over, thinking too trivial, by having it all laid out before him before, something I would have otherwise missed, or whose significance failed to connect with a specific cultural reference or some other such thing. This is why I need John, my anything-but-ordinary-everyman. He’s not one of them, one of the sheep, but he lives and breathes their air (and eats their grass? This metaphor surely has its limitations) in a way in which I never will. He speaks that language; he knows their customs, whereas I will always be a foreigner in my own country.

When he comes, his step is quick on the stairs. I understand: he feels badly about how things went last night, too, and wants to make up for it by appearing extra helpful now. Well. I won’t deny him that, at least. (The work always saved us.) “John,” I say, looking up as he appears in the doorway. “Come in.”

He does so, eyes glancing over me once, hands on his hips. “What have we got, then?” he asks.

“Revenge,” I say again, pointing at a particular print-out of an email. “The vase. The heirloom Ming vase, destroyed deliberately by a longtime friend. Act of revenge for Wilkinson having slept with the woman he desired. The friend, Barclay Higgins, was the ‘accidental’ victim of the bar fight that put Wilkinson behind bars.”

John frowns. “So: Wilkinson sleeps with some woman, Higgins gets angry and destroys a valuable vase, Wilkinson picks a fight and makes what’s clearly premeditated murder seem like an accidental death.”

“Right,” I say. “Wilkinson goes to court and from there to prison.”

“But that doesn’t explain this,” John says, pointing at the more recent photos of Wilkinson’s dismembered remains. “Wilkinson goes to prison, serves only eight years and is paroled – then gets murdered and hacked up not two months later?”

“Also revenge,” I tell him, smiling. I point to another email, an insurance report. “The Ming vase wasn’t just ‘destroyed’, it was broken carefully and systematically – well enough that any dealer still could have recognised what it was and what it had been worth. Higgins was deliberate about it, making sure that the damage was clearly and carefully made to avoid any suspicion that it had been accidental. The vase was broken into exactly twenty-seven pieces.”

John gets it then. “Ergo, he wanted Wilkinson to know that it was he who had destroyed it, rather than having just knocked it over or something.”

“Precisely,” I say. “Interesting fact, and one that Wilkinson’s jury never knew: it took me a bit of digging to come up with this theory, but it was right; Lestrade just confirmed it: Higgins was buried before the court case. However, before Wilkinson was taken in for questioning, the grave was exhumed. Higgins’ corpse was removed, cut into pieces, and replaced. No one ever knew until I had Lestrade check.”

“How many pieces?” John asks warily.

“You know already,” I tell him. “Twenty-seven.”

“And Wilkinson’s body – ” John stops, his mouth open, looking at me. “Don’t tell me – also twenty-seven pieces?”

I nod. “Revenge within revenge within revenge within revenge. Woman, vase, friend, murderer.”

“But the question,” John says doggedly, “is still of who killed Terry Wilkinson, and why? Was it a friend of Higgins who was out to avenge his friend – in that very precise, logical way? I mean, those cuts were clean. Not an amateur’s work, sawing through body and tissue like that.”

My eyes glint at him. “I know,” I say. It’s hard not to feel a thrill of excitement. “And I have no idea who or why.”

John processes this internally. “Wow,” he says, after a moment. “So what do we do now?”

We. (Relish this silently.) “I’m not sure,” I admit. “I don’t know whether this is a question of straight-up revenge and whether it’s now finished, or if it’s something larger.”

John frowns and nods at the same time, then looks me over again. “Have you eaten today?” he asks.

The question brings me up short and I realise with a touch of recrimination that I neglected to do so. “No,” I say, hoping he won’t chastise me over it. “I forgot. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” John says gruffly. “I should have – ” He stops himself, restarts. “Hungry?” he asks instead.

“A bit,” I say guardedly. “Why?”

He gives me a half-smile. “Dinner? I haven’t eaten yet, myself, and it’s coming on seven…”

“Chinese on the corner?”

His smile is a bit too relieved. “Perfect.”

Everything relaxes slightly; the familiar place and old routine make up for much of where our words fail to meet requirement and somehow it feels better than it had. It’s only later, once we’ve finished that John sets down his empty beer, his shoulders hunching over it.

“All right. Spit it out, then,” he says gruffly.

I remain upright, resisting the (permanent) urge to incline into his space. “What?” It comes out stiff, unwilling.

John gestures vaguely, fingers locking together after. “You’ve got questions, clearly. I’d rather just get it over it.”

I know what he wants me to ask. The problem is that he thinks that this will somehow clear the air, rather than clouding it even further. Never mind: he wants to talk about it, therefore I will endure it. “Where do you find them, then?” The question falls somewhere on the table between us among the empty serving dishes. “These women.” The clarification is unnecessary, yet I say it aloud anyway.

John shrugs. “Online, mostly. It’s always just for the one time.”

Always.. “How many times?” Hate the question, hate that I’m asking it out loud.

John’s lips purse in slight self-recrimination. “Six now.”

“You’re going to go on, then?” Steal a glance at him, his troubled face. “Six isn’t enough?”

For a second it looks as though he’s going to retort in anger, but it passes and he shrugs again. “I don’t know.”

Now I lean in. “John. What is this? What’s going on? I mean – why?”

John sits back, crossing his arms tightly. With him having retreated, it makes no sense to still be bending forward; I feel as though I’m exposed in enemy territory. John mumbles something unintelligible.

“What?” I demand, feeling my face crinkle in irritation.

“She shot you. She lied. She lied and lied and lied. And she would have done it all again,” John gets out around clenched teeth.

I gape at him. “And you knew all that months before Christmas, and yet – ”

“We have a child,” John reminds me, as though I don’t know. “That’s the only reason. All right?”

It’s not, particularly, not when the solution is still anything other than come home to Baker Street where he belongs. Besides which, I’m at a loss to see a solution to the issue of his paternal responsibilities even if divorce were option, which it apparently is not. Why isn’t it, though? “If you don’t love her any more,” I begin, and he cuts me off.

“There’s no if, all right?” He’s both angry and slightly ashamed of this. He clears his throat. “I tried. I can’t. I just can’t. I’m sorry. I’m just – finished. Had it completely. There are just too many lies. I can’t. You can’t go forward when the entire foundation is spun from thin air; it just doesn’t work.”

“So leave her,” I say, openly for the first time. “Just because you have a child doesn’t mean that you have to stay married. There are options. You could – ” I stop, realising I don’t know how to complete the sentence. There are no options that either of us would consider acceptable, appealing, suitable. Any of it.

John stares at me. “Yeah. Exactly,” he says flatly. “We could split the custody, me abandoning a five-month-old infant into the hands of a recently-left, very angry professional killer. I don’t think so. You and I both know that I can’t do that. You know Mary. You know she would use Laura as leverage.”

I can’t deny this. I slump back in my own chair in defeat. “There must be something you could do,” I say, but it’s half-muttered.

John shakes his head. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the other women before. I wasn’t expecting anyone to find out. I’m… not proud of it. I just – ” He stops, stops trying to defend it, trying to make me understand. (How could I understand, cold, sexless machine that he thinks I am? (That I used to think I was? Never mind.))

The silence hangs between us. I turn my empty tea cup in my hands, trying to think of something to say. Mr Szeto comes over with the bill, which he sets between us, slightly angled toward me as he knows from years of our patronage that I will always take it unless John is in a particularly celebratory mood and argues until I let him pay. I put down my card and he asks about dinner. We assure him that it was up to its customary standard and he beams and returns my card. John pockets both mints, as usual, and we go out onto the pavement. I hail him a taxi. As it draws up, he turns to me and says, “Look, things will be all right somehow. It’s just a… rough patch, I guess. I’ll figure something out.”

I open the door for him. “Sure,” I say, and it comes out sounding as meaningless as it did in my head.

He pauses halfway into the car, stopping to lean his arms against the top of the door. “Whatever happens, though – I’ll make sure you know, all right?”

“Please.” I duck my chin, not wanting him to see that this affects me particularly.

He smiles suddenly, unexpectedly. “You’re my best friend,” he says. “What you don’t know about me, no one does.” He turns away to climb into the car before looking back up at me. “Call or text me whenever you need me.”

“Of course,” I say automatically, and close the door. Then stand, hands in the pockets of my coat, and watch until the taxi turns onto Marylebone and disappears from sight.

***

The following Tuesday brings a second murder. I’m in the shower when Lestrade calls, but fly off to the crime scene the instant I receive his message, texting John on the way. John actually leaves the clinic and meets me there, a grungy flat above a chemist’s shop in eastern Newsham. Our cabs arrive at the same time and Lestrade is standing outside waiting to meet us.

“Got a tip-off on this one,” he says grimly. “It was called in this morning: just the victim’s name and this address. We got here thirty minutes later.”

“Who is it?” John asks, glancing at me.

“Name’s Eddie Murdoch,” Lestrade says, squinting at his own handwriting on a notepad. “Bought this shop five months ago after his release from – ” he flips a page – “the West London Mental Health Unit. What used to be Hanwell Asylum.”

The thoughts are clicking forward rapidly. “Why was he committed?” I ask, already fairly certain of the answer.

Lestrade lowers his chin and raises his eyebrows. “You’ll love this. He killed his wife and her lover, then got himself off on a plea of mental instability. His incarceration there was mandated by the verdict.”

I nod. Yes. This fits. “Method?”

“His death, or his wife and that?”

“The wife and lover first.”

Lestrade consults the pad again. “He shot them each in the head, twice.”

“Sounds fairly calculated to me,” John inserts, hooking his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans. “Temporary psychiatric breakdown wouldn’t suggest such level of detail.”

“No,” I agree. Back to Lestrade. “And how was Murdoch killed?”

Lestrade knows I know. “Two bullets to the skull, same as he did.”

“Tip-off,” I request, though it isn’t precisely a request.

“Came through the anonymous hotline. Voice distorter was used, if you’re thinking we could get a voiceprint match somehow.” Lestrade looks apologetic. “Do you want to come inside and see the scene?”

“I’d like to see the body,” John volunteers, before I can answer.

I look at him, nod. “Yes. We’ll come in.”

Inside, Murdoch is slumped backward over an untidy sofa, strewn with newspapers, takeaway boxes, and pieces of clothing. The same detritus covers most of the rest of the flat. The wall behind his head has been lavishly splattered with brain, blood, and pieces of bone. One of Lestrade’s minions looks ill. I think of Mary and how she could have chosen to shoot me in the same way, how much more obvious her real intentions would have been. Choosing to have me bleed out gave John just enough space to believe the cover I invented for her, to protect him. Fortunately, it also gave me time to save myself. (If I had died, though, would John still have gone back?)

“Sherlock?”

His voice startles me out of the brief reverie. “Sorry,” I say automatically, shoulders stiffening. “The body. Yes. Cause of death: obvious, unless we’re missing something subtle.”

John goes over, bending over Murdoch’s form. “The shots would have done it, certainly, but I’m wondering if this one was poisoned first, too.”

His perception takes me by surprise. (When will I stop being surprised by him?) I hadn’t realised he had already made the leap with me. “You think they’re connected?” I ask.

He gives me one of his patented pointed looks. “You do,” he says, as though that ends the discussion, but he goes on. “It makes sense, another revenge kill for a murderer who didn’t serve a sentence equal to the crime. You think it’s the same killer?”

“It could be,” I say, and refrain from mentioning how brilliant I think he is. His ability to follow my train of thoughts has become almost uncanny over the years. “A vigilante, perhaps.”

John snorts; I know what he thinks of this sort of procedure on a rational level, but am equally cognisant of how he actually feels about it on a gut level. There’s some admiration there, even if he doesn’t agree with it in principle. “I’ll start with the right ankle, then, shall I?” he asks, and goes ahead without waiting.

I watch him for a moment, then ask, “What if he was genuinely unbalanced at the time he committed the murders? Is there any way we can know now?”

His shoulders shrug a little. “We could ask to see his file, though there’s generally quite a lot of red tape around that sort of thing. Not sure if Greg could pull that off.”

“Greg can pull quite a lot off on occasion,” Lestrade says dryly from behind me. “Psych reports, is it?”

John half-turns. “Yeah. Sorry about that.”

Lestrade waves it off. “No worries. I’ll see what I can do. Are we agreed on cause of death? Seems a bit obvious, but I don’t want to jump to any conclusions…”

“Sherlock.” John’s voice is quiet, cutting over Lestrade’s trailed-off words. “Come here.”

I immediately go over, sensing rather than seeing Lestrade move in behind me. John is holding Murdoch’s right hand (trigger hand, my brain supplies), uncurling the rigor mortis-set fingers. “What is it?” It looks like a slip of paper.

John works it out of the tight grip without ripping it, and turns it around so that we can all read the name. “Diane Jenkins-Queen,” he reads.

His eyes meet mine and I feel him thinking my thoughts precisely. “A warning,” I say. I take the paper from John and give it to Lestrade. “You received a tip-off for Murdoch. This is the next one, the next victim.”

There are footsteps on the stairs before Lestrade can answer and two junior sergeants burst into the crime scene. “Sir!” one of them says. “There’s been another one – another murder!”

Lestrade pinches both temples with his right hand. “Lemme guess,” he says. “Victim’s name is Diane Jenkins-Queen.”

The two younger officers look at each other in surprise, but talk over one other in confirmation.

“Great,” Lestrade says. “That’s wonderful. Get a team out there. I’ll be there shortly.” As they scatter back down the stairs, he says without looking at me, “So what are we dealing with, here?”

For John’s sake, I attempt not to smile too broadly. “We’ve got ourselves a serial killer.”

***

Diane Jenkins-Queen poisoned her husband. Only half the jury had been convinced of that, however, and in the end she was given a much lighter sentence than one might have expected. The toxicology reports were quite clear, however, and Ms Jenkins-Queen was poisoned in precisely the same method in turn, albeit dining alone in a rather well-to-do restaurant. None of the wait staff saw anyone or anything unusual, yet the laminated slip of paper found inside her mouth bore not only a fourth name, but traces of the cyanide itself. She had only been out of prison for four months, paroled on good behaviour and a (now questionable) sob story regarding her husband’s alleged abusive behaviour.

Eddie Murdoch’s case of temporary insanity was hotly contested after his incarceration, Lestrade has discovered. Apart from the brevity of their served time, there is no discernable link between the victims as yet.

The fourth name is that of a French socialite (an extremely minor socialite, John tells me) named Lulu Lapointe. She has no criminal record and as yet, Lestrade has been unable to pinpoint her precise location or a current address. They’re looking. Meanwhile, John and I are taking apart Eddie Murdoch’s filthy quarters and scouring the restaurant for any trace of the poisoner. The owner of the restaurant has been quite insufferable with his complaints and demands to know when he will be permitted to re-open for business. I believe I shut him up with my observation that, had his security system actually been functional, we could have caught the murderer by now. Nevertheless, though he’s been kept at the edges, his unhappy and impatient presence is constantly perceptible and thoroughly annoying.

The restaurant is warm. Too warm for my coat; I’ve had to take it off. It’s June already. What is the precise date? I can’t think of it. John had to go home after a brief (terse) call from Mary (trying not to think about that), so I’m obliged to ask Lestrade.

“It’s the eighteenth,” he tells me. “Why?”

I don’t answer; the date stops me in my tracks. It’s been one year today. One year since Mary shot me. They were married on the eighteenth of May, gone for a month, and then I saw John again at last on the morning of the eighteenth of June in the smack house where I was waiting with Isaac Whitney, waiting for him to find me. And later that night, Mary shot me.

Lestrade is saying something vague, but his words aren’t registering. One year tonight. And John isn’t with me. I assume he went home. (Did I deduce that it was Mary who called, or did I just assume? My bias is proving my inability to differentiate between objective and subjective truth.) Where else would he have gone, without me? Has he forgotten it was one year ago today? I think back over the past four days of crime scene work with him. We’ve been close together almost all of the time, working in silent but very much in-tune, shared single focus. Was there more going on under the surface that I was unaware of as we worked? (Or was I just not paying attention? We’re on a case; I do forget sometimes.) He didn’t say anything unusual, anything to suggest that he was thinking about the date. Not that I can recall, at least. Perhaps he’s forgotten the date. Perhaps he’s simply at home with his child while Mary plays bridge or goes for coffee with friends or whatever else she does when John is stuck at home with their infant (deliberately kept from me, from our work, from the life we used to share) and isn’t thinking of anything but bottle temperatures and noisy toys that only stop after five repetitions of recorded annoyance.

I feel somehow sick, all of the details in the room blurring in my perceptions. Lestrade is still speaking; I blink and shake off his touch. Where is John? Suddenly his absence seems ominous. Am I imagining things? Is this date not one of rather large significance to us both? Today is the day that his wife tried to kill me one year ago. My first supposed death meant a great deal to John; why not this second one – the one which was, in fact, much closer to being my actual death? Lestrade’s voice is still there, repeating my name. I say something vague (no idea what, really) and move away from him, going toward the kitchen. Did Mary call? Did he say anything to me before he left? (Why can’t I remember this? Was concentrating on the case, but that was wrong – I should have been thinking of John. Did he just leave without my noticing? How is that possible?) Recall times when he claims to have left the country entirely without my noticing, but I’d thought myself unable to not notice now that I understand the significance of what I feel for him. I should have paid more attention.

Should I text him? Send a Where are you? Or would that make him exasperated, if he already told me where he was going? Think: probably. I don’t want him to be angry. What about something more specific, then? When are you coming back? Perhaps if I found another important piece of evidence… only we understand the killer’s motivation; we simply have no lead on who it is. Diane Jenkins-Queen was poisoned with cyanide, precisely as she poisoned her potentially-abusive husband. The cyanide was in the salmon, its cloying flavour disguised in a sweet, sesame-honey glaze. She poisoned her husband with cake, but it makes no difference: the revenge motif is clear enough. This is hardly novel, however. Not enough to bring John back.

I have never obsessed so much about where he was at any given time before, save that one important time when it was imperative that he stand precisely where I told him to. I’ve never been jealous, suspicious like this. How could I possibly be jealous? Or rather, how could I possibly be more jealous; he’s married to someone who shot me in the heart. I know jealousy – but I have never obsessed about a specific moment the way I am at the moment. His absence on this particular night of all nights strikes me as a negative omen.

On a whim, I call Mary. The landline at the flat.

Her voice is lightly-pitched and very cool. “Sherlock.”

“Mary.” My own voice is stiff, ill-at-ease.

I can hear her brows lifting somewhere across the city. “Calling to reminisce?”

So she hasn’t forgotten the date, at least. “No.” It’s short. “Are you at home?” Of course she is; I called the landline. Stupid.

“Yes.” A momentary pause as she considers. “John isn’t, if you were looking for him.”

Is that a touch of bitter triumph there? Perhaps it’s only my bias that imagines there is. “I wasn’t,” I say, lying. She probably knows that I don’t know where he is, but I can’t be bothered to work harder at disguising myself with the ice forming in the pit of my belly. “I merely called to let him know something about the case. I’ll call his mobile.”

Mary gives a laugh which is neither joyful nor amused. “Good luck,” she says, and hangs up.

I slowly lower my own phone, feeling hollowed out and empty in a way that I’m at a loss to describe. It’s as though she knows precisely where John is, knows that she’s lost his love, too, and is at least vaguely satisfied that he’s not with me, either. Who is it, then? Another of his women? Why tonight, of all times?

I’m angry, I realise, fingers clenched around the phone. I snap something at Lestrade as he approaches and he backs away quickly. I cannot possibly tolerate his stupidity at a time like this. I need to give myself something to do. Fine: I go into the kitchen and decide to sort through all of the serving utensils one at a time, test them all for cyanide residue. See if I can determine how the poison entered the kitchen, if nothing else. I tune everyone around me out and work until I realise that silence has fallen. Everyone has left. It’s past four in the morning.

When Lestrade returns at seven, he brings coffee and carefully asks how it’s going. I show him the route of the cyanide, brought in through the back door with a supply delivery (obvious; there were traces on the bill of lading for the paper supplies), suggest he track down the driver and investigate his side business of selling illegal poisons and hiding it behind his courier job. He sends a few people off to do that. He doesn’t mention John and the lack of mention is as ominous as the lack of John himself.

To my surprise, John does turn up around nine. No text first; he simply returns to the restaurant without a word and silently falls into step beside me as I’m crossing the room to examine the area around Jenkins-Queen’s seat again. There is a minimum of exchanged words: he asks what I’m doing; I explain. I do not ask where he went. I’m kneeling, lifting out a fibre sample of the carpeting. John bends over to watch when I smell it: cologne. Not perfume, but cologne. Male cologne. Shock nearly blots out my ability to process this, but my brain is already sorting: bergamot, white pear, cashmere wood: probably Bvlgari.

It makes no difference which cologne it is: John doesn’t wear cologne.

We’re too close together. I reel and nearly lose my balance, turning shocked eyes to his face, but can only stutter and wrench my arm out of his grasp when he reaches to steady me, stumbling to my feet and moving away from him. He’s wearing the same clothes as yesterday. It’s real: it happened.

“Sherlock – wait, what are you – ” He’s confused, brows drawn together, reaching out toward me but not coming closer.

I can hardly breathe, my heart jack-hammering in my throat, in my mouth. I’m staring at him but I can’t bear the sight of him at the same time. Breath sears my throat; I’m gasping like a fish out of water, the fibre sample dropped and forgotten. I cannot be in the same space as John – I cannot. I turn and stagger toward the doors of the restaurant, the early morning sun blinding me after the long night indoors.

Lestrade comes after me, shouting my name. He catches up despite being ignored and wrenches me around by the arm. “Sherlock, for God’s sake – what’s going on?” His eyes rake over my face and something in his expression changes, softens. “Bloody hell,” he says, his eyebrows giving him the look of a worried basset hound. “You’re not all right,” he states. It’s not a question. I don’t know what my face is doing, but evidently it’s telegraphing far too much. “Is this about John?” he asks, almost wincing. My lack of answer must be answer enough, because he goes on to say, “I wondered, last night. Something seemed off. Look – I’m guessing you don’t want to see him just now. Maybe you should take a break, get some rest. Do you want someone to take you home? Should I get you a cab?”

Think, I command myself. Home: no. John will eventually deduce the reason for my sudden flight and then – what? Will he confront me about it? Demand to know how and why this particular indiscretion on his part was more upsetting than the others? Demand to know why any of it was upsetting in the first place? No: I cannot go to Baker Street. He’ll find me there. “Not Baker Street,” I say woodenly.

Lestrade nods toward the cruiser with his head. “Come on. I’ll take you to my place. Give you a bit of time to get sorted, yeah? You look like you could do with it.” He’s ushering me toward the car and I’m following mindlessly, stunned and numb as though I’ve received a blow that’s temporarily robbed me of my ability to reason, to process this.

The silence in the car is horribly strained. I shut off my thoughts and hear only white noise within my skull. Arriving at the flat is slightly better; Lestrade seems more comfortable in his own territory. Have been here before (with John) but not in ages. It’s cleaner now that the second wife is gone. He’s pouring whiskey into a glass and saying something about it being morning, but pushing it into my hand regardless.

“Get that down, it’ll help,” he advises. “Listen – I don’t want to pry, but – what’s going on with you two? Things seemed fine, and then all of a sudden last night something felt off, and then John disappeared and you seemed all – what’s the problem? You two fighting or something? It’s just, I’ve seen you bicker, of course, but I’ve never seen anything serious like this, and I just – I mean, what’s going on?”

I don’t recall having sat down on the cracked leather sofa, but I seem to be there now. Lestrade sits down on the coffee table, bent forward, hands clasped between his knees. His face is concerned. Suddenly I think of how rude I generally am toward him and how unfailingly kind he generally is in return, even when he’s annoyed or exasperated with me. (A better friend than I am, whatever could be said of his deductive abilities.) He is truly concerned. I wonder if I can speak around the obstruction in my throat. Whether it would help. My gaze out of focus, I stare somewhere in the region of his knees. “John’s been cheating on Mary.” My voice is utterly devoid of expression.

Peripherally see his eyebrows go up. “Really,” he says. “Wow. Not all that surprising, though, I have to say. Not that I approve exactly, but – I mean, she shot you. His best friend. I get why he stuck around – the baby and all that, but it’s hard to see that marriage working out. But it doesn’t seem like John to sneak around on anyone.”

I have no answer for this. I raise the glass and take a sip of the whiskey. He remembered that I prefer it neat, without ice. It burns a fiery trail down my esophagus and into my stomach.

“Were you fighting about that, then?” Lestrade asks, still careful.

“We weren’t fighting. I think,” I say, realising I don’t even know what to call this block between John and I. Is that fighting? We haven’t exchanged angry words. This is worse.

Lestrade hesitates, and in the hesitation I feel him cottoning on to the real problem. “You know, I always wondered, but I never – with you two, I mean, I… well, I mean, John’s always had girlfriends and that, right? But I always wondered… is it… I mean, with you, is it… ” He trails off for a moment, then clears his throat and manages to ask the question. “Were you jealous?” he asks finally, with merciful directness. His tone is careful but kind, his head tilted slightly to one side, eyes on my face.

Could deny it if I cared to, I suppose. He’d never believe it, though. He’s perceptive enough for that, at least. The bluster of a transparent denial would take more energy than I would care to spend. He knows, anyway. He’s probably known from the start. I nod imperceptibly, unable to meet his eyes, withdrawing into myself.

He’s immediately sympathetic. “That’s rough, mate. Really rough. It must have been bad enough being part of his wedding and all that, but then to see him off with multiple women and all of that, now – ”

“He was with a man last night,” I interrupt, my voice dull.

Lestrade stops talking. I glance at him and see his mouth fall open. Then: “What?!” he demands. “Are you sure?”

“Very.”

“But – ” Lestrade is spluttering. “I thought he was straight. I thought that was the only reason you two weren’t together, to be honest!”

Feel my lip curl in bitterness. “So did I.”

“Oh, shit,” Lestrade says, with feeling. “No wonder you’re upset. I would be, too. Shit. What a disaster. What is he thinking?”

“I really couldn’t tell you,” I say, eyes still on the cheap wall-to-wall carpeting. “I just had to get away from him.”

“Completely understood,” Lestrade says. “Look – maybe I’ll see if he’d be up for helping Molly with the autopsy instead; the lab is behind right now and they could use another hand, and I need a specific answer concerning the poison. We know the salmon was poisoned, but I want to know if the killer gave her the same ankle injection first or not. John could help with that. Meanwhile, why you don’t stay here and get some sleep or something? I know you don’t like to sleep on a case, but it’s been five days now and you could do with a break, I think. Until we find Lulu Lapointe, I can get my own forensics team to look over the rest of the evidence from the restaurant. All right?”

I’m too weary to argue with him. “Fine,” I say automatically.

He stands and reaches forward to squeeze my shoulder in what’s clearly meant to be a friendly, man-to-man grip. “Drink that,” he says, nodding at the whiskey. “I’ll be back later. Just – take it easy, all right?”

“Right,” I say, and he goes.

I do normally avoid sleep during a case, but he’s right: I’m exhausted, and I would do anything to prevent myself from thinking about John with some man, involved in some illicit, seedy internet rendezvous. I’d do anything to block out the images of him touching, being touched by this stranger whom I hate more than words could ever express. I put the whiskey on the coffee table, turn sideways on the sofa and pull my coat tightly around myself. This is the single lowest moment of my life, I think. Nothing has ever felt as bad as this: knowing that the problem was never the fact that I was male. It was simply me that John never wanted.

That is the worst part of all.

***

It’s dark in the sitting room when I wake. I don’t move from Lestrade’s sofa, but sit up, huddling into the upturned collar of my coat, knees drawn up to my chin. The time on the digital display of the dusty DVD player says 6:41pm. There’s a single text on my phone from John: Where are you? Nothing after that. Did he stay at the crime scene, then? I wonder if he asked Lestrade about me. And if so, what Lestrade said.

I sit there in the darkened sitting room, the minutes or hours sliding meaninglessly by. I don’t know what to do with this. How to think of it. How to rationalise it into something that I can accept, live with. I cannot accept this. The clock on the wall ticks as the evening passes.

After awhile, I hear a car outside slow and stop, the engine idling, then footsteps approaching the house. Lestrade, probably. A key turns in the door, predictably, but it’s John who walks in.

My stomach drops. John. My pulse begins to race, my heart in my throat. I don’t move. He pushes the door closed, locks it, then turns to face me, and his face shows everything. He knows. He knows what I know, and he knows how I feel about it. For a long time, neither of us speaks. He is eight metres away, or an unbridgeable chasm. I don’t know whether to be angry or relieved that he’s here, that he came to find me. There will be no more hiding this, then. We will both finally speak truths and I cannot imagine that our friendship will survive what I have to say – but now, there will be no avoiding it. The truth of how I feel will need to be said aloud at last, and it will destroy us. I never thought that the end would come like this, somehow. It hollows me out to think of it, that this could be the last time that I see him.

Someone has to break the silence. Finally I say it. “Who was he?” My voice is rough with disuse and sleep, scratchy and too low.

John’s mouth purses and he looks at the floor. “No one,” he says, shoulders twitching in a defensive shrug. “Just some bloke. I didn’t even know his name.”

I can’t tell whether this makes it hurt more or less. “I loved your choice of date.” The words scrape in my throat, sharp-edged and painful.

He shakes his head, almost smiling – the angry smile – but not countering it. For a long time his mouth works and he inhales several times as though about to start a response, then changing his mind and cancelling whatever he was going to say. At last, he raises his face and says, “Christ, I’ve made a complete hash of this, haven’t I?”

I don’t know where he’s going with this. “John…”

He glances at me, shakes his head again, and puts his hands in his pockets. “I’ve buggered everything up beyond belief. I don’t even know what to say now. If there’s anything I can say.”

I have to say something now, evidently. “What do you mean?”

John takes his hands out of his pockets and gesticulates with them. “I mean everything – you and I. From the beginning. I always knew. For God’s sake, how could I have not known?”

“Known what?” I demand. My arms are still locked around my knees. I must look like a child, but I cannot open myself any further, not with everything the way it is.

“That it could have been more, with us,” John says heavily. “That I wanted it to. You said you weren’t interested in anything, that first night, but we’d only just met then. I could have brought it up again, pursued it more specifically. Hell, I could have just taken the chance and kissed you one day. There were times when I felt it, felt it could have happened, but I let them all slide by without a word, never making a move. I always knew the possibility was there, but I just never had the balls to risk it. And on top of it, I made sure everyone knew that we weren’t like that, didn’t I. I was so afraid of what people would think of me, being with a bloke. It never even occurred to me to wonder how that might have made you feel, always hearing me deny there was anything between us. And then you died, or at least I thought you did, and I knew then, inescapably. I mourned you like a lover and most of all I mourned the fact that I’d been such an arse about the whole thing. That I’d never just had the guts to ask again, after that first night. See if you’d maybe changed your mind about it, see if the possibility was there. I thought it was, but I was too much of a coward to admit that I wanted it.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “What?”

John raises his face and meets my eyes directly for the first time. “I’m saying that I knew from the start how I felt about you. I’ve loved you for a very long time, Sherlock. And I’ve fucked this up beyond belief. You came back and I was engaged. And I stayed engaged. It seemed like the safe thing to do, like the obvious thing. And you didn’t seem to mind, so why would I have risked everything to potentially ruin our friendship by even mentioning it? I had no way of knowing that you even felt the same way. You let me get married without ever saying anything, so how could I have known? And then everything went to hell – Mary shot you, almost killed you, and by then it was too late: she’d snared me in the marriage and we were having Laura and it was just too late to do anything about any of it. You knew all that, but you still didn’t say anything – you would have gone off to Serbia to die over there and you didn’t even ask me to come with you. I thought you didn’t want me with you, so I tried my best to make it work with Mary. Obviously I’ve failed on that score, too. But lately, just – working with you so closely all the time again, it’s been torture, knowing that it was never going to happen because of everything I’ve done. And then I suddenly realised it had been one year since Mary shot you and I couldn’t stop thinking about how all of that was my fault. I’ve been blaming everyone else, but it’s my fault, isn’t it? There are so many times I could have fixed this before it got to this point, times when I could have said something, ended things with Mary, told you how I felt in the first place, and I just never did any of it. And because of that, I almost lost you again, permanently, and – Christ, I’ve just ruined everything, haven’t I?”

This last bursts out of him with such self-loathing that somehow I’m on my feet without realising I moved. John’s face is tormented and twisted with it. “John,” I say inadequately. “Don’t – ”

“You can’t deny it,” John says bitterly. “You know it’s true: I have. I always thought that even if I never told you how I felt, we could at least be friends. But I can’t deny what I feel for you, child or no child, marriage or no marriage, and then I go and try to get it out of my system with someone else, but of course you worked that out and now I’ve gone and hurt you on top of everything else. I am such a sorry excuse for a man – I don’t even know what you could want in me.”

“Everything,” I say intensely. He needs to understand this. My eyes are riveted to his face. “John – I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything. I never thought you could want that from me. That’s why I never said anything. That’s the honest truth: I never knew.”

He stares at me, desperation written all over his mobile features. “Is it too late?” he asks. “I’m sorry – I’m so sorry – ”

I hear myself saying his name as I move toward him, everything a blur around me. I could fall on my knees before him and tell him thousands of times over until he believes it. Instead I seize his face with both hands, my eyes locked on his, then close my eyes and put my mouth on his. John makes a choked sound and grasps my shoulders, his mouth opening under mine. The kiss is hungry and more than a little desperate on both sides and it doesn’t matter any more that it should have happened five years ago. Every missed opportunity, everything that’s gone wrong – his marriage, Mary shooting me, him going back to her, his stranger from last night – none of it matters now, in this moment. John is as essential to me as oxygen; I want him so badly that I could weep for it. It feels like nothing I’ve ever felt before, more intimate than I knew a kiss could feel. (How could I have known? I’ve never kissed anyone I felt this way about before now.) I feel drunk on it, on him, on every miniscule movement of his lips and tongue against my own. We kiss and kiss and John is shaking in my arms, his back heaving with emotion. When we finally break apart, both of us breathing hard, I survey him intently, my arms still around him. I couldn’t let go if I wanted to. (I decidedly don’t want to, possibly ever.) “Are you all right?” I ask, my voice coming out strangely rough.

“Sorry,” John says, his voice a little unstable. “I’m just a bit – not a fan of myself at the moment. I just – I’m sorry,” he says, his mouth working, blinking hard. “I’m so sorry – for everything, Sherlock.”

“It’s perfectly all right,” I hear myself murmur, my voice low and not entirely steady in turn. “It’s not too late. Did you mean all of that? That you wanted this from the very beginning?”

John nods, eyes serious, his mouth still troubled. “Since that first dinner. But I had to go and tell Angelo I wasn’t your date.”

“You weren’t then,” I point out. “That was accurate.”

He shrugs in my arms, self-deprecating. I don’t loosen my grip. “But all of those times I made sure that everyone knew that we weren’t – when I knew in my heart that I wanted that,” John says. “And then Irene confronted me about it and later, I knew you’d heard, but we just never talked about it. I thought you knew then, how I felt.” John frowns at me. “Why did you never say anything? Why did we never talk about that?”

“We were both a little preoccupied with the CIA agents’ attack on Mrs Hudson,” I point out. “And later it seemed irrelevant: I thought you were straight. There were always women. And Mycroft had told me about Mary before I went to the restaurant that night, to tell you that I was still alive, that I’d come home. I always assumed it was never a possibility. That was why, last night – I thought the only reason it had never happened and never could happen was because I was male, so – ”

“I’m sorry,” John says again, his face filling with shame. “It just got to be too much, being with you and knowing that what I really wanted was never going to happen because I’d fucked everything up. And we’d already drifted so much since Christmas and since Laura was born and I just – I was thinking that I couldn’t take it, working so closely with you and knowing it was never going to happen. I wish I hadn’t. I never meant to hurt you.”

“Stop. It’s over. I don’t blame you for anything,” I say, and he starts to protest.

“But I – ”

“It doesn’t matter now.” I kiss his forehead, his cheeks, then his mouth finds mine again. I twine my fingers into his hair and marvel inwardly that I am suddenly permitted to do this. And somehow it is all right. I still don’t like it, but he’s here now. With me. I pull back. “Do you really love me?” I’m aware of how insecure it sounds, but I can’t quite believe that he means it. That he not only professes to feel that way now, but did all along.

John nods, his eyes sober on mine. “Yeah. I meant that. Have done for a long time. I should have told you ages ago.”

“I love you,” I blurt out, and it sounds terrible, so suddenly and awkwardly put. I cringe inwardly.

But John’s eyebrows lift and curve around his eyes like parentheses. “Even – ” His voice cracks and he clears his throat and tries again. “Even despite – everything I’ve done? Do you still want me, after all that?”

“More than ever.” The admission is completely honest and sounds as desperately wanting as it is. I mean it with every part of myself, body, mind, soul – everything. John says my name in a sort of exhalation of relief and our mouths come together of their own accord. This time the kiss is even wilder, hungrier, needier. Every hair on my body, every nerve ending, every blood vessel, every cilia on my skin is reaching for him, yearning for his touch in particular, needing to mould itself to him, and the need is rising in an unstoppable crescendo.

It was all worth it, waiting for this moment: my feigned death, the long two years away from him, all that I endured during that time, the pain of his rejection and Mary’s presence and significance in his life upon my return. It was all worth it for this: John is gasping into my mouth and our bodies are touching all down our fronts and when he puts his hands on me to pull me closer to him, I can feel his arousal against myself. There seems to be no question about what is coming next. I cannot stop touching him, fingers pulling at his clothing and skin and anything they land on. We half undress one another there in the sitting room, in a blur of mouths and hands and hot breath, and then through some tacit understanding we’re stumbling down the short corridor into Lestrade’s guest bedroom, kissing and panting onto each other’s skin. My penis is harder than it’s ever been in my life and when John grasps it through my trousers, his mouth on mine, the sound I make aloud despite myself is wanton and naked with need. John responds in kind, groaning into my mouth, his body twisting and contorting against mine.

“John – I need – ” I’m babbling, gasping, completely unable to form sentences, my hands skating down his body and grasping whatever they can find to touch.

“Yeah? Tell me,” he says, eyes half-closed, tongue and teeth doing something to my throat that makes it even more difficult to think clearly.

But this one need is extremely clear. “I need to – I want to touch you,” I pant, though it’s an incomplete answer. I make myself say the rest aloud, shameful as it feels to admit. “I want to be inside you.”

John doesn’t object, as I half thought he might. “God, yes,” he breathes, and strips off his trousers and underwear, then divests me of mine. I’ve never been completely nude with anyone else before; I feel both the thrill of intimacy and a touch of apprehension. Not fear precisely, but the concern of being weighed and found wanting in some way. But John’s eyes devour my flesh, down to the erection straining upward and his hands stroke over my shoulders, down to my elbows, gazing almost worshipfully at my nude form. And then he’s pressing himself up against me, reclaiming my mouth, and I shiver violently as our bodies come together. The desire to enter him, possess him, join myself to him is becoming untenable. Somehow we get to the bed and stagger into it, John on his back beneath me. We’re kissing, our bodies writhing together, and I refuse to let myself think of him with the other man last night. His hands are on my back and arse, his legs tangling with mine. Our penises are touching, rubbing together, and it’s ecstasy, better than anything I’ve ever felt. I feel an intense need to bond myself to him, touch and taste and smell every cell of his body.

I move down his body, tasting his skin, lavishing my tongue across his flesh, absorbing the sounds of pleasure he makes when I suck at his nipples and bite at his ribs, inhale the scent of his underarms. I could consume him, so great is my need to join myself to him, become part of every part of him. I trail my fingers over him, feeling the soft hair at the softer flesh of his belly, the harder muscle beneath the skin, feel the way his hips jut upward the moment I close my palm around his penis. It’s wet and hard and hot to the skin of my hand and it fits my palm as though it was tailor made. He belongs to me; I was just never permitted to have him until now. I close my lips around the head of his penis, relishing the musky taste of him. John swears with feeling, inhaling sharply and I feel every sound he makes directly in my own flesh. He’s saying my name, hands in my hair and I concentrate every bit of my focus on his pleasure, on the sensation of his penis in my mouth, of the softly crinkled skin of his testicles in my fingers. This is the taste of his sexuality, of John at his most aroused and I resent not having known this taste until now. My mouth moves over him, devouring, inhaling, drinking in the feel of his skin through my fingertips. (Had not even known how great my hunger for him was until now. How could I not have known this?)

“God – Sherlock – ” John is gasping and groaning, his voice strained, hands clenching in my hair. “It’s amazing – you’re amazing – ”

His praise emboldens me. I take my mouth from his penis and look up at him along the length of his torso. “Turn over.”

He does it without question and cries out when I lower my face to his arse and press my tongue to his the entrance of his body, into the heat of the core of his body. I half expected him to protest, but he is shuddering and moaning under my mouth. When I feel his muscles relax, I say it again. “John – I need to be inside you. Can I – ?” The words stick in my throat, too embarrassing to verbalise, even now.

“Fuck, yes!” John is unabashedly enthusiastic. “Just – let me just get – ” He’s moving away from me, toward the edge of the bed. “We just need – this,” he says, bending to retrieve something from the pocket of his jeans. It’s a small tube and sitting up on my knees, I understand immediately when I see it. John sits down on the edge of the bed and looks at me seriously. “I think you know I’ve never done this before,” he says, putting the tube in my hand. “Just – go slowly, all right?”

I nod, eyes still on his. “All right.”

John leans forward and kisses me again, slowly, deeply, putting his arms around me and drags me closer. As we kiss, he leans back and pulls me down onto him, legs tangling with me, our penises rubbing together again. John breaks the kiss momentarily. “I think I’m pretty open already, but – get your fingers in me first.”

My entire body is quivering with want, my erection already dripping with moisture and straining against John’s. He uncaps the lubricant for me and squeezes some onto my fingers. I look into his face as I find his entrance and massage it, slowly working my fingers into him. He nods once, face contracting with either pain or pleasure or both. “All right?” I ask, somehow barely able to breathe. My pulse is racing.

“Yeah, that’s – that’s good,” John pants, and he’s trembling, too.

I push my fingers into him, searching deeper, and note the way his penis is lying flat against his belly, leaking wetly. He does like this. He isn’t just humouring me. He’s shaking, his exhalations shuddering as I curl my fingers into him and then suddenly he’s grabbing for my wrist, stilling my hand.

“Enough,” he gasps. “I’m ready!”

I withdraw my fingers. “Are you – ”

“Yes!” John is turning over onto his stomach, his arse pushed into the air. “Do it,” he orders, and I couldn’t resist if I wanted to. It takes only seconds to line myself up and then push into him, going as slowly as I can make myself, listening for his reactions, wary of causing him pain but only just barely in control of myself. It’s so difficult; I’ve wanted this for far too long and the sensation is like nothing I’ve even imagined. John’s body is squeezing around my penis in a grip so pleasurable it’s nearly painful and I am shaking with the effort to make myself go slowly.

“Are you – all right?” I gasp out when I’m all the way inside him, fingers gripping his sides so hard I’m sure it will bruise, the pleasure so intense I can barely breathe.

“Just – give me a moment,” John says, panting, and I have to close my eyes to prevent myself from seeing the way we’re joined together, my penis buried to the hilt in his body. After a moment or two, his body relaxes noticeably and John’s head drops in a nod. “Okay,” he says. “You can move now.”

My hips move of their own accord, pulling back and then snapping forward before I can prevent them, and we both groan. I cannot help my body from doing this, from pushing itself into him, but divert all of my energy into trying to keep the thrusts careful, not to go too hard. The exhalations gutting themselves from my throat sound tortured. I have never felt anything so good in all my life, and John is moaning, too. I pull him upward by the hips so that he’s on all fours and run my hands over his chest and stomach, catching his penis and stroking it as my own drives into him. He’s gasping, his words a mixture of profanity and my name and I can’t manage words at all – I’m moaning and bucking into him uncontrollably, my entire body awash in the pleasure twisting and tightening in me, my testicles drawing up. I can’t stop it now, doubled over John’s back, one hand on his nipple, the other on his penis and my hips are flying, pumping hard into him. My orgasm is upon me; I cannot stop myself. “John – I’m going to – I’m sorry, I can’t – ” (Wait, I meant to say, but suddenly I cannot even speak; all I can do is thrust.)

“Do it!” It comes out as a groan, but he repeats it. “Do it, go ahead!”

A desperate sound escapes my throat and the wave of orgasm overcomes me, body throwing itself forward into John’s, my hips jammed against his body as my testicles erupt and come. I can feel my release gushing into his body multiple times and I am helpless to pull myself from within him as stream after stream of my seed empties itself into him. The pleasure is so acute that my jaw aches from my teeth gritting together, breath bursting out in gusts from my nose, my abdominal muscles clenching and releasing and clenching again as I come. The wave finally releases me, leaving me slumped over on John’s back and gasping weakly. One hand is still circling his penis, the other pressed to his pounding heart. “Sorry!” I pant. “So sorry, J – ”

“It’s fine,” he gets out, still breathing hard. “Put your fingers back in me and finish me with your mouth!”

I make some sound of fervent agreement and pull myself free of him, replacing my penis with two fingers. I feel weak from the strength of the orgasm but I desperately want John to get there, too. Want – need to feel him orgasm at my hand. He turns onto his back again and I waste no time getting my mouth onto his erection, even harder now than it was before, and simultaneously twist my fingers in his body, slick with my own release. I press them to his prostate and lavish all the attention of my lips and tongue to his penis. It’s less than a minute before he’s moaning, breath bursting out and scraping over his vocal cords and then he’s shouting, hips jutting up off the bed into my mouth, anus clenching around my fingers and then my mouth is filled with bitter/salty fluid. I nearly choke but manage to swallow and his penis discharges itself again, filling my mouth a second and third time, his fingers nearly ripping my hair out at the roots. Feeling John orgasm from such a close vantage point, in my very mouth, is so thrilling that my own penis twitches in sympathetic reaction and I think that merely witnessing his orgasm could have triggered my own. I keep his penis in my mouth, stroking it with my lips and hand until it twitches in over-sensitivity. I cotton on and release it, looking at him up the length of his body.

“Come here,” John says, his throat rough from the sounds he was making, and he pulls me up onto him and kisses me for a long time. Our bodies are relaxing together and it feels even more intimate than it did before, his body soft and spent beneath my own. Even the feeling of his softening penis against mine feels sensual and open and somehow trusting. My body is still shivering in aftershocks of the most powerful orgasm I’ve ever experienced, but feeling of him against me and his arms around me make for a sensation of security and intimacy combined as the shuddering shocks subside.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t wait,” I say after awhile, my mouth on his throat. If my body weren’t so spent, I would feel more ashamed than I do, but his hands stroking over my back aren’t signalling disappointment. I don’t think so, at least.

John turns us so that we’re both on our sides. “Don’t apologise,” he says, thumb caressing my bony hip. “It’s hard to go slowly when it’s your first time.”

“You knew?” Of course he knew. Mycroft said, but I had thought that perhaps after Janine, John might have thought that had changed.

He smiles at me, nicely. “Yeah.” He doesn’t explain how. I suppose to someone as experienced as he is, it would have been obvious. My lack of experience.

“Was it – all right?” The question is self-conscious. I feel bared, exposed. (What if it was disappointing for him? How can I persuade him that it will be better next time, if he grants me a next time?)

He shakes his head, smiling at me and pushing sweat-dampened hair off my forehead. “I’ll say. That was phenomenal.”

Relieved, I close the distance between our faces and kiss him again. He doesn’t refuse it, putting an arm over my back and pulling me even closer. I don’t want to break the spell, jar this bubble of non-reality by reintroducing the reality that awaits outside this room, this moment, but I have to ask. “So what happens now?”

John sighs. He finds my hand and twines his fingers into mine. “I don’t know,” he says. He meets my gaze evenly, soberly. “All the same reasons stand, as far as leaving Mary goes: you know that I can’t. I can’t take that risk with my daughter. You know that Mary would use her as collateral and I just can’t put a five-month-old baby at risk that way. As much as I’d like to go home, tell Mary that it’s over, pack my things, and move home to Baker Street, I have to think of Laura.”

I understand; I expected this, but – “But what about this?” I ask. My voice sounds more plaintive than I intended. “Is this just a one-time thing, then? Or how is that going to work?”

John shakes his head. “It’s not a one-time thing. You know how I feel about you. I couldn’t turn my back on this if I wanted to. But I’m not sure how we’re going to make it work. I suppose I’ll see you as often as I can, but it has to stay a secret.”

I want the entire world to know that John Watson does, in fact, love me. I want to rent every billboard in the Commonwealth and announce it. I want it to be the Google homepage from this day forward. I want to tell every waiter everywhere that he is my date, that I am allowed to kiss him, taste him, enter him. I want Mary to know. I want her to know that he did choose me in the end. But I nod, despite my disappointment. “I understand,” I say, though only it’s partly true. I do understand on a rational level, but the part of me that loves John doesn’t function on a rational basis. I can’t bring myself to meet his eyes as I ask, “Will it always be like that?”

“I think, for the foreseeable future, that it has to be,” John says quietly, fingers tightening in mine in apology. “I’m sorry, Sherlock. I know it isn’t fair. I’ll try to get away as often as I can, but – I have a job and an infant at home. Does it help at all to remember that you’re the one that I love, though? Because you are. I love you. I love you more than I can possibly tell you.”

This will have to be enough. (It isn’t and it never will be, but I have no choice but to accept it.) “I love you, too,” I say in response, though it’s unhappy.

John slides both arms around me and pulls me to him, front-to-front, and holds me tightly. “I’ll stay tonight, at least,” he says. “I told Mary the investigation could go all night.”

“Were you expecting this to happen, then?” I ask into his hair. Somehow it’s easier to ask when he can’t see my face.

He presses a kiss into my curls. “Hoping,” he says. “Hoping very much. But not counting on it, no. I know how lucky I am that you didn’t throw me out of the house the minute I walked in.”

A question occurs. “How did you know I was here?” I ask, pushing a knee between his thighs. Had wondered earlier but it wasn’t the time to ask.

John is holding me as tightly as he can, his grip loosening and tightening over and over as though to continue pressing himself to me to revel in our proximity again and again. His cheek and nose pressed just behind my ear, he says, “Lestrade told me. He was pretty angry with me. From the way he was, I guessed that he knew what I’d done and was angry about it. When I asked where you’d gone, he wouldn’t tell me at first. I finally convinced him that I needed to see you to put things to rights and he gave me the key – very reluctantly, I might add.”

This makes me smile. He is a good friend. “I’m glad you found me,” I say, and John kisses me again, and then again, and again.

“I don’t know where he is,” he says, later. “But it seems he’s not here, so… let’s not waste any time tonight.”

Lestrade may be more intelligent than I originally gave him credit for. The crime scene can’t be that demanding at this point, unless they’ve found Lulu Lapointe (alive or dead) – in which case, he clearly hasn’t let me know. No: he knows what’s happening here. And John has a good point. Who knows when I’ll get another full night with him? “Let’s not,” I agree, and John smiles in the dark of the room.

***

I wake before John does, his gentle snoring rhythmic in the dark of the room. There are sounds coming from the kitchen; Lestrade is home, then. (What time is it?) I turn my head carefully, not wanting to wake John. It’s still partly dark outside. It’s early, then, not much past seven. I glance at the door and realise that it wasn’t even closed all the way. He’ll know that John is here, then. How things stand. I remember pulling John’s shirt off in the sitting room and mentally reiterate: Lestrade will definitely know, then. Has he walked by the guest room and seen us together? It would depend on the amount of streetlight coming in… no, he’ll have inferred it either way. Wonder briefly what he thinks of this development. He’s no fan of Mary, hasn’t been since my brother decided to fill him in on that score. (As a security measure, he’d said, and for once, I didn’t object.)

I turn my attention back to John, still asleep in my arms. My grip loosened in sleep but didn’t release. We didn’t sleep much; only around four o’clock did John finally yawn and settle onto my chest in a way that felt both novel and as though I had always known what it would feel like. I wonder if it will seem different for him on this side of the night. If he’ll regret it. I think back to everything he said last night and cautiously think that he won’t. Will he go home after this, or will he come back to the crime scene with me? Will he feel guilty about this? Daytimes are Mary’s time with the baby regardless; he doesn’t need to go home. Perhaps he’ll want to distance himself and take himself back to the clinic.

Awake, I decide I can’t sleep any more. But neither do I want to leave John alone in bed without saying anything. We did finally pull back the blankets and get under them once he decided it was time to sleep; at least he won’t have been seen uncovered by Lestrade. I turn my face into his forehead and press my lips to his warm skin. His breathing shifts as he wakes slowly. I kiss him again, gentler than I knew I could be with anyone. He is exquisitely important to me, so much than I would do anything to keep him from hurt or harm. He wakes little by little as I place kisses in precise locations of his face. He’s blinking and smiling.

“Morning,” he says, his voice scratchy.

I kiss his mouth. “Morning,” I say in response, and he kisses me again, then stretches and yawns, his spine cracking. He makes a rueful sound, then puts his arms around me again and kisses me again, more deeply. I kiss back for several long moments, then tell him under my breath, “Lestrade is home.”

John makes a sound of negation. “I don’t care.” He kisses me again, one hand roaming southward down my back to grip at my arse.

“The door is open,” I add, my breath already shortening.

“Then keep quiet,” John says in low tones, his hand sliding between my thighs and finding my penis, already half-erect. I can’t resist it (him) and don’t protest when he shunts his hips forward, legs tangling with mine, lining his penis up beside mine in his hand. “Come on, get your hand here,” he says, keeping his voice down, which makes it all the more seductive. I find his hand and wrap it around his and our joint erections and somehow we establish a rhythm, thrusting into the circle of our hands. He kisses me through it, his mouth stifling the sounds I can’t help making, my voice rising as the crest of orgasm nears and this time we come nearly at the same time, mine starting before his, but then John is groaning into my mouth, a splatter of wetness on my lower stomach, his thighs flexing between mine. The sheets must be filthy. (I’ll send Lestrade a cleaner or something. I owe him that much.)

We’re both breathing hard after, trying very hard to be quiet. I run my fingers through the short hair at the back of John’s head, gazing at his face, trying to memorise this moment. I have never loved anyone this way. (Feel somewhat tempted to say it again, but don’t want to overdo it with the sentiment.)

“This has been the best night of my life,” John tells me fervently, his voice still low. His hand strokes my face in infinite tenderness. “No matter what happens after this – please don’t forget that I love you. I mean that, Sherlock. Tell me you’ll remember that.”

“I’ll try,” I say, eyes searching his, and he kisses me again for a long time, passionately, his arms tight around my back, his lips and tongue stroking against mine, and I almost wish that I could just die now, that we didn’t have to go on past this particular moment.

But of course it ends. “I should go,” John says, as I knew he would. “I’ve missed so much work lately, I should really go in… but you’ll call me when you need me?”

He’s already sitting up, withdrawing, moving into the next part of the day. I don’t move, still curled on my side, watching him. “I always need you, John.”

That gets a smile and a quick kiss, bent over the bed. “Come on,” he says. “Get up. I don’t want to go out there and face Greg alone. Too embarrassing.”

“All right.” I reluctantly pull myself out of bed and put on as many of my clothes as I can locate in the room. My shirt and belt were lost somewhere on the way to the guest room, it seems, as were John’s shirt, t-shirt, and socks. I emerge from the room first, spot my belt in the corridor and am threading it through my belt loops as I come into the sitting room and see my shirt. John is pulling on his socks behind me when Lestrade comes out of the kitchen.

He makes eye contact with me first, eyebrows lifting pointedly, then looks at John. I shrug a bit but can’t quite help smiling slightly. “Morning,” Lestrade says loudly, to both of us.

“Er, morning,” John replies, looking as embarrassed as he sounds.

“Made coffee,” Lestrade says, with put-on cheerfulness, but his eyes are narrowed shrewdly. “Found all your clothes, then?”

“Yeah, cheers,” John mutters.

I finish buttoning my shirt and don’t dignify this with a response.

Lestrade chuckles. “Right, fine, got it,” he says. “Look – we’ve got a lead on a location for Lulu Lapointe. Either of you feel like tagging along?”

“I will,” I say. “But John has to get back to the clinic today.”

“As soon as you’ve got a body, I’m there,” John puts in. “But yeah, otherwise I do need to go back to work.”

Lestrade’s eyes move between us. “Sure. Of course,” he says, his tone disguising whatever he might think of that. “We’re headed north – you want a lift to the clinic, or are you going home first?”

“No, I’ll go straight to work,” John says quickly, glancing at me. “A lift would be great.”

“Sure thing. Help yourselves to coffee first,” Lestrade says with an air of magnanimity.

I go into the kitchen and John follows me. “That was easier than I expected,” he says quietly.

I shrug. “He knew.” I don’t specify what Lestrade knew; John can surely work that out on his own.

He puts an arm around my waist as I stir sugar into my coffee and kisses my shoulder. “I wish I could stay with you.”

“You have to work,” I say, making the excuse for him. Briefly wonder if this will be the first of many such occasions. There are so many things in his life that take precedence over me. Best just accept that now, difficult as it is to swallow.

In the car, I sit in the front with Lestrade, but when we reach the clinic, John leans forward and squeezes my shoulder. “See you soon,” he says, and then he’s gone.

Lestrade manages to keep quiet for all of thirty seconds before saying something. “So,” he says, turning left and making for Lapointe’s assistant’s flat.

“Shut up.”

A broad grin breaks over his face. “I’m just happy, is all,” he announces. He looks at me and I refuse to meet his gaze. “Really, Sherlock,” he says, serious now. “I’m really glad. It was about damned time.”

“That’s true enough,” I say, and my voice is stiff, but Lestrade cackles and thumps me on the knee.

“Only about five years late now,” he says, with the air of making an announcement. “You two were always supposed to be together. Anyone could see that.”

I agree, but can’t think of anything to say to this; I can’t see that we actually will be together any time soon. Complicated. Worthwhile, but this is going to be very complicated, indeed.

***

Lapointe’s agent is troubled and has no information as to her whereabouts. What he does have, however, is the somewhat relevant information that Lapointe was directly responsible for a man’s death six years ago. Once we get him to give us the short version (his version of the short version, that is; the idiot can hardly speak without interjecting useless trivia), he tells us that Lapointe was drunk and mistakenly fired a gun she had allegedly believed to be unloaded. The bullet hit her victim, a co-star in the (very) minor television drama in which she had starred in France, in the inferior vena cava. My own bullet wound gives a throb of reminder when I hear this, and Lestrade glances at me. The man, Benoît d’Entrevaux, survived the shooting and Lapointe slipped out from under the charge of manslaughter. However, d’Entrevaux was in a minor automobile accident four months later and died as a result of the heart wound re-opening. The trial was long over by that point, Lapointe’s lawyers had had her criminal record erased (media coverage had been completely denied throughout the trial and her extremely minor fame kept the paparazzi’s attention from being attracted), and she was never made to answer for d’Entrevaux’s death.

“She was haunted by it, though,” the agent tells us seriously, stroking the stubble on his chin with a frown.

“Yeah, great, I’m sure that’s a comfort to his family,” Lestrade retorts. He loathes these sorts and this time I am inclined to agree with him.

I stand. “You’re absolutely certain that you have no information as to her current whereabouts,” I say. A reminder of the gravity of the situation wouldn’t go amiss. “It could save her life.”

“If our vigilante hasn’t found her by now,” Lestrade adds, still angry. “She could be dead somewhere, so if you’re refusing to cooperate out of some hope to keep this out of the media, it’s time to rethink your priorities. This woman’s life is at stake!”

This shakes off the gravitas a little; the man looks startled and raises his hands in surrender. “I swear I don’t know!” he says. “The only place I can think of is maybe her London boyfriend’s, but I’ve tried calling there and there was no answer, I swear!”

Lestrade’s pen and pad are already out. “Name and address of the boyfriend,” he snaps.

The agent hesitates for one moment longer, then his shoulders slump and he caves. “His name is Andrew Morris,” he says. “He’s the CEO of a big software company, AriSoft. He’s married. He’s got a flat in Belgravia where she goes sometimes. She’s got another boyfriend who lives somewhere else, but they fight a lot, so… Normally she answers her mobile, though, so I’ve got to admit, I’m worried.”

Lestrade turns to me. “You know this company?”

“I’ve heard of it,” I say. Look down at the agent. “Address,” I command, and he gives it meekly. Lestrade is writing it even as he makes for the door.

***

Lestrade glares a little at my set of picklocks but doesn’t object when I use them when no one responds to his knock at Andrew Morris’ flat. It’s a single-storey flat but on an enormous scale, stretching back the length of the block, and it is empty. We fan out, searching for any sign of Lulu Lapointe. I can feel the events of last night and early this morning attempting to distract me, tugging at my attention and wanting thinking over, but this isn’t the time. We are endeavouring to save a life and catch a serial killer. I cannot think about John now.

It’s difficult, however. My entire body feels alive in a way it has never done before, every nerve tingling with awareness of him, of having been with him, in him. The taste of him is still on my tongue, his scent still staining my skin. Have always scoffed at the notion of attaching any sort of worth to a person’s virginity, but I’m reluctantly forced to admit that I understand the argument better now. It was my first experience of that sort and it was – I hesitate mentally, not even wanting to acknowledge it silently, but – it was significant. Incredibly so. John and I are connected in the most intimate of ways possible now. He is part of me and I of him. And it means more to me than I care to admit. (It’s everything. It’s absolutely, utterly everything.) I can still feel his hands, the proximity of his body, the heat of him, within and without. And all of my being is still reaching for him, the need for him greater, if anything, the hunger unsated and demanding. It’s been only hours since we were together and every part of myself, mind and body and heart, craves an answer to the question of when we’ll be together next. Attachment issues. I amaze myself – but then, it’s John. There’s really nothing amazing about that; I’ve been attached to him for a very long time already.

(Enough. Case: focus.) I cross the room to the bookshelf and stoop to inspect the items on it and in it. “Lestrade.” He makes a vague noise in response, busy sifting through the papers on the dining room table. “Come see this.”

He comes over and squints at the bookshelf in question, his face filled with confusion. “What am I looking at?”

John would have known by now. (Wish it was he here with me, rather than Lestrade. He’s a good sort but John would have picked it up instinctively by now.) I explain patiently, or as patiently as I’m able to do, mindful of the previous night and his rather exceptional level of understanding. “The loose book,” I explain, showing him. “Obvious: a secret cabinet.” I pull it and he nonetheless sounds very surprised when it swings open, revealing a rather impressive display of armoury.

We gaze at it in silence for a moment. “Wow,” Lestrade says, rubbing his chin. “That’s a lot of guns.”

Brilliant summary of the obvious. I don’t say it, even managing to spare him the eye roll. “Particularly for the CEO of a software programming company,” I say dryly, instead. “Does he have a hunting license on record?”

“I’ll check,” he says, and lifts his phone to his ear to make the call.

I crouch to examine the guns further, blocking out the drone of Lestrade’s voice in the background. None of them have been handled lately, but they’re all exceptionally well kept-up. Almost suspiciously so, if they’re not in regular use. I take a pair of gloves from my coat pocket and pick one up, checking it. Not loaded by the weight, and a cursory glance at the magazine confirms it. Interesting. Very interesting.

Lestrade comes back. “Yeah, he’s got a general hunting license, the sort you renew annually, but that wouldn’t cover the handguns, or this lot here,” he says, indicating a Heckler and Koch P7 and a number of similar models nearby. “Some sort of hobby collector, maybe? Illegal, obvious, but there are a lot of gun enthusiasts out there…”

I straighten up and close the cabinet. “Maybe,” I say, not convinced. Besides the hand guns, there are also several long-range rifles, too expensive to be used for deer hunting. He could simply be a hobby collector, but these particular pieces are odd. “I’d like to take a look at the kitchen. And bathroom.”

Lestrade spreads out his hands. “Go ahead,” he says. “Bearing in mind, of course, that we haven’t got a warrant and that I’d like to be out of here fairly quickly.”

I shrug off his words, making for the kitchen. Still wish John were here.

***

My search of the kitchen is interrupted by Lestrade appearing behind me several minutes later. He clears his throat. I turn, instinctively sensing bad news. I’m correct.

His eyes meet mine, very serious, and suddenly he looks much older. “They just found the body of Lapointe’s official boyfriend – not Morris, someone else. The other one the agent mentioned. Name’s Pete Turner. Another minor actor sort. Not dead, just badly injured.”

“Message?” I ask.

“Yeah – it says ‘you can’t hide forever’. Grim stuff.” Lestrade shakes his head. “Let’s go.”

I follow him out of the flat and text John. They found a body. Injured, not dead. I ask Lestrade for the address and send it separately. And hope that he’ll come.

***

John texts back to say that he’s sorry, but that he had to perform a procedure unexpectedly and will be tied up for the remainder of the work day, and then after he needs to mind his child.

It’s unsurprising, yet the text settles like a stone at the pit of my abdomen. I’m standing still, staring at the screen, lost in thought when Lestrade barks my name, standing with the paramedics near the A&E entrance. I blink and attempt to shake off the dark clouds gathering around my head and in the hollow cavity of my chest. Right: case.

***

As we learn later, at the time of Pete Turner’s abduction, Ms Lapointe had already been captured. A car accident was staged, but when John arrived and examined the body, he announced within minutes that Lulu Lapointe had been dead for several hours before the car her remains had been placed in had been hit by an oncoming vehicle. The driver of said vehicle disappeared instantly; not a single witness even made mention of him. Then again, the three witnesses saw only the aftermath, by which time the driver had disappeared. John’s examination further shows the same ankle injection found on Terry Wilkinson, Eddie Murdoch, and Diane Jenkins-Queen: she was poisoned. The name of the next victim was predictably on the body, folded into a tiny square and inserted between her breasts, held in place by the brassiere.

At least John came this time. Lapointe was killed the day after Lestrade and I searched the flat, two days after John found me at Lestrade’s. Lestrade texted me at Baker Street just before ten in the morning to tell me that the body had been found, and I texted John We’ve got a body., along with the address, and he’d texted back at once: Meet you there. Leaving the clinic now. He had said that he would come if there was a body, and he was true to his word. He gave me a quick smile upon arrival, then went straight to the car, where Lapointe’s stiff, damaged remains were waiting.

Lestrade had glanced at me more than once, obviously watching us, but I refused to acknowledge it.

Now it’s late, past midnight, and John is still here – here being the lab at Scotland Yard. The circles under his eyes are dark and he looks weary, but he hasn’t said a word about leaving so far. Lestrade is upstairs, likely drinking his nineteenth coffee of the day and wishing it were beer or something stronger.

He comes over to me. “Getting anywhere with that?”

His tone is almost deferential. (Why? Is he upset with me? Being deliberately distant, or am I imagining things?) I look up from the microscope. “It’s the same poison,” I say. “But we already knew that.”

“Or suspected,” John agrees. He glances around. “Everyone else seems to have gone home for the night…”

I look around, noticing it for the first time. “So they have,” I say. “What – ”

He cuts off my words with his mouth, swooping in so quickly I almost didn’t have time to register what he was about to do. I recover quickly, kissing back hungrily, hands finding their way to his sides. I’m seated on a stool and John is higher than me for once, bent over me, arms around my shoulders. It’s a good, deeply satisfying kiss and when he releases me I feel flushed and more than a little aroused. I blink, licking my lips, and realise I don’t know what to say. I have to say something, but all I can seem to do is blink stupidly.

John smiles, his eyes dark and lit with interest. “I’ve been wanting to do that all day,” he says. “Only there was never an appropriate occasion. We haven’t been alone since I arrived.”

“To hell with propriety,” I state, and John laughs and kisses me again. I don’t want it to end. I pull him closer, wanting to fuse myself to him, and when he’s pressed to me, chest-to-chest, his abdomen moving against my own, it feels as though an immense weight has been removed from my shoulders. John. I feel an overwhelming mixture of things: I feel relieved, just having this physical confirmation that he doesn’t regret the other night. I feel like the further I go into him, the more I lose sight of myself; he is all I can think of. I feel drunk on him, on this. The kiss ends far too soon, leaving me still reaching for him with my hands and mouth both, but he withdraws. “John – ”

He holds me off by the shoulders. “We do still have a case, remember?” The reminder is gentle. He kisses me on the forehead, his lips lingering warmly for a moment. (I close my eyes.) “I shouldn’t be distracting you.” He sounds rueful.

(Who could possibly care about a case now?) “It’s far more distracting when you’re not here,” I complain instead, the words a little sharper than they should have been. Perhaps a lot sharper.

John smiles slightly but looks troubled and I regret the words and tone both. He kisses my forehead again but it feels slightly absent, as though he’s thinking about something else. “Sorry,” he says, moving a step or two away, but doesn’t elaborate. Not Sorry that you’re my last priority, or Sorry I haven’t left Mary yet, or Sorry I can’t be with you every minute of every day. I know that’s what you want and I want it, too. Just Sorry, full stop.

We sigh at the same time and it isn’t amusing as much as it’s awkward. The tension between us grows. (Am I supposed to apologise?) “Where’s Lestrade?” I ask, just to break the brief silence.

“Still in his office. He’s researching the next victim,” John says, his voice tight. He is leaning against the counter, still facing me, hands fidgeting and restless.

“Sebastian Moran,” I say, extremely aware of the tension. Speaking hasn’t made it evaporate.

“Colonel,” John corrects me. A slight silence falls. John should be saying something else, asking for details or something, but he isn’t speaking. His eyes fall to my lips. He licks his own, a telltale gesture, though John’s lip licks come in approximately eighteen deduced moods of their own. This one is decidedly arousal, however. (Oh. I misread the tension. How could I have done that? Stupid, stupid! Am not sure how to proceed. Wait awkwardly? Evidently.) After a moment, John’s yes travel up my face to meet my gaze. “So, er,” he says, and puts his hands on my knees. They’re warm, the heat transferring directly into my skin. (Want to look down at them but keep my eyes on his face.) “Do you think Lestrade will… stay in his office for a bit?”

His tone is entirely casual, yet completely suggestive. His subtlety is staggering. (How had I never noticed that before?) “I don’t know, but I devoutly hope so, if you meant – ” My pulse is thudding in my throat. I watch his face for a clue, a cue as to how to act.

Happily, he makes it very clear, swiftly putting his mouth on mine. Our lips open jointly this time and our teeth click, the kiss growing rapidly violent. John pulls me off the stool, his body surging against mine. I can feel his erection beginning, stiff and pushing against the thin material of his khakis and know that my own arousal must be equally perceptible “Maybe we can – if we make it quick,” John pants against my mouth and I nod fervent agreement. His hands are on my arse, and this time I’m able to note the difference between the nervous anticipation of the first time with the equally apprehensive anticipation of wanting to live up to that on the second time. I cannot fail in this, not with everything riding on whatever scattered moments John will be able to spare for me. I reach into the right pocket of my trousers and withdraw the lubricant I purchased earlier. John pulls back long enough to look at it. He understands immediately and smiles into my eyes, eyebrows lifting suggestively. “You didn’t waste any time acquiring that,” he says, but he sounds approving despite the hint of mockery.

“Just in case,” I say, trying to sound casual. It comes out a bit strained.

John puts his hands on my face. “I’m glad you have it with you,” he says, and kisses me again for a long moment. After, he asks, “So, er… what should we do with it?”

He’s asking me again, leaving it up to me to decide. (Why? Is he just going along with this? Humouring me? Is he doing this because he knows I’m new to it and wants me to feel comfortable? I don’t want him accommodating me like that; it makes me feel like I’m about five years old and even less confident than I feel already. The truth is that I want to do what we did before: I want to be inside him. Even more base: I want to pin him against the counter and plunge into him, holding him there so that he can’t change his mind and decide against it. But I want him to want it.) I shrug, though it’s really more of a twitch of the shoulders. “I liked what we did before,” I say vaguely. I put my left hand on his arse to more firmly establish what I mean, and he gets it.

“You want to – do that again?” he asks, half-turning away from me in suggestion, his eyes still on my face. I nod and he agrees swiftly. “It was good last time. Let’s do that, then. Come on, we might not have much time. Get your fingers in me, then.”

He’s already unbuttoning and unzipping his jeans and drops them to his ankles, his underwear following suit. My eyes are glued to his penis, the erection over ninety degrees, the flesh firm and hard, the foreskin already pulling back. I find my voice. “Er – bend over the counter,” I say, and John obligingly does exactly that, his ankles spread as far as they can go with his jeans around his ankles. I step in close behind him, then stop to consider: I should probably rid myself of my own trousers before my hands are covered in lubricant. Feeling awkward even with John looking the other way, I fumblingly unzip myself and lower my own clothing to ankle-level. John is bent over, head on his arms, which are folded on the surface of the counter. Somehow I feel like the one who is exposed, standing behind him, my clothes half off, erection bobbing nervously in the air, holding the tube of lubricant and feeling suddenly that I cannot do this.

John cranes his head back to see what’s taking me so long. “Hey,” he says. “Everything okay?”

I swallow. “Yes,” I say, my throat dry. “Are – are you sure you want to do this?”

“Of course I am,” John says immediately. He pushes himself upright and turns to face me, hindered by the clothing bunched around his ankles. Unperturbed, he leans in and takes me by the chin with his right hand and puts his mouth on mine, gently.

As we kiss, his left hand closes around my penis and grips it firmly, stroking it in long, sure strokes. I gasp into John’s mouth: no one has ever touched my body this way before. (Janine wanted to, to be sure, but as she herself said: that was never going to happen.) To have John touch me this way renders me weak, both metaphorically and literally. My arms are locked around his shoulders and back respectively, kissing him with something like a combination of desperation and relief. (It’s going to be all right. He still wants me, wants this.) His hand on my penis feels incredible. (Can hear myself moaning into his mouth, unable to stop myself from responding vocally.)

After a long moment or two of this, John pulls his mouth off mine and smiles at me. “I love you,” he says, as though reminding me. “Now get this delicious cock of yours into me, yeah?”

It throbs in his hand at his words, as though he has direct control over it. (He does.) I nod. “Okay,” I say, and wish it sounded more certain. He resumes his position, bent forward over the counter, sticking his arse out deliberately and I have to swallow the saliva that gathers in my throat at the sight. I go closer and rub the right cheek with my hand, remembering how it feels, how his flesh feels against my palm. (John. He is everything I have ever wanted and didn’t know that I did.) I uncap the lubricant and squeeze some into my hand. Rub over the entrance to his body and bend over him, kissing his back through his shirt. (Wish we were both nude and somewhere else. The fluorescent lighting is doing little to make me feel more relaxed.) Work my fingers into him, one at a time, his voice coaching me through it. When it’s time, I coat myself with lubricant and stand directly behind him now, positioning myself and then beginning to push into him.

John groans and his body grips my penis like a fist, squeezing around the intrusion, but after a moment the muscles stop spasming and John’s body relaxes to allow me entrance. We’re both breathing hard and I can feel sweat forming at my temples. “All right,” John says, the signal to begin.

I start with my hands on his hips, head bowed forward as I slide within the tight grip of his body, then, as the sensation and concept both overwhelm me slightly, I change my mind and wrap my arms around his torso, bent over him. Only my pelvis is moving; otherwise he is pressed back into my chest as my hands rove over his clothed chest. I wish again that there had been time to undress entirely. There is no time to unbutton his shirt; this is too urgent, and besides which, he is wearing a t-shirt under the checked shirt as well. Time ceases to have meaning; all there is here and now is the sound and feel of him. He is moaning quietly, and moves one of my hands down to his erection. I grasp it and stroke, trying to time it with my thrusting within him. Once the rhythm is established, he groans louder, pressing the hand on his chest harder to him with one hand, his covering mine.

“Harder,” he requests.

I comply, feeling myself beginning to shake with the need to attain orgasm. “John,” I pant, “are you – close?”

“Getting there,” John says, exhaling hard. “Keep going!”

I squeeze my eyes shut and keep thrusting, endeavouring not to come but straining toward it all the while. Am not sure how long I can keep this up but I don’t want to come before John again. I very much want for him to come with me inside him, to come from that, specifically. Hear myself make a sound not unlike desperation. “Please,” I groan. “Please come!” (Wince mentally; it’s so base.)

John grunts, his fist closing around my hand on his penis, and thrusts hard into it. “Almost,” he gets out, his teeth gritted together. “Just – ” His hips are snapping forward and back, impaling himself on me with the latter. “Put your hand under my shirt!” he gasps.

I waste no time in doing so, shoving my hand up and rubbing over his right nipple hard, having deduced last time that his nipples are sensitive and that he prefers things a bit rough at times. I pinch it, rolling it between my fingers and he makes a louder sound than any that preceded it. “Like that?” I ask in his ear. My penis feels so engorged within his body that I could swear that over ninety percent of the blood in my body is there, and John’s is clenching and contracting around it, the pleasure so sharp it’s very like pain.

“Fuck, yes!” The words are heartfelt and unfeigned. “That’s it – I’m going to – ”

Thank God. I close my eyes again and let go, my hips attaching themselves to his buttocks as the orgasm, barely held in check, finally rushes over me. The pleasure is wracking me from head to toe, so blindingly good that I’m barely able to register the fact that John’s penis is erupting in spurts over my fist, that his body is spasming against my front, hot breath and curses spilling from his mouth like a waterfall. I’ve filled him with my release, feel it within him, wet and warm as I continue moving in him, the last ebbs of the climax releasing within the heat of his body.

John’s body relaxes and he slumps forward over the counter, head on his arms again. “God, that was good,” he says, breathing hard, his words slightly muffled against his arms.

I don’t want it to be over already. (Don’t want to pull out of him just yet, but it seems like the thing to do.) I do it carefully, watching my semen trickle down the insides of his thighs. “It was,” I agree. “Don’t move. Let me get something to clean up with.” He makes a vague sound of agreement and I spot a box of tissues and pull up my trousers before moving to get it, my body feeling heavy with lassitude. I bring it back and do my best to clumsily clean the sticky mess from his skin, then pull up his underwear and jeans before cleaning myself.

He zips himself away, then smiles into my eyes and moves into my space, putting his arms around my waist. “That was great,” he tells me, and kisses me.

I still feel uncertain about this. Again, he reached his orgasm much slower than I would have reached mine had I not forced it back over and over again. No matter what he says, I feel the reluctance of his body, feel that he is physically less interested in this than I am. It leaves me feeling deflated, no matter the fact that he did eventually get there. “Are you sure?” I ask after the kiss, dubious.

His hand strokes the hair back from my forehead. “Very sure,” he promises. “I’m just not seventeen any more, you know?”

So he knows precisely what I’m not saying. It’s that obvious, then, that we have a mismatch. I don’t know what to say to this. I thought it would be perfect when or if he finally decided that he wanted this from me.

His eyes scan mine, his eyebrows framing them in concern. “Hey,” he says. “Stop thinking whatever it is that you’re thinking. I’m forty-one, and you’re doing this all for the first time. It’s perfectly natural that it’s a bit faster for you than for me. But it didn’t even matter, because in the end it happened at the same time. Right?”

“Yes,” I say, still uncertain. “But – ”

“It rarely happens at the same time with any two people,” John interrupts. “And sometimes it doesn’t even happen at all for one person. Or both. Listen: I’m extremely attracted to you. I always have been. So stop doubting this. Me. I love you, and I want this. All right?”

He clearly doesn’t want to discuss it; his tone is firm and resistant to any further question about it. I duck my head in a nod. “All right.”

He smiles; this was the correct answer. “Good,” he says, in that same, firm tone. He kisses me again, then again, longer, arms tightening around my back, and after a moment some of the tension leaves my shoulders and I let my arms circle his shoulders as the kiss deepens. His mouth on mine is one of the very best things I’ve ever felt. (I love him. I love him more than one human should love another. Am far too dependent, far too vulnerable. He could destroy me like an insect, crushed beneath his foot, or even just with his fingers, as though I were nothing at all. Love: I wasn’t wrong about it. Was and wasn’t: the paradox. It doesn’t matter because I have no choice about this: I love him terribly, deeply, permanently, unchangeably.)

“Don’t let me interrupt or anything, but I thought I’d just let you know that I found Colonel Moran’s military file and that I’m turning in for the night,” Lestrade remarks casually from the doorway.

Startled, we break apart. (Hadn’t even heard the door. Unconscionable. But it was because John was here: therefore completely reasonable.) John clears his throat and I do the same. “Military record?” I repeat, turning to face him.

“Yeah: he was in the military. Colonel and that?” Lestrade says, as though reminding me. (Idiot: of course I knew that.)

“Is there anything unusual that we should know about?” John asks before I can respond.

“Not particularly. He was a colonel in the Indian Army,” Lestrade says. “Sniper. Expert sniper, in fact. Had a couple of strikes against him for conduct; apparently he didn’t get along all that well with some of the others in his various units. Didn’t stop him from getting repeatedly promoted, though, so he must have been quite good.”

“Any criminal record since he left the military?” I ask.

Lestrade shakes his head. “No. In fact, no record of any sort. That’s the odd bit. It’s like he just disappeared.”

“An alias,” I say, and John nods as though he were about to say the same thing. “He assumed a new identity.”

“Yeah, well, not legally, then,” Lestrade says. “There’s no record of a name change.”

“So likely a criminal, then?” John guesses. “Someone who was an expert shooter and didn’t want anyone from his military days to find him once he became a civilian. I can understand that, but why not do it legally unless he wanted to, say, continue using those particular skills?”

He’s shrewd and I look at him with pleased admiration, then realise at the set of his jaw that he’s thinking of Mary. Extremely similar circumstances, except that Mary was never military. Never legal, for that matter; her kills were all done under the table. Mycroft has determined that her stint in the CIA last less than a year before she moved into the private sector.

Lestrade’s eyes meet mine for a moment; he’s thinking the same thing. “Right,” he says, and tactfully doesn’t mention Mary. “So the question is, how to we find this guy?”

“If we’re going with the theory that he used his skill set as a sniper for criminal purposes, he’s likely quite intelligent,” I point out. “It could even be that he somehow got wind of the threat against him and went underground.”

“If he is that sort,” John agrees.

I look at Lestrade. “Do we know anything else about him? Known associates? I assume addresses and telephone numbers are out, as he hasn’t been known as Sebastian Moran since his release from the military in – what year?”

Lestrade looks down at the file. “2001,” he says. “That gives us thirteen years of lost history. It’s not looking good.”

“So what do we do?” John asks. “Just wait until his body turns up? Or what if the killer can’t find him? Do we just wait for another kill?”

Lestrade purses his lips and makes a thinking sound. “Tell you what: since Moran may be in the wind, let’s start focusing on the killer himself tomorrow.”

“Himself?” John repeats. “Could be a woman.”

Mary, I think, but don’t say. “Statistically a male would be more likely,” I state.

He gives me the ghost of a smile, as if in gratitude for not bringing his wife into it. “True,” he says.

“So – let’s meet here at nine, say?” Lestrade proposes. He nods toward the wall clock. “It’s almost one and I don’t know about you two, but I’m knackered.”

“I’ll be here,” I say.

Lestrade looks at John but doesn’t ask. “Right. I’m off, then. Good night.”

He goes. I take John’s hand and look down at it. “Can you come?” I ask quietly.

John hesitates. “I’m not sure,” he hedges. “I’ve missed a lot of work lately…”

I don’t push it. Accept it, not looking him in the eye. “All right.”

“I would, you know,” he says. “It’s just – ”

I don’t want the painful explanations. I know them all by heart already. “Don’t,” I say, cutting him off. “I know. Go to work. It’s all right.”

He squeezes my hand. “Okay,” he says, and starts for the door. Once we’re outside, he doesn’t let go, though his grip loosens somewhat. He raises his arm for a taxi and as it slows, he asks, “Mind if I take this one? It’s just that it’s late – ”

I would have insisted on it, anyway. “Of course.”

He hesitates, then kisses me quickly. “Good night. I’ll be in touch.”

I say something vague and watch him get into the car. I think of the hesitation and shiver as it drives off, already colder without him.

***

Our plans of contemplating the murderer himself are delayed when a murder is reported through the anonymous hotline at the Yard just before nine the following day. Lestrade phones to tell me, pulling me from a three-hour-deep well of research into Sebastian Moran’s background. “What?” I ask without saying hello.

“A murder,” Lestrade says, getting mercifully straight to the point. “Don’t know if it’s related, but it was reported. Anonymously, through the hotline.”

“Like Murdoch,” I say.

“Yeah, but get this,” Lestrade says. “There’s no name. No next victim.”

I frown at the opposite wall. “Cause of death?”

“Blunt force trauma, or so the ME thinks. Can you bring John?”

Hesitate. “I can try,” I say dubiously.

Lestrade’s silence is horribly understanding, but thankfully he doesn’t say whatever he’s thinking. “I see,” is all he says. “In that case, I’ll text you the address. You’ll come, at least?”

“Of course,” I say, and hang up. Text John. No time to wait for a response; I’m in my coat and at the kerb, hailing a taxi, less than twenty seconds later.

***

John texts back an hour into the investigation and says that he can’t come, and doesn’t give a reason. I turn off my phone and shove it angrily into a pocket. Damn him. The work, our work, was always supposed to take precedence over whatever he is doing. I realise later that it is Saturday and that he is likely tied up at home. Domestic duties, then. My resentment of his choice to have married Mary – and stay married to her, despite everything – grows.

The coroner comes over and tells that the cause of death was indeed blunt force trauma. I snap back that I am well aware of this and that the question was whether or not the victim was poisoned in the right ankle, as I’m capable of seeing for myself what the two-by-four cedar plank did to the victim’s skull. Lestrade says my name warningly and I ignore him.

***

The case lasts until Sunday night, leaving Lestrade and I with the dispirited conclusion that it was just a random murder, connected in no way to our serial killer or his string of kills. We resolve to resume our fruitless search for former Colonel Sebastian Moran in the morning, and go our separate ways.

I go home alone to a darkened flat where the scent of four-day-old rubbish is beginning to accumulate (right, Mrs Hudson is out of town somewhere again) and don’t bother turning on any lights. I don’t want light or food or Mrs Hudson. All I want is John, and he is likely watching telly with Mary or bathing his child or some such thing. I think of how he adjured me to remember how he feels regarding me during the times when he is unable to be with me, and here and now, it feels like fiction. Something one would say to a child to ease the difficulty of a situation, an easy fib.

Am of two minds whether to try to believe it or to dismiss it as a gentle, white lie. He misses our life together, or claims to. Loves me. (Weigh this dubiously, don’t know what to make of it.) But the lure of normalcy, the incomparable delight (???) of fatherhood, regardless of how he feels about Mary now… how can I compete with that? Even the white lie of the marriage – having Mary there, sustaining her end of the fiction, offering warm food after a long day, something home made and prepared with care (if no particular culinary talent, bread notwithstanding), the hetero-normative appearances of a not unpleasant-looking woman and feminine things in the bathroom and bedroom, perfume and fresh flowers in the vases. Some part of him surely wants that, or he’d have never married Mary in the first place.

It occurs to me that believing John’s feelings for me is not a realistic option. It’s too new. Too untested. I have no relative data to which to compare it, test it for strength, for genuineness. It’s not that I believe he would tell me a deliberate lie, but I don’t know that I trust that he knows one hundred percent what he actually wants.

With these thoughts in mind, I eventually fall asleep on the sofa, still in my coat.

***

John’s call wakes me at quarter to nine. I croak something unintelligible into the phone. He ignores that. “Sorry if I woke you,” he says, but his tone is urgent; he’s not thinking of that. “Listen – I think we should talk.”

I wake fully, alarms going off mentally. “John – ” I don’t know what to say next, how to finish. Panic is rising. “What do you – I mean – ”

“Not like that,” he says, mercifully cutting me off. “Can I come over?”

I blink, trying to catch up. “Of course,” I say.

“Great. I’ll be there in about half an hour.” John hangs up, which is uncharacteristically blunt of him.

I slowly put the phone down, then galvanise myself into action, making for the shower. I’ve just dressed and made coffee when I hear the door open downstairs. John’s step. Despite my apprehension, something eases in my chest at hearing this. John is home. Where he belongs. Even if it’s only temporary.

He comes into the kitchen. “Hi,” he says, his face worried.

I wave toward a chair. “Hi. Do you want to sit down? I made coffee…”

“Sure,” he says, meaning the coffee, and also goes to sit down. He pulls out a chair without making any sort of attempt to come over to me, present a physical overture of any sort.

I pour him a cup of coffee, debate internally, then take it to him and set it down. (Should I make the first move toward – something?) I hesitate for a moment, then decide against it. John doesn’t say anything as I pour my own coffee, then bring it back to the table and sit down across from him. I stir sugar into my cup and wish I knew how to do this, what the rules are for carrying on a secret relationship of a romantic/sexual nature with someone. What the rules of conduct are. The rules of smalltalk. I need to break the silence. I take a sip of coffee, then set it down and get out the question. “So: you wanted to talk,” I say.

“Yeah.” John pinches the bridge of his nose. “Listen – I hope you won’t be upset with me about this, but Mary was asking about the case. I told her a few of the details, and – well, I think she might have recognised some of the names of the victims. I’m sorry – maybe I shouldn’t have said, but – it’s there in the police reports for her to hack if she wants to, anyway, so I just… I don’t know.”

I feel the bridge of my nose contracting. “What?” I say, frowning at him. “Which names? Did she confess to knowing any of them?”

“No,” John admits, “but just the way she reacted to a couple of them… I mean, it was all very subtle. Maybe she really doesn’t, but we know that she’s a liar, so I just thought – all right, I thought that she recognised Eddie Murdoch’s name, and also Diane Jenkins-Queen. And I’m absolutely positive that she knew who Colonel Moran was. Or is. Whichever.”

My coffee is forgotten. “Did you ask?” I ask, leaning forward. “We could really use some information there!”

“I did ask,” John tells me, putting his hands around his cup. “She insisted that she didn’t, but hard enough that I thought it was a lie. I told her that we were looking for him and she made a little sound that sounded like she thought that was a pretty far-fetched thing to do. I asked her what that sound was supposed to mean and she denied having made it. I think she knows him, or knew him. Or something. I don’t know. But I told her that if it turned out that she did know anything about him, it could save his life. She just said, ‘well, I don’t know him’, and left it at that.”

“But you’re sure she does,” I say, watching John intently.

He nods. “Quite sure, yeah.”

I sit back, remember my coffee, and take a long sip. “Interesting.”

“Yeah,” John says. It sounds slightly bitter. “Really interesting.”

“She’s at home with Laura now?”

“Should be, yeah. She was when I left. Why?” John asks. “You’re not thinking of asking her yourself, are you? I wouldn’t advise that.”

“Why not?”

“Well, for starters, I’d hate for you to get shot again,” John retorts. “Not to mention in front of my daughter!”

His vehemence startles me. “I see,” I say quietly.

John rubs his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says, his hand still over his eyes. “I’m just – I hate this. I hate when I can see it overtly, you know?”

I know precisely what he means. I decide not to say that I hate even hearing him talk about being at home with his wife and daughter. That I resent the very existence of both. (Touch of shame regarding the child, but it’s nonetheless true.) The silence lengthens between us.

John sighs heavily after a bit. “I’m sorry,” he says without looking at me, but directing his gaze rather to the floor. “I’m rotten at – this. After everything I said about having fucked everything up, I’m still – ” He stops, not finishing the sentence. I don’t know what to say and therefore don’t say anything. After awhile, John says, with forced calm, “So how do we look for Moran?”

(Tread carefully.) “I’m not sure,” I say slowly. “I’m not certain whether or not it will be possible to find someone who has successfully hidden himself for the past thirteen years now.”

John makes a sound to show that he heard, his shoulders slumped. Perhaps he wants me to console him, tell him that I understand his divided loyalties and that it’s not a problem, but I cannot. It is a problem and we both know it. I cannot tell him comforting lies.

My phone rings after awhile. It’s Lestrade. I feel almost closer to him than I do to John these days. I pick it up. “What?”

“Good morning to you, too. Someone’s gone missing,” he says.

My pulse spikes. “Really! Who?”

“You’re not going to believe this,” he says, incredulity colouring even the fatigue in his voice. “James Malone, the chairman of the board for AriSoft!”

AriSoft: Andrew Morris’ company. “Odd connection,” I say.

“Isn’t it? He apparently lived alone but his doorman saw him leave for work at his usual time this morning – but get this: he was also seen arriving at the office this morning, so he was abducted on the premises! We’re going in to search. Thought you’d want to know.”

“We’ll be right there,” I say, speaking for John without checking first, and hang up.

He’s on his feet already. “What happened?”

“You remember Andrew Morris, CEO of AriSoft? The chairman of his board was just abducted,” I tell him.

“I remember the name, but who is he?” John asks.

“Boyfriend of Lulu Lapointe, the most recent victim.”

John’s forehead contracts. “I thought her boyfriend was Pete Turner, the bloke who was abducted and beat up?”

“She had more than one,” I say, rolling my eyes. “This was the rich one with the flat in Belgravia. He owns AriSoft, a big software company. And now the second most important employee in the company has just disappeared. Come on.”

He falls into step behind me, our natural rhythm falling into place with ease. I have time to notice this, at least, as we hasten down the stairs and out onto the pavement. It feels right having him here with me. As though it were meant to be. (It was.)

***

It occurs to me in the taxi that John has not done anything to acknowledge what has taken place between us recently, the fact that we are more than detective-and-helpmate, former flatmates and best friends. He has not kissed me or touched me in any way, nor said anything to indicate that things are still that way between us, and the awareness of this missing aspect gnaws a hole into my guts. I attempt to reason with myself; experience has been showing of late that I am miserably incapable of focusing on a case when preoccupied with John. So: what can I make of that, then? He was concerned about Mary and her possible connection to Sebastian Moran. He’s the one actually focused on the case this time. He isn’t thinking about time-wasting things like reassuring me, yet again, that he still feels what he claims to feel for me.

I glance at him. His profile is angled toward the window, forehead and mouth troubled. Look away again, out my own window, not seeing anything. Suppress a sigh. (It’s not that I want him to hold my hand or something. Just some acknowledgement would have been nice. More than nice, not that insipid, flat word. But something along those lines.)

The taxi stops in front of the steel-and-glass façade of AriSoft’s corporate offices. I pay and we exit, John walking around to join me on the pavement before we go in. “What’s the plan?” he asks, sotto voce.

“There isn’t one, particularly,” I say, shrugging. “We search the offices. His office in particular, see if we can find a clue. We talk to anyone who saw him this morning, check the surveillance. Standard procedure.”

I start to walk, but John grabs me by the elbow and swings me around. “Wait!” he insists. “Sherlock – you’re forgetting that this isn’t just some white collar corporate sort.”

Frown. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” John says, still intense, “that if he’s on the same list as the rest of that lot, then he’s a murderer who our killer thinks hasn’t served justice for his crimes. He’s someone from the underside, someone who knows how to escape. What if he knew he was being watched, or what if he somehow caught wind of the fact that he was next on the vigilante’s list?”

He makes perfect sense, of course. “So what if he did?” I ask, impatient. “He’s still missing.”

“Missing and on the run are two different things,” John argues. “If he’s in the wind and knows how to hide, then he could even be on the offensive at this point. If he senses someone is coming for him – I’m just saying, let’s be careful, all right?”

I pull my arm from John’s grasp and fleetingly think that it’s the most contact I’ve had with him since Friday night in the laboratory at the Yard. It’s now Monday morning, and it’s the wrong sort of contact. “Don’t lecture me,” I say, and stride toward the revolving doors.

John’s mouth opens in my peripheral vision but he closes it and falls in just behind me. I can see without looking that his mouth is doing that flat, unimpressed thing it does when he’s angry.

In front of the bank of lifts, I can sense John’s tension. I refuse to ask, but finally it gets to be too much. (These are surely the slowest lifts in London.) “What?” I say at last, a tad waspishly.

His reflection’s shoulders are hunched in the steel doors of the lift in front of us. “What was that supposed to mean?”

“I thought it fairly evident,” I say stiffly.

“No, I mean, what was with – all of that? What’s got into you?”

“Nothing,” I say, no less stiffly. The lift pings and the doors open. I press the button for the seventeenth and top floor, where both Morris and Malone’s offices are, and where Lestrade and his brainless appendages are waiting.

“If you’re angry because I’m a little preoccupied, then I don’t know what you want me to say,” John says to the row of buttons in front of him.

My shoulders are rigid. “Being focused on the case is commendable.”

I can sense his jaw tightening. “Is this about the week-end, then? The fact that I was unavailable to help yesterday and Saturday? Because I do actually have some other responsibilities, you realise – ”

“Yes, I’m extremely aware of your other responsibilities,” I say, the words ground out. “Let’s just not discuss it.”

“Fine,” John says shortly. The lift doors open and he goes out first without a backward glance. If I let the doors close and descended to the ground floor again, he wouldn’t even notice. I close my eyes for a moment, then follow him out of the lift.

Lestrade explains where they’ve looked so far. A minion is just setting up the surveillance footage. John does not acknowledge my presence when I move to his side. (No one else has the power to make me feel this insignificant.) I clear my throat. “Where is Morris?”

There’s a receptionist or administrative assistant of some sort standing nearby, wringing her hands. “He hasn’t come in yet. Sir.”

“Is he normally this late?” John asks, looking at a large wall clock. He has a point; it’s after ten. Morris hardly seems the sort to arrive late. Interesting that the day that his chairman of the board goes missing, Morris should be significantly late for work. (Related? Possibly. Reconsider: very.)

Lestrade starts the footage: Malone, who is slightly heavy-set, in his fifties with salt-and-pepper hair and a well-cut dark suit, is moving quickly, surprisingly agile for someone his age, but appears to be in no particular hurry as he enters through the main entrance that John and I just came through several minutes ago. Another camera shows him waiting for the lifts. There is surveillance at the reception area on the seventeenth floor where he is shown exiting the lifts and turning left for his own office, but there is no camera coverage in the corridor where his own office is. There is a camera within the office, but it seems it was disabled.

“So whoever abducted him knew what they were doing,” John says grimly.

“It would seem,” Lestrade agrees. He catches my eye, lifting an eyebrow in silent query.

I ignore it. “So how does a man disappear from his own office without being seen?” I gesture toward the office. “Show me the office.”

“We didn’t find anything at all unusual, but come and see,” Lestrade says, leading the way. Over his shoulder he adds, “Though that’s never stopped you from seeing stuff no one else can see in the past.”

He’s trying to cheer me up and it’s ridiculously transparent. Still. Malone’s office is empty. Not a paper is out of place. It’s impeccable. Too clean. I look around the room, eyes taking in every possible form of exit and cataloguing them as I go. I consider the window and Malone’s unusual agility. Possibility, but a closer inspection shows no fingerprints on the window ledge at all. Certainly nothing recent. There are no books on the shelves, only expensive trinkets. A steel panther stretching, polished jade stones for eyes. A lacquered ashtray. A hand-woven Turkish-style carpet. A hint of expensive cigar tobacco in the air. “Vaguely Indian,” I muse aloud, more to myself than anyone else.

“Indian?” John repeats, catching it.

“What was that?” Lestrade, from the other side of the office.

I look up and see it: a ceiling tile not quite in place. There’s always something. Large enough for a grown man to fit through? I rather think. As I think this, everything happens at once.

“Colonel Moran was in the Indian Army,” John says. “It was in his military file.”

Lestrade’s phone rings. I move the desk over one metre and climb onto it and lift away the tile. “What?” Lestrade says sharply. “Where?”

There are fingerprints in the dust inside the duct. It leads straight up, but only for a metre. Dangling from the top of the passageway is a rope. Rope: perfect for evidence; always a skin cell or two left behind from where the rope chafed the palms. John was right, or at least partly so: “Colonel Moran is in the wind,” I say, my voice echoing into the duct.

Lestrade hangs up his phone. “Andrew Morris is dead,” he says. “Shot on the pavement, but no one saw anything.”

“What?” I say to him, looking down from the desk.

“What?” John says to me, looking up from where he’s apparently spotting me.

“Morris is dead,” Lestrade repeats.

“Malone is Moran,” I tell him.

He looks intensely confused. “What?”

John puts out his hand to help me down from the desk. Could refuse to take it, but it seems unnecessarily petty. “Colonel Moran is James Malone,” he says to Lestrade, but is still looking at me. “But how did you know?”

I step down from the chair and wave around the office. “Vaguely Indian décor. Subtle enough so as not to be obvious, but he spent the bulk of his youth and early adult days there. The attachment makes sense. If he caught wind of the investigation, then he’s done a runner. Escaped through a passageway he obviously built into his own office for just such an occasion.”

Lestrade is gaping at me like a fish out of water. “But where does it go?”

“Get a blueprint of the building,” I order. “Meanwhile, we need to get to Morris’ body. Send someone.”

“Are we pursuing Moran or Malone, then?” Lestrade wants to know. “Which would you say is top priority?”

“I don’t know, but they’re related,” I tell him. “I’m sure of it. In fact – you go to the body. We’ll stay here and figure out where Moran has gone. If possible.”

“Right,” Lestrade says. He thumbs the screen of his phone and is already making a call as he leaves the office.

John’s eyes meet mine, soberly. “You’re sure it’s Moran?” he asks now. “Completely sure?”

“Fairly,” I say. “We can certainly dust for prints and match them to his military record. Why?”

“Because if Malone is Moran, remember: Moran’s a sniper,” John reminds me. “And now his CEO is dead.”

“So you think maybe he isn’t just on the run,” I say. “But why shoot Morris? Unless it was Morris who was pursuing him.”

“But does that make sense?” John asks, debating the opposite side now. “Morris is a CEO of a software company. Hardly seems the type.”

“But he does have an illegal gun collection,” I recall. “Including some long-range weapons, in fact… what if they were snipers together? I wonder if Morris has a military record?”

“Let’s find out,” John says decisively. “Where’s his office?”

“We could just google it,” I point out, though John has a good point: I wanted to see Morris’ office, anyway. He’s gathered this and is already walking toward the door, knowing I’ll follow. It strikes me now that, even fighting, he and I make perfect partners. We fill in one another’s thoughts, ask each other’s questions and supply all of the right answers. I feel alive again, working with him this way. It’s nearly as good as our physical connection. It’s all part and parcel of the same thing, rather.

Morris’ secretary puts up a feeble protest but John deals with it effectively (principally by telling her with a commendable efficiency of words that her boss is dead). His computer is password protected, but that affords me as little an obstacle as the secretary did for John. I sit down in his expensive chair and type rapidly, searching. “No record,” I say aloud, for John’s benefit.

He leans in over my shoulder, close – too close for platonic contact, perhaps, though we were always in one another’s space from the first. “Military or criminal?”

“Either,” I say, showing him both pages. His hands settle on my shoulders and squeeze. I attempt to simultaneously ignore it and drink it in as deeply as possible. (The former fails spectacularly.) Breathe. Think. Focus. “Couldvbeenprivate.” The words tangle themselves on my tongue.

John’s laugh is an exhaled breath through his nose. “What was that? Didn’t quite catch it.”

“He could have been a private contractor,” I say, getting the words out properly this time.

“Could have,” John agrees. “But that doesn’t explain the sudden shift from guns to software. Unless it was always a side hobby. But what a hobby! Picking people off for jobs? It doesn’t make sense.”

Unlike me, John can evidently touch and talk at the same time. His fingers are massaging my shoulders through my coat, tugging at the hair at the base of my skull. It’s intensely distracting and slightly arousing as well. “I don’t know,” I say. “And if it’s Moran who killed him, what’s their connection?”

“The girlfriend?” John suggests. “I wonder if he didn’t know she was seeing someone else.”

“But she was killed by the serial vigilante,” I point out, closing my eyes and revelling in the sensation of his fingers in my hair. “How does Moran fit into that? He would hardly have become a justice killer, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know,” John says into my hair. Perhaps it’s been too long for him since our last contact, too, or perhaps he’s feeling the same way I am about our partnership in the work, feeling how well we fit together again, current lack of answers notwithstanding. “Try searching his computer,” he suggests. “See if the Moran’s name comes up anywhere. Maybe we can find a connection between them.”

“Good idea,” I say, and move away from his hands with reluctance. He was right. “You’re brilliant,” I say, as a Word document comes up. John smirks and leans forward as though to kiss the side of my face or possibly my ear when he stops, the screen catching his eye. The smirk dies and I feel blankness come over my own features.

It’s a list. It reads:

TERRY WILKINSON

EDDIE MURDOCH

DIANE JENKINS-QUEEN

LULU LAPOINTE

SEBASTIAN MORAN

And there, below Moran’s name:

MARY MORSTAN (A.G.R.A.)

***

It feels like an eternity before either of us moves or breathes or speaks. John is frozen, his lips millimetres from my face. Now he straightens stiffly, squaring his shoulders, exhaling. (Have no idea what he could be thinking.) “John…”

“Is there a second page?” He’s brusque, cutting me off.

I scroll down. There are five pages to the document. Under each name is a paragraph detailing the crime and punishment, or lack thereof, below it. Moran and Mary’s paragraphs are the longest. I scroll upward before John can read any of Mary’s multiple paragraphs. I saw, in my one glimpse, more than he would ever want to see. Good job he doesn’t read as quickly as I do, and besides which, he wouldn’t have been able to focus on the words (he needs reading glasses and won’t admit it). I don’t need to say it out loud: yes, there’s a list, and there are real reasons on it. “It doesn’t explain how he knows Moran,” I offer, but I know that John won’t care about that.

He moves away from me and takes out his phone. I know who he’s calling but have no idea what on earth he could want to say to Mary over the phone at this precise moment. After a few (tense, silent) moments, he disconnects. “No answer,” he says. “Listen… I’ve got to check on Laura. Mary’s supposed to be there and she’s not answering. I just – I’ve got to make sure my daughter’s all right.”

“Of course,” I say.

John reaches the doorway and turns back. He opens his mouth, contemplates, then looks back at me, gives what could be a partial nod, then shuts his mouth and leaves without another word.

I have a bad feeling about this. Somehow it seems instantly clear to me that Mary is gone. And I wonder if I will see John again.

***

Lestrade calls me to say that Morris wasn’t poisoned, only shot. I tell him to obtain a search warrant for Morris’ flat and any other properties he owns, rents, or leases, and tell him about the hit list. He asks me where John is and I tell him, honestly, that I don’t know. I take Morris’ laptop back to Baker Street and begin systematically searching it for any other information, all the while drumming my fingers and trying not to notice that I’m waiting for John to text.

He doesn’t. For the whole of that day and the following morning as I move through the crime scene around Morris’ body with Lestrade and whomever else, it feels like a dream. I’m on automatic pilot, just waiting. At noon I cave and text him. Where are you? What’s going on?

It’s another twelve hours before I get an answer, by which point we’ve found the poison in Morris’ country residence in Wiltshire, deduced that he discovered Moran’s history at some point and had begun delving into his criminal background. Based on his notes in the hit list, Lestrade and I are able to piece together the facts for a long-since cold murder case wherein Morris’ wife and two children were killed in a house fire after Morris’ wife failed to make timely payments for her secret cocaine addiction. How Morris discovered that it was Mary who had set the fire is anyone’s guess. How he discovered Moran’s history, or any of the other killers’, is equally difficult to spot. Presumably he learned of Lulu Lapointe’s past from the woman herself. Perhaps it became an obsession once he learned of not one but three unpunished killers in his life. He killed with poison, illegal gun collection notwithstanding. His kills were humanely done but the crime scenes arranged to send specific messages in terms of the manner of the original crimes committed.

And he is dead. Andrew Morris, England’s most recent vigilante, has been shot – by, I presume, Sebastian Moran: a crack shot who somehow discovered that his cover had been blown and that his own CEO was on the verge of eliminating him. And he is on the run. Mary is missing – was she hunting Morris, too? And now John is gone. I presume he’s hunting Mary, in turn. I wish I were with him. I wish I knew what was going on.

When he finally does contact me, it’s after midnight. I’m still at the Yard when the alert sounds.

I can’t tell you where I am but I’m guessing
you know who I’m looking for. She’s gone.
I left L somewhere safe. Can’t say more in
case someone sees this. I’m not on the cont-
inent and I’m turning my phone off now so
that I won’t be tracked. I’m sorry. –J

I’m sorry. I stare at the screen for a long time. Does this mean that he’s not coming back? Briefly I wonder what he means by “somewhere safe”, regarding his daughter. Confirmation that he’s looking for Mary. What does he intend to do, though? Why won’t he let me help him? I text back suddenly, in the event that he hasn’t turned his phone off yet, or in case he turns it back on to check: I want to help. If there’s a way, tell me and I’ll come to you. I send this, hesitate, then send a second message. It smacks of desperation but perhaps it needs saying. I love you.

Five minutes later I receive a text and pick it up, my heart pounding. Failure to send. Message cannot be delivered. My heart gives a painful twist and descends into my belly. He won’t see it. He’s shut me out of this deliberately: why? Has he gone to retrieve his criminal wife to bring her to justice, or… has he gone looking for his wife and love to bring her home to their daughter? I cannot stand to contemplate the latter, but it feels horridly inevitable and I cannot stop thinking of it. Fantastical scenes of Mary weeping and pleading for John’s forgiveness, granted with tears, his voice gruff, kisses in foreign cities and promises to start their marriage over again, no lies between them this time. Me a distant thought in the past, a mistaken indulgence during a time of trouble. A line guiltily crossed, never to be mentioned to the wife, like all the other affairs. Affairs grants the others too much status; they were meaningless hook-ups, he said. Nothing more. Whereas he said that he loved me.

I’m alone at Baker Street. The case is solved, apart from the unanswerable gaps in terms of how Morris came by his information. But I’m alone in the dark of the sitting room, the normal feeling of post-case resolution utterly absent. John is gone; this is all that matters. I have no idea if or when he’s coming back or where anything stands between us. I think of his fingers on my neck and in my hair in Morris’ office yesterday morning and am fleetingly glad that he did that, that things hadn’t been left on our tense exchange in the lift. But will it even matter now? What am I to the lure of what resolution with Mary could be? It’s everything he’s always wanted. How can I compete with that?

He could at least do me the courtesy of letting me know that our dalliance is finished. Twice only: not enough to build a foundation upon, a solid case. There’s not enough evidence. Or perhaps he sees our relationship as inherently damaged as his relationship with Mary: too many years of feelings unspoken, never acted upon, too many misunderstandings and too much loss. I always took him for granted before St. Barts. (But never after, never.)

The uncertainty consumes me in the dark. I feel weightless, insubstantial. One day he will come back and tell me, one way or another. Until then – where is he? Is he in danger? Am I insulting him just by imagining his emotionally fraught reunions with Mary when in fact he is in some foreign country where he doesn’t speak the language (and apart from his passable Farsi, John’s linguistic skills are extremely limited), headed into dangerous territory all on his own? For the first time I feel in retrospect some of what he may have felt upon finding out I’d been alive during my absence. If he truly does feel the way he said, did he feel that I’d left him out? Gone off into danger alone, without the one person who always watched my back, deliberately left him out? This thought rings true. (Oh, John.) The desire to explain myself, better this time, rises. If he comes back to me, I’ll tell him everything. Explain properly. Explain that I never for a moment wanted to be without him. That I never want to be without him again.

The darkness whispers and beckons, and I feel myself falling into its maw.

***

It takes six days, six interminable days before I hear a word from John. The flat looks like a bomb went off. (There was a minor explosion in the kitchen, but that doesn’t explain the state of the sitting room.) Have nearly torn through my own skin with the unbearable anxiety of not knowing where things stand with John, not knowing where he is or what’s happening. When I see his name on my phone, I lunge for it, jabbing violently at the screen. The text is disappointingly short, particularly on details, but the important fact is there. It reads: On my way back. Can you get Mycroft & Lestrade to Baker Street by six? –J

He’s coming back. Tonight. Here. I text back Done. and send it. Then text my brother and Lestrade the same message: Baker Street, 6pm. John’s request; not sure what it’s about. SH. Lestrade texts back promptly; my brother slightly later and with too many questions. I ignore them all and attempt to straighten up the sitting room. Try not to wonder whether or not John received those two messages, whether they came through at some point once his phone was back in an area with clear reception. I shower and dress properly for the first time in days and feel considerably better after, though no less apprehensive.

The day finally passes. Lestrade arrives first, which is a mercy. Mycroft arrives promptly one minute before six. He frowns at the sight of the paper coffee cup in Lestrade’s hand for no apparent reason. (Ah: he’s miffed that Lestrade was earlier than he was. Petty.) Lestrade asks me if I have any idea what’s going on and I respond tersely that I don’t.

“Moscow,” Mycroft says thoughtfully, stroking his chin.

“What?” I snap.

“He went to Moscow, of course,” Mycroft says, as though I knew this.

I instantly hate him for not having told me. “Good of you to have shared that,” I say through clenched teeth.

Lestrade glances at me. “You sure you two don’t want to fill me in?”

“You’d have to speak to him, apparently,” I grit out, jabbing my chin in my brother’s direction.

Mycroft shrugs. “That’s about the extent of it. Six days ago, Doctor Watson caught a flight to Brussels and from there to Moscow. I know the name of his hotel. Would you care to know that? That’s all I know, little brother. His return flight is direct to London and landed one hour, five minutes ago. I expect he’ll be here any moment now.”

As if on cue, I hear his key in the lock downstairs. Two sets of footsteps, one constrained somehow, then Mary’s voice, sharp. Ah: so, not a happy resolution, then. My heart lifts and for the first time in what feels like months, I feel the smallest ray of hope. (There’s no time for that now. Focus.)

John marches Mary into the room before him, giving her a push. His body blocks the doorway and he crosses his arms over his chest. “She’s all yours,” he says to Mycroft and Lestrade, not even looking at me.

Lestrade glances at me. “What’s this about, then?” he wants to know. My brother has merely arched an auburn brow, waiting.

John’s eyes flicker briefly to mine, the barest of acknowledgements. “I believe you’ll find her guilty of quite a few unprosecuted crimes, including the murder of the wife and children of Andrew Morris, the CEO of AriSoft.”

“Andrew Morris is dead,” Lestrade tells him. “He was shot down in the street the other day. Crack sniper shot.” His eyes settle on Mary, weighing her.

She lifts her chin defensively. “Moran’s shot, not mine.”

“He’s dead, too,” John adds, glaring at her. “The body’s in Moscow with their police. It’ll have to be processed before it can be shipped anywhere, and then someone will have to claim it. Mary shot him in the heart. Sound familiar?” This, he directs at me, jaw set.

I feel my mouth twist. “Interesting,” I say. Then, to Mary, “Explain. What was your connection to Moran?”

“I don’t have to tell you a damned thing, Sherlock,” Mary says, with that heavy, condescending patience she has. “I’m not saying a word without a lawyer present.”

“We discussed this,” John all but growls at her. “You are going to talk, and you are going to do it now. I might add,” he says to Lestrade, “that she’s also guilty of having abandoned a five-month old infant.”

Mycroft goes to my chair and sits down, crossing one knee carefully over the other. He withdraws a small notebook as though he has all the time in the world. “Record,” he says to Lestrade, without looking at him. He nods at one of the desk chairs. “Sit,” he says to Mary.

She turns and looks over her shoulder at John. He raises his eyebrows, arms still crossed, and looks pointedly at the chair. Mary sighs, then goes to the chair. She pulls it into the centre of the room and sits down. It amazes me continually that she can even sit with defiance.

“Now answer Sherlock’s question,” Mycroft says placidly, almost bored. “Your connection to Moran.” He waits, an embossed platinum pen balanced between his fingers.

“We were rivals,” she says, mouth pursed. “But we both answered to the same man.”

“Moriarty,” I supply from over her right shoulder, standing near the coffee table.

She doesn’t even acknowledge it, but neither does she deny it. “He knew too much about me. I had been looking for him for years. I only just found him last year, but he had obviously created a deep cover and didn’t appear to be working actively any more, and I thought we could just ignore one another, leave the past behind.”

“When did you find out that Andrew Morris was pursuing you both?” Mycroft asks.

Mary hedges. “Show them the note,” John says.

She reluctantly digs into a pocket of her coat and pulls it out, reads it aloud: “‘AGRA: your number is up. The games are off. We’ll see who gets to you first: him or me. Consider this a favour, for old times’ sake.’”

“So Moran knew that Morris was after him,” Lestrade says, confused. “I don’t get it: they worked together side-by-side for years, neither one saying a word, but Morris has a hit list on his computer of justice kills he somehow feels it his right or duty or whatever to carry out, with Moran right there under his nose day after day. Was he just building up his nerve all that time? I don’t understand.”

“Moran told him, the idiot,” Mary says, rolling her eyes. “He always was thick. They got drunk together once on a business trip to New York and Moran let it slip that he knew me. He never said my name but somehow he knew about the job – ”

“The one wherein you killed his wife and kids,” John interjects.

Mary rolls her eyes again and sighs heavily. “Yes, thank you for the reminder,” she says sharply, as though the crime was somehow John’s fault. “Anyway: Morris evidently put the pieces together, figuring out that if Moran knew me, then he must have been the same sort. I don’t know how he ever found Moran’s real identity, but he was a software programmer, right? A hacker, in other words. Evidently he figured it out. And found me.”

Mycroft clears his throat subtly. “In fact,” he says, “we recently learned that Andrew Morris was once employed by our government. It was a summer internship only, some time ago. Many years, in fact. It would, er, seem that he… retained some knowledge as to how to access our databases. Which would have, of course, given him access to any and all legal name changes obtained in this country. Including yours,” he says to Mary with a slimy smile. “Our database does extend into Northern Ireland, you realise. You should have changed your name back in America.” He stands. “Does anyone else have any further questions, or are we finished for the present?”

He looks around. John is glaring at a patch of carpet near Mary’s feet and Lestrade is chewing on a plastic stir stick and apparently lost in thought. Mycroft’s eyes meet mine. I shake my head minutely.

Mary laughs, just a short, bitter thing. “I suppose you all think it’s that easy,” she says. She sticks her tongue out, showing a small, hard black object on the tip of it. Withdrawing it again, she says, “I assume you know what that is. Suicide pill. If you think I’m going to just ‘come along quietly’, think again, boys. You’re not taking me. This is what’s going to happen: you’re going to forget about this, the way you’ve forgotten about the rest of it. AGRA disappears the instant I walk out of this room and Mary Morstan goes back to her regularly scheduled life.”

“Or what?” Mycroft inquires, completely unmoved.

Her brows rise to positively alarming heights. “Or I bite down on this and John loses a wife and our daughter loses her mother. And it will be on your heads.”

I want to say something, but have no idea what John’s feelings on this are. My brother and Lestrade and I all turn and look at him.

Mary turns around and gives him that cool, reptilian-eyed head tilt. “Is that what you want?” she asks him.

John shakes his head. “Go ahead,” he says, his voice hard. “Bite the damned thing. I don’t care any more. Or do the right thing and take your punishment. Life is prison is too good for you. You burned a woman and two children alive, and God knows what all else you’ve done. I don’t care any more. I just want you gone.”

With her back turned to me, Mary doesn’t see me move in time. The blow to the back of her skull is only enough to jar her hard, causing her to cough and fall forward. Lestrade understood immediately, for once, and is there in front of her as I hold her down, a knee to her back. His grasps her jaw with a large hand, forcing her mouth open, fishing inside with his other hand. “That’s it, spit it out now,” he says. “Got it.” He stands up, holding up the black dot on the tip of his finger. He tosses me a pairs of handcuffs. “Cuff her,” he says, grim satisfaction in his tone.

“With pleasure,” I respond, and snap the cuffs on. “Brother mine: all yours.”

Mycroft has a wide array of truly frightening smiles. He deploys one now. I think it’s the first time I’ve seen him genuinely happy since my return. “Ms Morstan,” he says, courteously enough, and he and Lestrade take her by the shoulders and remove her from the flat, leaving John and I alone.

I don’t know what to say to him. He’s leaning against the doorframe, looking absolutely drained and older than his years, the fight gone from his eyes now that Mary is gone. I want to go to him but can feel him actively pushing me away. “John,” I try, uncertain. “Are you… of course you’re not.”

He rubs a hand over his eyes. “No. I fucking well am not okay.”

A moment passes. “I know.” The words fall to the floor between us.

He hesitates. “Thank you for not letting her take the pill.”

I shrug this away. “Of course.”

“I have to go,” he says abruptly. “I need to see Laura. I need to – I don’t know. I’m going to need some time, all right?”

It feels as though a giant fist is crushing the air out of my chest. “And then what?” I can’t breathe.

John shakes his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know right now. I just – I need to be on my own for a bit.”

I swallow; my throat is dry. “For how long?”

“Don’t push it,” he says sharply. Then – “I’m sorry, Sherlock. I don’t have an answer to that right now. My entire life just fell apart, all right? I just need to be by myself.”

My pulse is fluttering in my throat like a bird trying to escape. “All right.” The words are dry and sound meaningless.

His eyes glance up but don’t quite meet mine. “I’ll, er, be in touch, I guess,” he says. Hardly a promise. But then he turns and goes, his steps heavy on the stairs, leaving me standing there by myself. The way I started the day: alone.

I feel worse than I did before he came back. At least he’s not with Mary. But is this any better? All that matters is that he’s not here, that he’s not coming to me for comfort in his difficulty. Even in the months after Mary shot me, he stayed with me. Even if he didn’t speak for days on end, sunk into the depths of his anger and resentment against every part of what had happened, he was still there. I understand that he has a responsibility to his daughter, that he has suddenly become a single parent. I understand that it takes priority over me. But this – it seems as though all of my doubts about his feelings toward me were well-founded. He said nothing about needing some time and then coming back to me, nothing about wanting me to be a part of what he is going through, nothing of that sort. I feel utterly extraneous. Is it that he believes I would be useless in terms of emotional support? Would he really prefer to be on his own than with someone he has very recently claimed to love, who has been on his side through all of this? Does he think that I would only take from him, take his love, take his support and help, and not be able or willing to give any of it back? The thought stops me in my tracks. It’s possible that I myself have seen it this way, too. But it isn’t true. I can do all of that, be all of that. I want to. But only if he wants it from me. At the moment, it seems that he wants nothing whatsoever from me.

The thought is crushing.

***

In retrospect, it makes more sense. After I’ve slept, it’s more possible to see it in perspective. John has always been rather single-minded; he has never multitasked well. Having the drama of capturing Mary in Moscow (would very much like to know how he knew where to find her, but that can wait until another day), her reluctant return to face the music, the worry over his infant – of course he wouldn’t have the energy to consider our situation. I understand that, at least in my head. He could have said something to give me some sort of hope, but everyone has his limitations and I know John’s better than most. I am actually struck by how calmly I manage the next three days. I make myself rise, shower, dress, and eat every day, in case it might be the day that John decides to see me again, but I try not to dwell on the possibility.

It’s extremely difficult. Possibly the most difficult thing I have ever done. But he is the most important thing in the world to me, and it is worth waiting for. He will not refuse to give me a final answer. But only when he is ready. I know this much about him, at least. I do not contact him, which is difficult. Nor does he contact me.

The flat is empty and silent. Mrs Hudson is still somewhere else, visiting or some such thing. I am perfectly alone, and feel it. On the third day, I clean the flat. It’s surprisingly therapeutic. The world has not ended. John may or may not care for me at all any more, but at least there is order in one part of the universe. Latent control issues. It’s quite obvious. Nevertheless. I wash all of the dishes and clear up all of the mess in the sitting room. Then, after some thought (and too much remaining time on my hands), I clean the bathroom and my bedroom. I sweep the stairs and hoover the sitting room carpet. Take out the rubbish and resist the urge to smoke a cigarette while doing so. John would hate it if he knew. I make something to eat (it’s after six now and it seems I forgot about lunch) and brush my teeth. Sit down with a book about cold war spy theory and try to absorb myself in it. Try to ignore the fact that I’m not absorbing a word, that it’s all just a façade to pretend to myself that everything is all right. I cannot wallow in childish angst forever.

When I hear John’s key in the lock downstairs, I raise my head. Somehow, despite the instant elevation of my pulse, it’s as though I knew it was coming. That he was coming. That today would be the day. (I must remain very calm.) I remain in my chair in spite of my urge to stand and go to the door, watch him come up the stairs. He’s already on them, turning the corner at the landing. My heart thuds in my throat, practically audible. I’m still holding the book when he appears in the open door. I look over at him; our eyes meet. I intended to keep myself quite cool, emotionally detached, but find myself completely unable to do so. Not now. Not this time. This is so important and I cannot lie to myself about that fact. What he says here and now will define us forever. I cannot shut out the enormity of this reality.

John swallows, his throat moving in the lamplight. “Hi,” he says quietly. His left hand balls and unclenches, fingers splaying out as he stretches them. Nervous/unhappy reflex. My stomach clenches.

“Hello,” I say, aiming for a steady tone. It mostly works.

John gestures with his right hand, his arm stiff. “Can I, er, come in?”

Close my eyes for a moment. “You can always come in here. You know that by now, surely.”

He has the grace to look abashed. “Look, er, I figured there was a lot I should bring you up to speed on, explain and that. I just wanted to say first that I wouldn’t – well – blame you if you don’t want me here.”

This fails to process. “What?” I demand, utterly taken aback by his unexpected words.

He winces as though I’ve struck him, his head turning slightly away, chin angled toward the carpet. “I just mean – I’d say I’m out of second chances, wouldn’t you? After everything I’ve done, how long I’ve made you wait… all the times I’ve put everyone but you first. The other women. The man. Mary. Leaving and not telling you about it. Needing space after. I wouldn’t want me now, either. Not after having treated you the way I have. I’m just saying I would understand, that’s all.”

My pulse is so loud now that it’s thundering in my ears. I stand without realising I was going to. I don’t know what to say but this is it, this is the crux of the moment. It is absolutely imperative that what I say next both reassures him and convinces him to stay, not to leave again. I am simultaneously convinced that anything I could possibly utter will be completely inadequate and fail to accomplish this. “John,” I begin, my voice low and not quite steady now in spite of my best efforts, “I…haven’t even considered not wanting you any more. Not once. Please stay.” The words sound too weak and John looks dubious. “Please,” I repeat, aware of how desperate it sounds. “I don’t care about the rest. Not any more, now that you’re here. Please don’t go.”

John’s chin lifts sharply, his eyes meeting mine again. He inhales deeply, quickly, his chest heaving, and then without warning, his shoulders collapse forward, his arms crossing over his chest, his face bowing forward. “Jesus Christ,” he says shakily, “I don’t deserve you.”

I realise that he’s crying: John Watson, who never shows emotional weakness of any sort, is crying. I react instinctively, as rationality is failing me on this, moving toward him. I put my arms around his shoulders and pull him into my chest. “Don’t,” I say roughly. I remember our conversation in Lestrade’s dark sitting room. “It will never be too late, John. No matter what.”

John’s arms unfold themselves and he puts them around me tightly, his face turned into my shoulder. His breath is still shuddering and I’m aware that he doesn’t think himself able to speak just yet. After a moment he draws a deep breath and says, “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. I never meant to make you wait so long. I was just such a mess and I had to figure out what was going on with my daughter and see what they were going to do with Mary and all that – it was just too much.”

I detach him gently so that I can look him in the eye. “You always were a rubbish multitasker,” I say, and put my hands on his face and kiss him. He kisses back with the strength of a man grasping for a hand when drowning. His cheeks are wet and I don’t care. We kiss deeply, for a long time, our mouths managing better than our words can, communicating all of the desire for this to still be, for this to exist between us. He’s still trying to apologise and I’m still trying to absorb the apologies and tell him somehow that they’re unnecessary, just as long as he does love me.

When we finally break apart, we’re both breathing heavily. “I love you,” John says. “I love you so much. I’m sorry I shut you out. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was leaving. I’m – ”

“Stop,” I order, rubbing my thumbs over his cheeks. “Just stop. I understand. But tell me more.” I nod at the sofa and he acquiesces. I sit down and pull him half onto myself, limbs wound around him. I press my lips to his cheek and say, “Now tell me everything. How did you know that Mary was in Moscow?”

John twines his fingers into mine and lays his head on my shoulder. “Something she said once,” he says. “That it had been a home of sorts for awhile, that she had old connections to the city. In retrospect I wondered if maybe her handlers had been stationed there or something, or now that we know it was Moriarty, maybe that’s where he’d set up headquarters or whatever. She had a couple of Russian things, too, and after you noticed Moran’s connection to India through his trinkets, I thought I would try there. She left me a note. I tried calling her but the phone was off. I went through her desk and found two phone numbers written down on a little notepad and they were both clearly foreign, so I traced them the way you showed me, and realised she was in Moscow. The track gave me her exact location, at least within one hundred metres, and I found her. We fought. She told me – not willingly, but she told me about Andrew Morris and his wife and children. A few other things, too. She told me about working for Moriarty all that time. I was so angry I almost could have killed her, but in the end I put a gun to her head and said that she was coming back and going to prison.”

My arms tighten around him. There is nothing sympathetic to say that wouldn’t be wholly inadequate to convey my compassion for his situation, so I decide not to try. I kiss the side of his head. “Go on,” I say. “What did Mary’s note say?”

“It said something along the lines of being sorry, but knowing that one day it would probably come to this, that someone would find her and threaten her, that she didn’t want to put Laura and I in danger, and that it was better for everyone if she left. She said that if it wasn’t Morris, it would be someone else, and then someone else. You get the gist. She also said that she wasn’t coming back and not to follow her.” John’s face twists in anger. “And yet, she’d left an infant, her own child, alone for hours! So much for not wanting to put us in danger!”

I make an understanding sound and reflect with vindictive pleasure on the fact that Mycroft currently has Mary in the least pleasant holding cell he could find while she waits to be tried for her many crimes. “Right,” I say. “So what about your daughter? What did you do with her before you left? What’s happening with her now?”

“Actually,” John says, “that’s one of the good bits.”

“Explain,” I request.

“Well, the thing is, I’d always wondered how that could even work, if Mary and I ended up splitting amicably and it seemed like Laura wouldn’t be in danger if I finally did what I wanted and moved back in here with you. I mean, I suppose we would have shared custody, right? But how was that ever going to work, with you and I doing what we do? It’s not as though I can drop everything and run out the door to a crime scene with a baby around. As I’m sure you’ve noticed. And it would be like that for at least another twelve years or so.” John shifts, turning his head so that he can see my face.

I don’t know what to say to this; the same thought had occurred.

John smiles, to my surprise. “I know,” he says, to my unspoken thought. “I feel the same way. And I’ve felt awful for feeling that way. But a solution seems to have presented itself, at least for the time being.”

“What is it?”

“Well, in fact,” he says, “my sister and her girlfriend came to visit a few weeks ago, one night when Mary was out. Probably for the best; Harry hates her and can’t hide it at all, and even Patricia doesn’t like her and it’s rather obvious. And Mary loathes both of them, so – anyway, we got talking, and they told me – well, Patricia told me – that they’d wanted to have a baby themselves, only it seems it’s not going to work. All that is complicated enough for a same-sex couple but it seems that they’ve already looked into that and it’s definitely not going to work. They’ve been talking about adopting instead. Meanwhile, they adore Laura. They even argued over who got to change her nappy when that came around. So when I got home to Mary’s note, I was at my wit’s end about what to do with Laura while I went to chase Mary down and bring her back. So I called Harry and Patricia on a whim to ask if they could look after her for a few days or maybe even a week or two, and they didn’t even argue. They got in a cab and came to get her right on the spot.”

“Good,” I say, remembering my encounter with them in the grocery store, their anxiousness to see the baby. “It’s better that she be with her own flesh and blood, anyway.”

“Exactly,” John says. “After I left here the other day, I just had to go back to the flat and be alone for awhile, get my thoughts sorted out. There was never any doubt in my mind about you, for what it’s worth. I just had to go through it on my own, get myself feeling like a human again by myself, for however long it would take. The next morning, I called Harry to tell her that I was back in town and ask when a good time to come and get Laura would be, and she kept putting me off. She made me explain where I’d been and what happened, so I told her everything, about Mary. She was furious that I hadn’t told her – she was even furious that Mary had shot you, and you know how you and she don’t even get on all that well. She had a lot to say about Mary in general. Anyway, I finally got her settled down and she asked what I was going to do about Laura, and I said I supposed I’d be raising her on my own. I didn’t say anything about you since we’d never even talked about that or anything, and I had no idea how you’d feel. But yeah, Harry wouldn’t let me come until the next evening.”

“What happened then?” I ask.

John fingers tighten in my hand. “It’s Harry, so I never should have expected it to be easy, right? She started in about how it wasn’t right for a child to grow up with only one parent and what did a man know about a five-month-old baby and such, and I was arguing back, and finally Patricia stepped in and made everyone sit down. She brought Laura over and gave her to me and made tea for everyone. Then she sat down and said that Harry had started this all wrong and Harry actually didn’t contradict her. Then she basically explained to me that they strongly felt that Laura should be with two parents, particularly a woman, at least while she’s still an infant. They pointed out that I would have to quit working to be at home with her, or hire a full-time nanny. They pointed out that their flat here in Westminster is a bit far from the suburbs, but that they would rather it be them who looks after Laura, and proposed that they essentially take her until she’s a little bit older.”

Interesting proposition. “How much older?” I ask carefully.

John takes a deep breath. “Five or six, Patricia suggested. And after that, we could discuss it, see where she’d be happiest. The thing is, they’re right about some of it, at least. I’m glad Mary had her on bottles already, because otherwise this would be really hard. It’s almost as though she was expecting to have to leave at some point. And they admitted that they’re completely besotted by Laura and since they’ve been wanting a child of their own and all that, having their niece around instead would fill that gap a bit. And it would be a bit of a solution for me. On top of that, they do live rather far from the flat – but it’s a five-minute walk from here…” John’s eyes are somehow both pleading and defiant. “What do you think?”

I’m taken aback. “What do I think? It’s your child, John. I hardly think I have a say in this.”

“I know that, but I want your opinion,” John says stubbornly. “Would it make me a terrible human being to do this? Let them keep her?”

“It’s not as though your child is a piece of property,” I say dryly. “You’d hardly be giving up ‘ownership’ of her to strangers. Your sister is her aunt. And forgive me for saying it, but you’re not the most paternal of men. You’ve done very well with her from what I’ve seen, but it’s less joy and more duty, unless I’m quite mistaken.”

John’s brow creases and his mouth turns downward and for a moment I hate myself for having caused this collapse in his face. But he agrees. “No,” he says. “You’re exactly right, as always. It was exactly that: her existence gives me joy, but the actual act of taking care of an infant? Not so much. And certainly not entirely on my own. And everything else they said was true, too – Harry pointed out that I work in a clinic and go running off to crime scenes with you. They said I’d be free to keep doing that. And that I could visit any time, be as involved as I want.”

He looks so hopeful and clearly wants me to reassure him and tell him that I don’t think he’s a terrible human being for wanting to consent to this plan. (As if I would know anything about that.) “Then what’s the problem?” I ask, trying not to sound impatient. “If you’re all right with it, then fine. As you said, they live right around the corner. You can visit every evening, if that’s what you want. And she could certainly stay here sometimes, if you want that.”

John’s eyebrows lift incredulously. “Really?” he asks in disbelief. “You wouldn’t mind that?”

“I’m hardly the parental sort, myself,” I say, which is a massive understatement. “But it’s your child. You do what you want, and I will support whatever it is.” I clear my throat, slightly self-consciously. “I’m no expert, but I’m given to understand that this is the way love is supposed to function. So we’ll convert your old room upstairs for whenever you want to have her here.”

John’s eyes widen and go soft again. “You – you’re – ” he stops, his throat sounding constricted, and he doesn’t finish.

I open my mouth to attempt to respond to this, but he cuts me off with his mouth. We kiss and kiss, John crawling into my lap and straddling me, eventually pushing me down onto my back on the sofa. It feels exquisitely good to feel him against me again, to have his arms around me, his mouth on mine. I close my eyes and lose myself in it, in the pleasure curling up through my body and spreading everywhere. “John,” I breathe after awhile.

He understands instantly. “Bedroom?” he asks, his own voice breathy.

I manage a nod and he slides off me and hauls me to my feet. He kisses me hard and pulls me forcibly by the hand down the short corridor into my own bedroom. Once inside, he pushes the door closed and traps me against it with his hips. “Take off your clothes,” he commands, and I nearly go weak in the knees. Wordlessly I strip, extremely aware of his eyes on me, my own on his face. Watching him watch me. He is breathing hard, his jeans tented visibly.

“Take yours off, too,” I say, and he nods and sheds his garments in seconds. His penis is hard and flushed dark and saliva fills my mouth just looking at it.

John moves toward me, eyes on my face, and kisses me slowly, our penises touching and rubbing together, and it’s so intimate it’s nearly painful. The very slowness of it is laying me bare, opening me relentlessly and exposing everything within me to plain sight. Only for John. Only ever for him. His hands are gentle on my body, touching everywhere, everything, and when he squeezes my arse with both hands, his tongue pressing into mine, my hips stutter forward, needing friction, needing to rut against him. I feel rather than hear his low laugh. “Not yet,” he says. He sucks at my neck and kisses the spot after, laving his tongue over it. “I want to try it the other way tonight. I want to show you how much I want you. Okay?”

My head is nodding itself before he’s finished speaking. I don’t care what we do at all, as long as it’s something. And I understand now: this is the way he would have preferred it. I never asked – I was too concerned that if we discussed it at all, he would change his mind. It makes perfect sense – in the work, it’s nearly always me who leads, because it’s what I do. But in this, John is the expert. I surrender silently to this, to him, and he leads me to the bed. He inspects the top drawer of my nightstand and smiles approvingly, withdrawing the tube of lubricant. He brings it to the bed and we lie down next to each other, the blankets pushed to one side.

“I want to do everything you did to me on the first night,” John says. I recall every moment of that in precise detail and shiver without meaning to. John smiles, a slightly predatory look in his eyes. “No arguments?”

Shake my head. It’s quite possible that my limbs are shaking slightly, too. “None.” It’s difficult to trust, to let go, but I am already laid bare before him, quite literally.

“Good.” John urges me onto my back and presses his lips to mine, then, before the kiss can get particularly involved, kisses his way down my body, slowly and incredibly sensuously. He kisses my throat and neck and collarbones. His hands push my arms up over my head, then trail down them into my underarms as his tongue strokes over my nipples. It feels singularly exceptional and my nipples peak in his lips, my erection full and aching, twitching when John’s body nudges it now and then. His mouth is on my stomach, tongue dipping into my navel, then into the hair around my penis. He gets his nose underneath it and smells his way along its engorged length, so obviously relishing it that I’m even more aroused. His hands are on my hips now, kneading, and then he puts his mouth on my penis and slides it nearly down to the base, his tongue warm and firm around it from beneath.

The sensation is unlike anything I’ve ever felt in my life. I noted his reaction to it when I did it, and I’m well aware of the general population’s fondness for this activity, but never had I ever imagined it would feel this good, or this intimate. Pleasure is flooding my nervous system and I’m gasping at the very concept of John doing this for me. Somehow it required the visceral experience of it to grasp precisely how good it would feel. It’s almost better than being inside him. The only part I don’t like it being the only one acted upon. I feel I should be doing something in response, other than gripping his hair and trying very hard not to thrust into his throat as his mouth moves over my aching flesh, his tongue doing unspeakably good things at the same time. I’m powerless to speak, however, my stomach flexing and releasing under the bombardment of pleasure.

It’s nonetheless shocking when I feel the press of John’s fingers at the entrance of my body. My first instinct is to fight it, reject it, but it’s John, I remind myself. John, who owns me, who can take whatever he wants from me, just as long as he doesn’t leave me again. I breathe and make myself relax, releasing my back muscles deliberately and turning my attention to the pleasure of his mouth still sucking and mouthing at my penis. The slight pain eases quickly, dissolving into pressure. He slides the finger in and out, giving my body time to adjust to the sensation before he adds another. Before long, it’s a disappointment rather than a relief when his fingers withdraw themselves. He has me writhing in pleasure, between his mouth and his hand, unplanned sounds escaping from my throat. John turns me over, urging with his hands and voice, rearranging my long limbs so that I’m on all fours, face down in the pillows, and then his tongue is on me, in me, and it’s all I can do not to cry out. His hand is stroking my penis, his tongue stabbing into me without the slightest hint of reservation or doubt or distaste, and it feels so good I think I may die. I’m a drooling, whining mess, my dignity lost somewhere in the distance when John finally lifts his face and says, his voice lower than usual and roughened with arousal, “I’m going to fuck you now. Okay?”

“Oh please, please,” I babble, half into the pillow. He obliges me immediately, the head of his penis nudging against me. His hands rub over my back, massaging, and then he begins to push himself inside. I feel I really should have known or suspected what this would feel like from when I did it to John, but whatever I’d imagined is incomparable to this. I feel as though he’s splitting me in half. I also feel as though I’m whole for the first time in my life. This is what I was put on this earth for: to be one with John Watson. (Had no idea I would get so horridly sentimental over this. It’s most distressing, and completely unavoidable.) I feel him against me, his body warm and solid and sure, and think again that this is so much better, with him in control. I can give him this, complete control over my body, my pleasure, or rather, over our joint experience. I do trust him – entirely. His hands are precise and gentle and steady, moving with absolute surety of a surgeon’s experience, knowing exactly how to touch, how to please. (I must have been so clumsy with him. No wonder it took him longer to climax than I expected; I am a complete amateur in this. What do I know about touching another person? He was right to gently take over in this, without rubbing my inexperience in my face. That’s John all over – infinitely competent, infinitely powerful where necessary, infinitely tender when he wants to be. I cannot believe he chose me, of all people.)

He bends over me. “Are you all right?” he asks, and his voice is shaking with lust as evident as the sun. “Not hurting you, am I?”

“No,” I say, my throat tight. “It’s – perfect.”

John exhales heavily. “God, I love you,” he half-whispers. Still bent over me, he wraps one arm around my torso, fingers pressing into my left nipple, and with the other he reaches for my penis again, and begins to move within me. I am utterly awash with sensation. For such a small man, he has made me feel completely surrounded by him, held and cherished and fiercely desired, and the combined feeling is indescribable. He shifts a little and his penis within me brushes my prostate more tangibly than his fingers had and I gasp, the air raw in my throat. “Good?” John murmurs, increasing his pace a little.

I can’t speak; an anguished God, yes-type sound tears itself from my throat. I’m drooling into the pillow.

John moans, evidently finding speech difficult, himself. He’s curled over my back, thrusting into me hard, yet staying as close to me as he possibly can. Only his hips are moving, hammering into me like pistons as his hands stroke and caress my body. My prostate is sparking and spasming with each thrust, my penis wet in his hand, my testicles full and tight.

“Harder,” I manage, the word scraping in my throat, and that seems to cut the last ties of John’s restraint. His response is a mixture of breath and voice, and his thrusting goes wild, plunging into me with unrestrained force, our bodies slamming together with a slapping of flesh against flesh, and I’m drowning in pleasure. It’s flooding every pore of my body and about to spill over. John’s fist tightens on my penis and that does it – my back arches and I’m thrusting into his hand, gripping it with my own and coming hard, my testicles imploding as streams of semen burst from my body, and with that, John’s breath chokes in his throat and he goes rigid for a split second before following suit, burying himself as deeply as possible in me as the crest overtakes him. I feel his penis twitch and erupt within me, warm gushes of his release filling me. He gives another thrust, then another, still coming, and then his hand goes slack on my spent penis.

After a moment, we get ourselves down on our sides without dislodging John from me. I’m not ready to have him pull out of my body just yet, and it seems he’s in no hurry, either. His arm is around me, his lips on the skin between my shoulder blades, breath warm on my skin. I put my hand over the one he’s got pressed to my heart. “I love you,” John says again, still panting. “I hope I can make you understand how much, someday.”

I shift, wanting to face him. He slips out of me as I turn, the slick of his release escaping to run down my arse and onto my thigh, but it doesn’t matter. I tangle my legs into his and get an arm around him. “I know,” I tell him. No need to keep secrets any more. We’re past all that now. (We are, aren’t we?) “I love you, too.”

John’s smile is so wonderful that it hurts. “There’s never been anyone else for me, you know,” he says. “Just like you said at the wedding: it’s always you. It always was and always will be. No matter what’s happened. It’s always been you.”

My heart attempts to break my rib cage in its sudden expansion. (For God’s sake, I’m not about to cry, am I?) “It’s always been you, too,” I say, my voice rough. “John Watson: you’re all I’ve ever wanted.”

John closes the short distance between our faces and presses his lips to mine for a long, intensely good moment. “I’m all yours,” he says after.

I close my eyes and drown in his words. This is all I’ve wanted since my return from my supposed death. I will require years to fully, properly express to him what this means to me. Fortunately, it would appear as though I may get that, an eternity with John.

Nothing could be better.

*