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"Absolutely not," said Sherlock, as Lestrade knew he would, but Lestrade had a queasy feeling Sherlock was not going to get his way.
Because John was squared off in front of him, looking all jaw, and Lestrade had come to know the man well enough to understand what that meant.
Lestrade shifted foot to foot; he'd been standing on the pavement for hours now, staring up at the windows above an unassuming pawn shop, where in a second floor flat a military veteran was holding his children, 10 and 8, hostage. In the hours since he had been cornered there, he'd been working on the construction of a bomb.
It was Sherlock who had treed him here. The veteran hadn't planned to get caught. He'd been murdering government officials who he thought had betrayed him; a lady at Veteran Affairs, a rental assistance man, a veterans' hospital billing agent. He'd been careful. He hadn't been planning to make any grand statements. He only wanted revenge, pure and simple, and he'd left little evidence of use to law enforcement.
Lestrade hadn't even considered that the murders might be related. They'd been spaced out over the course of six months, and the modus operandi had been different each time. The woman had been killed in what appeared to be a car-jacking gone wrong. The billing agent had been knifed in an altercation in a parking garage. And the rental assistance man was killed in a home invasion robbery.
But Sherlock had appeared like the ice-eyed angel of death in Lestrade's office the day after the third murder, holding three newspapers, and told Lestrade he had a serial killer on his hands, then made it look ridiculously obvious. The car-jacking took place in heavy afternoon traffic; Sherlock made the salient point that anyone could have gotten out of that congested London area a lot faster on foot than by car, a carjacking simply didn't make sense. But it did make fleeing from a carjacker nearly impossible, therefore the motive wasn't to steal the car but to kill the driver.
The altercation in the parking garage was also clearly planned, Sherlock went on. It took place at about 4 p.m. on the sixth floor of the garage, when a car parking next to the billing agent's car clipped off one of the agent's mirrors just as the notoriously hotheaded agent was arriving. Cameras caught the whirling shapes of the two men circling each other, the quick lunge and stab, the fleeing driver.
"It was four o'clock, the parking levels on floors one, two and three had open spaces," Sherlock said, in the rapid, staccato style of Holmes-in-full-throttle. "This car didn't park there. Why? He wasn't coming to use the shops, he was accessing the office buildings on the higher floors. But most of them close at five and don't make appointments after four, so not there for an appointment. What was he doing there? He was awaiting someone, someone whose schedule he knew. He also knew the man had a temper. He struck the car, a fight escalated, he knifed the victim and fled. But he wore a hat and never turned his head around to see if anyone witnessed the crime like a killer would usually do; he planned ahead, and knew where the cameras were. Premeditated murder, right there."
Sherlock did the same with the home invasion robbery, pointing out entrances and exits chosen for murder, not for robbery, until Lestrade felt as thick as a bank vault door and gave Sherlock access to the case files.
It was John, reading the paper, who had inadvertently tipped Sherlock off; he knew the man killed in the garage. The Veteran Affairs agent had worked on John's case when John was fresh back from the wars, and John described him as a "proper dick."
"Oh," Sherlock had said, and grabbed all their crime clippings from the previous year. From there it was easy. Sherlock reasoned out the killer's profile over the course of one sleepless night, and he told Lestrade to look for a veteran who returned eight months earlier, with a mental health history but no physical injuries, likely with young children, probably estranged from a wife, living in the Leeds area.
A quick search of records of veterans narrowed it down to two; the police contacted the first, while Sherlock, in high dudgeon over the ignorance of the force and with John in tow, headed to the residence of the second.
In the old days, it might have worked. But a high profile death and heroic resurrection story along with a distinctive face had made an unwilling and easily recognized celebrity of Sherlock, something he was prone to forgetting.
The veteran had been walking back from the chip shop with takeaway and his two children when he saw the unmistakable duo step out of a cab two corners away. By the time the two had flanked the building and called Lestrade, the man was standing in the second-story window with a knife to the throat of his son.
It had been a very long morning.
A professional negotiator had been working on the man for the last three hours, talking to him on a cell phone, but the man wanted to talk to John.
"Let me talk to the bloke what writes about the detective," he said. "At least he served, unlike any of you pussies. Got shot, too, didn't he?"
John finally took the phone and walked a short distance away.
Sherlock immediately tensed and followed, wintery eyes narrowed and wolf-sharp on John's face, as John's easy, laid back voice started commiserating about the plight of veterans with the troubled voice on the line.
"It's not like the nutcase can attack John over the phone," Donovan muttered, coming up behind Lestrade on the sidewalk, handing him a cup of coffee and eying Sherlock.
"Sherlock's been that way since he came back," said Lestrade. "Can't let John out of his sight for a second."
"That's rich, isn't it," said Donovan. "The freak pretends to be dead, John nearly dies of misery, then he comes back and can't let John can't have a piss without holding his hand."
Lestrade felt the same irritation he always felt when she or anyone else on his team started talking shit about Sherlock.
"Sherlock's new to this whole caring thing," said Lestrade, knowing it wasn't really any use. "You've loved a lot of people, yeah? Mum, Da, brothers, sisters, what? Boyfriends, husbands, your own and others'. Friends. John is all of those people rolled into one for Sherlock. All the eggs in one basket. The sum total of his experience with love. He's new to it. He's scared shitless."
"Maybe if he wasn't such a dick, someone would have loved him before," Sally said, sipping at her coffee and peering up at the window.
"Maybe if he hadn't been raised by high-society wolves and wasn't autistic and hadn't been treated like shit by everyone he met before he was 18, he wouldn't be such a dick," Lestrade snapped. "And things are different with him and John since he came back, they might be together and they might not, but whatever's changed, it's made Sherlock more human, hasn't it. Don't tell me you haven't noticed the difference."
He turned and caught Donovan's eye, daring her.
Donovan nodded, conceding the point.
Lestrade let his gaze linger. Sally was a hard woman, but Lestrade had a soft spot for her. Respected her a lot. Hard worker. Smarter than she knew. Tough as hobnails. In her way, she was a lot like Sherlock. Cynical. Dim view of people. Willing to take what she wanted without giving too much thought to the fallout. Anderson, what was that about? Really, she could do better.
But he thought he knew. It was damn near impossible making it work with someone who wasn't a cop. He felt a nudge on the old bruise, thought of Ericka and sighed.
Sherlock was watching John as if John was standing on the edge of a cliff, instead of pacing slightly up and down the sidewalk.
John looked up suddenly.
"He says he will release his kids, but he wants me to go in."
Sherlock cracked like a whip.
"Absolutely not."
"He's letting the kids go," John said, and he was standing with feet planted, jaw tipped. "He just wants help. He can't sleep for the nightmares and he can't stop looking for snipers in the buildings, and I know a bit about that. I'm going in."
The triangle of lines formed between Sherlock's brows that meant he was far beyond furious, and he leaned forward and snarled into John's face.
"Stupid. John, it's stupid, for God's sake, surely you know that. He has no intention of leaving that flat alive." He flung his hands the the sky and whirled away, then spun back and grabbed John's collar. "He spent the better part of the day assembling a bomb. This is his contingency plan. This has always been his contingency plan. Do. Not. Go. In. There."
John's eyes were widened and his shoulders braced, Lestrade had seen it a thousand times. This was John standing in the blast path of one of Sherlock's fearsome rages. No one on earth could be as discerningly cruel as Sherlock, who could divine a person's weak spots and secrets and leverage them to such devastating effect that he was universally feared. Only John was impervious, folding his arms and waiting out his wrath until he could address the real issue, what ever terror was plaguing Sherlock at the time.
Sherlock was half crazy with fear, now.
"Kids, Sherlock. Two kids," said John. "If I don't go in there…"
"Oh, God, yes, John, I know." Words tumbled from Sherlock, shaken and furious. "Oh, Sherlock, it's all my fault, because I'm responsible for the behavior of every nutter in England, I simply can not live," he mimicked in a high pitched voice, throwing his hands in the air, before leaning back into John's face and snarling. "Honestly, John, you've been trying to get yourself blown up since you got out of uni, haven't you? Won't be happy until you're splattered all over some wall to prove you were a good man. I'm sorry you couldn't save your father from the bottle and your mother from your father, but your atonement is already written all over you in scar tissue…."
"Sherlock!"
"John, he doesn't know what he's doing! He could detonate that thing at any second without even meaning to…"
"All the more reason to get the kids out." John's voice was soft.
"Jesus, Lestrade!" Sherlock whirled on him and Lestrade almost leaned away from the force of the freezing eyes. "You can't let him go in there, Lestrade, he's a civilian, he's got no business in there, if he gets killed the press will destroy you, I will destroy you, I will never work a case again, I'll find another use for my talent, or someone else will, do you really want me on the other side? Do you think you could ever catch me? I'll make your life..."
"Sherlock!" John yelled.
Sherlock went silent, staring at John.
"Please, John," he finally said. But defeat was already in his voice.
John shook his head once, thought, and shook it again.
"Got to, Shells. It's who I am. I'm sorry. I'll be fine. Back in a jiff."
John hit a button on the cell phone and raised it to his ear.
"You'll send the children out." Silence. "All right, I'm coming in. If the children don't pass me in the door, I'm turning back. Where are they? Oh, you're on the ground floor, in the pawn shop, now? Where's the bomb? You brought it down? A 10-gallon bucket of petrol and fertilizer, you carried it down the stairs. You moved it." Silence again. "Alright, okay." John's hand was placating in the air. "Just…don't move it again. Alright? I'm coming in."
He hung up and blew out, then straightened his shoulders and stepped off the curb. Lestrade watched him as he trotted across the street, such a small fellow, really. He couldn't stand to see him open the door, and looked instead at Sherlock, who was stone faced, lips tight and eyes cold, hands gathered at the small of his back.
"The kids, the kids!" a cry went up, and two small figures appeared in the pawn shop door. John knelt by them, said something, and pushed them forward, started them running. A tide of black uniforms behind blast shields ran into the street, snatched the children up and swept back as cameramen jostled and jockeyed to capture images of their shocked, blank faces.
It was worth it, thought Lestrade, relief nearly dropping him to the pavement. John did the right thing, look, the children are safe. He did the right thing.
And then the wall across the street sneezed out. There was a massive muffled thump Lestrade felt in the ground. He threw his arms over his head as the shockwave knocked him back, and he could feel searing heat wash over his hands and head.
When he looked up, the flat above the pawn shop was sliding down into the hole where the pawn shop had been, and black smoke billowed into the sky. All around him was debris, window glass and pieces of brick and wood. The pawn shop was utterly destroyed, only a few pieces of wall still standing around the edges, none more than a meter high.
Sally rose from a crouch and stared blankly at the store. Lestrade blinked. His mouth was open. Cops started rising from behind their cars. The sound of falling things still clattered in the street. The remains of the upstairs flat settled and stilled in a mass of debris in the empty socket of the pawn shop.
For a moment, there was a stunned silence. Then it was broken by a single broken cry.
"John!"
It was the most terrible sound of shock and horror Lestrade had ever heard in a life of crisis and crime. It seemed to galvanize the street into action, and voices rose in command. Firefighters were shouting, organizing, heavy-booted and helmeted, hurrying for the building.
Lestrade turned to Sherlock. Tried to catch his sleeve, think of something to say. But it was useless.
Sherlock wheeled, and Lestrade went sick and cold at the look in his eyes. He was looking at the death of a standing man. Sherlock had not one solitary resource at his disposal that could help him survive this unmitigated disaster, this bottomless horror show.
Sirens began screaming at the edges of his consciousness, screaming in from all directions, and things were still falling, tumbling loose and smoking into the sky. Sherlock started to run. Not for the building. For the barricades a hundred meters away, toward the busy street beyond.
There were an infinite number of emergencies to address. Lestrade began shouting commands into his radio, automatically assigning duties, but he did it a dead run, and let go of the button on his radio as he tackled Sherlock around the flaring waist of his coat.
Sherlock struggled with a desperate strength that was astonishing in one so apparently slight. He was dead silent, only making a slight breathy sound as he concentrated on freeing himself from Lestrade's grip, but Lestrade applied every atom of himself to hanging on.
Lestrade understood for the first time in that moment how much he'd come to love Sherlock, not just feel a fondness for him or have a soft spot for him but love him as a brother, and he hung on, because if Sherlock got loose, he knew Sherlock would be dead within the hour.
"Sherlock," he kept shouting, but Sherlock's eyes were crazed, white around the edges, and he was beyond reach. And slowly, he was sliding from Lestrade's grasp, scrabbling along the concrete and pushing off from Lestrade's body. The fabric of his clothes was hard to hold onto, slippery and loose, and Lestrade felt the thin hard body beneath inching through his hands.
Just as Lestrade felt a wash of horror, just as he understood he was losing, he heard a rattle of shoes and a second form hurtled down over Sherlock's torso.
Sherlock actually screamed then, body collapsing under the combined weight of Donovan and Lestrade, and his animal panting shook both of them.
"Sherlock, Sherlock, stop," Donovan added her chant to Lestrade's.
"Let me go," Sherlock shrieked, and Lestrade hardly recognized his voice. It was stripped of all he knew of Sherlock, the icy confidence, the rich smug spill of knowledge and self-congratulation, the soft deference he used talking to John, all of it was gone, his entire personality was gone. He sounded only like a boy, screaming in anguish.
"What are you going to do, Sherlock?" Lestrade demanded.
"You can't stop me, Lestrade, you can't stop me," Sherlock panted.
"He wouldn't want this," Donovan said.
Sherlock bucked again under the weight of the two of them.
"You can't make me live, let me go, just let me go." Sherlock was crying now, in frustration and rage and terror. "Let me go, can't you see, he's getting away. John's getting away. Let me go."
"John will be there when you get there, you don't need to go right now," Lestrade said, chest heaving against the cold pavement.
"You don't fucking know that, no one fucking knows anything about where people go, so don't patronize me, I don't know where John went but I have to go, I have to go too, don't you see, I'm no good, I'm no good without him…" Sherlock's voice choked off, his head hidden under the soft cloud of Donovan's hair.
Donovan tightened her grip on his shoulders and the look she gave Lestrade was agonized, and they both knew it was true. If Sherlock had been given a life like most other's, a life in which he hadn't been deformed by the abnormal pressures of his family and isolated by his genius and the autism that prevented him from making connections with most people, he would have friends and internal resources. He would grieve horribly, but in time there would be a future for him.
But it was in Donovan's eyes, and Lestrade's knew in his own as well, that Sherlock would never be happy again. His obsessive love for John would be unhealthy in most people; in Sherlock it had been the opposite of that. It was the source of his health, his sanity, and his only meaningful connection with the world. Through his relationship with John the agony that had driven him to drugs and suicidal behavior had abated. He'd learned what peace was, and contentment, and even happiness. Without John, Sherlock was destroyed.
But it was not in Lestrade to release him to certain suicide. The way Sherlock had wheeled, with purpose, Lestrade knew Sherlock had a plan in place for just this contingency. A needle and a vial of something quick and painless, probably somewhere in their flat.
Donovan's face was a rictus of horror and pity. She stroked Sherlock's temple, helpless.
"I can't let you do it, mate," Lestrade said.
"If you ever loved me, Lestrade, for God's sake," Sherlock said in a defeated whisper. "Let me go. Let me go with him. Let me go."
"Can't, Sherlock. I just can't."
"Please." The hoarse whisper tore something loose in Lestrade, and he looked at the sky and felt a searing rage. He'd seen so much death and mayhem in his career he thought himself resigned to it, but Sherlock had never had a chance, not a chance at a normal life, at happiness and peace, and for a few short years he'd had some grace, finally, a friend, maybe even a lover, only to have this wrenched away from him, and it was all ruined, this man who had struggled so hard and come so far, like a little brother to Lestrade, destroyed. He'd known life wasn't fair for a long time, he'd known it was cruel, but this seemed impossibly malicious.
"God, you're no better than Moriarty was, are you," he whispered. "You're that cruel. He didn't deserve this."
Tears were tracking down Donovan's nose, and she wasn't pinning Sherlock as much as embracing him now, and Lestrade saw for the first time that in her way she had a place for Sherlock in her world. In spite of the disgust his seeming callousness evoked in her, she saw something of what he saw, too.
And then in the constant stream of voices on the radio at Lestrade's hip, a suddenly urgent voice broke through, calling for a medic.
"There's a man alive in here!" the voice was incredulous, then tight with urgency, calling for a stretcher, an IV unit.
Donovan and Lestrade stared at each other, hardly daring to hope. Lestrade reached for his hip and thumbed his mic.
"DI Lestrade here, please describe the survivor."
"Hold on DI, he's conscious," the voice said. There was a silence. It went on for eternity. Donovan shut her eyes and her lips moved.
"DI?" the voice said. "He gives his name as John Watson."
"Oh my God," Donovan keened, as Lestrade slumped over Sherlock's legs, so flooded with relief and gratitude he thought he might be sick. Donovan petted Sherlock's head. "He's alive, Sherlock, did you hear? He's alive!" Her voice was soft and joyful, as if announcing a birth.
Under the sound of his own ragged breath and Donovan's soft voice, a third sound. Sherlock, sobbing, head dropped onto his forearms against the asphalt. Lestrade eased some of his weight up, and Donovan slid off his back but remained lying next to him on the street, protectively shielding him from the television cameras with her body and hair. Lestrade hitched himself further up, leaning on his hip and stroking Sherlock's shaking back.
The radio was alive with the sounds of emergency workers communicating about John, stabilizing him on the ground, checking his vital signs, assessing damage. He had feeling in his extremities, but severe glass lacerations and burns on his hands, a serious concussion and blast lung, as well as pronounced hearing loss that could be temporary.
"He says he realized the guy meant to take them both out right as he walked through the door and he hit the deck behind the front counter," the officer said over the radio. "He says he knew how the blast path would go. Watson's seen bombs before."
"God bless John," Lestrade said, shaking his head and laughing in euphoric relief. "Fucking John Watson. That bloke will outlive God."
"Alright, we're bringing him out," a voice said, and there was an animal push against Lestrade's legs and Sherlock was up and running and gone.
"Glad as hell I'm not a medic right now," said Donovan, tears still tracking down her face, and she met Lestrade's eyes and they grinned at each other, heaving for air and shaking their heads.
"Thank God, sometimes things work out," said Lestrade. "Sometimes." He got to his feet, Sally rising and brushing herself off.
"He'd have killed himself," she said.
"Probably has a plan for it," Lestrade said.
"Good job you stopped him," Donovan said.
The enormity of the ways in which this day could have gone pear-shaped humbled them both.
"I was losing him until you got there," said Lestrade. They stood under the steady thump of the choppers.
"Don't see that too often, do you," Donovan said. "Love like that."
"Nope."
Then someone requested Lestrade's assistance and Sally headed to help with the police escort to the hospital.
The last thing Lestrade did before getting into his car was look up at the leaded sky.
"That last thing," he said. "Didn't mean that."
***
Three weeks later, Lestrade was watching a pair of detectives photograph the body of a murdered college professor in the bathroom in which she'd been found when he heard his phone get a text.
He looked, swore, and barked, "Everybody out! Out of the bathroom. Right now, please. We'll get back to it, we just need to let an expert take a look."
Donovan, standing at his shoulder, looked at him and raised her eyebrows.
"Sherlock," Lestrade said sotto voce. He tipped the phone to show her.
"If that crime scene on the morning news is in fact the home of Dr. Angela Andrews, keep everyone away from the body until I've been there-SH."
"Three people have already been near the body," Donovan noted, watching Anderson sulk his way out of the rather posh bathroom, nearly as large and far more attractive than the bedroom of Sally's flat.
The woman with two neat holes over her forehead, sprawled backward into the tub, stared like a china doll back at Sally.
"So far they haven't done anything but take pictures," said Lestrade.
"What's he on about, then?" asked Donovan. "He usually doesn't care if anyone examines, so long as the scene isn't disturbed."
"Don't know," Lestrade said thoughtfully. "But there's a reason. There always is."
"Yeah. Can't argue that." They stood in companionable silence.
Things had changed between them a little since that tackle on the asphalt. Lestrade felt it, and he was fairly sure Donovan did, too. It was little things, things like silence at a crime scene, a sort of understanding, an ease.
This was the first time Sherlock had come up; they'd both avoided the topic, and neither said why. But Lestrade was fairy sure it was because they were letting this new something grow between them for a while before exposing it to such a harsh and potentially destructive wind. He found himself, to his surprise, hoping he was right.
It also meant that Sally was changing her position on Sherlock, Lestrade suspected. She was as cautious as a feral cat. It would take more than a glimpse of the extent of Sherlock's total devotion to John to win her over. But Sally was giving him a chance, a slim chance, and it was a place to start. Lestrade found himself hoping like hell Sherlock didn't bollocks it up.
Like a demon summoned by the mention of his name, the man himself appeared in the master bedroom door, coat flaring wide as a cape, eyes narrowed and silver in the brilliance of the police lights placed in the scene for the sake of the photographers.
"Oh, for God's sake, Lestrade, I told you not to let anyone near the body, but the presence of floodlights indicate the recent presence of a small army," Sherlock snapped. "I said keep away, Lestrade. Keep away. You still speak English, last I checked, what part of that text did you not understand?"
"No one has examined it," Lestrade said, hoping his reasonable tone would settle the feathers of this great bird of ill omen.
But Sherlock flung his hands up in despair, if anything, more enraged.
"Oh, no one has examined it, good, I supposed I should be chuffed no one has performed an autopsy right here on the Morrocan tile floor, and we may all thank our stars no one has embalmed her after donating the organs and giving her eyes for science," he sneered. "God, when will it occur to you I might be right once in so often and take some direction?"
Something was a little off about Sherlock, Lestrade noticed, and narrowed his eyes, just as Sally spoke, voice unusually calm.
"John working at the hospital today, then?"
The absence of the word "freak" was far more glaring in its omission that it would have been had she said it. Sherlock's head angled sharply to look at her, and it really was for all the world like two sleek hunting cats, warily examining each other for evidence of hostility.
Sherlock looked faintly puzzled. It was a little surreal. His answer was uncharacteristically cautious.
"In surgery."
"Will you need an assistant, then?" Donovan asked levelly.
"You? No," Sherlock said decisively. Lestrade felt a wash of profound disappointment at the insult he knew Sally would not likely forgive. "I don't require any assistance," Sherlock added, swinging around slightly as if to make sure there were no eager volunteers with whom he'd have to argue. "Least of all you," he added, swinging back, and Lestrade blistered. But before he could bark, Sherlock went on.
"I will need gloves, though. And a mask."
Sally froze, insult radiating from her, and then she muttered a curse and spun away.
"Jesus, Sherlock," Lestrade got out, and was met with Sherlock's look of bemusement that said he was aware someone had taken offense something he said and he couldn't be arsed to figure out why because it was a matter for inferior intellects.
Sally thrust a fistful of small blue objects at him, lips tight, and retreated.
Lestrade found himself frowning as Sherlock pulled on the gloves and settled a blue surgical mask over his face, then carefully slipped his coat off and hung it on a bedpost. He looked over at Sally, but Sally's arms were folded angrily.
"Never seen you consent to a mask before, or take off your coat," Lestrade said, but Sherlock was already stepping in to the creamy brilliance of the bathroom and kneeling at the edge of the tub. Lestrade frowned more deeply and glanced at Sally again, and this time she, too, was clearly noticing something different in the detective's behavior.
Sherlock thumbed her eyelids up, tipped his head and peered at her eyes and then he was unbuttoning the woman's blouse gingerly. He never did anything gingerly. But it was as if he expected a bomb. His dark head bent slightly as the woman's bra came clear, he pulled the shirt slightly to one side and looked at the woman's armpit, then abruptly stood.
"Who has been in here?" he demanded.
"Anderson, two photographers," Lestrade said.
"Jesus, Lestrade," Sherlock said. "Find them and isolate them. And call for ambulances with full protective kit. Dr. Andrews died of a gunshot wound to the head, but if she hadn't, she would have died within a week of ebola Zaire."
Ten days later, Sherlock, Anderson and the two techs were released from quarantine. Andrews' research partner had made a full confession; they were working on a vaccine for the disease, racing another team of researchers for what would be a very lucrative patent and doing it illegally in her private lab when she had been infected by a needle stick. He killed her before she could show symptoms, intending to carry on alone.
Sherlock had had a time of it, explaining to John via cellphone from quarantine why he'd exposed himself to a highly contagious and incurable disease.
He explained that he'd seen the house on the news with reports of a possible gunshot murder, remembered that a high profile Cambridge professor who had worked on tropical diseases lived in that area, reasoned that a murder of such an academic was likely connected to her work. His explanation that no one would have taken him seriously if he'd suggested hazmat protocol and that quick action was necessary to prevent accidental exposures did nothing to appease John.
"You just didn't want to look stupid if you were wrong," he'd accused, and privately, Lestrade thought he was right. John's towering rage had lasted most of a week, which was nearly a record for the doctor, whose temper was quick to flare but usually as quick to recede.
But judging by the fact that the two were barefoot and rumpled and that Sherlock was in his dressing gown and silk pajamas when Donovan answered the call of "come in" at her knock early Saturday evening, she reasoned they'd made peace.
They both looked surprised to see Sally; clearly they'd expected Lestrade when the heavy police knock fell on the door.
"Really, Donovan, just because you're on the verge of shagging him doesn't mean you should let Lestrade send you on errands," Sherlock said.
"Sherlock!" John said, but Sally only grinned.
"If I'm not used to him by now, I'm a bit of a princess, aren't I?" she said.
Just then Sherlock, twisting from his indolent sprawl on the couch, noticed the gift bag.
"A social call, Sally?" he said incredulously. "Narrow bag, you've brought wine, why?"
Sally lifted the bag.
"Maybe your grateful clients bring you wine, but I'm a cop," she said. "I bring scotch."
"For God's sake," John said. "Sit. I'll make drinks."
"No, just on my way through, thanks," said Sally, leaning to set the bottle on the coffee table. She glanced at the clutter on the table, barely kept herself from jumping back, then sent a look of amused horror at Sherlock, who was lifting himself to a sitting position.
"Oh, those, they're only mildly poisonous, mostly, and besides, they're all dead, they could hardly harm you," Sherlock said, waving a hand dismissively at the small specimen jars stacked loosely over most of the table's surface, each containing a spider of one sort or another.
"I don't know how you do it," Sally said to a ruefully grinning John, shaking her head. Sherlock, social niceties never a strong suite and impulse control even less so, leaned forward and seized the gift bag, drawing forth a glowing golden bottle.
"Laphroigh," he said. "Sixteen years old, cask strength. Expensive. Why? What is this? Why have you brought this?"
Sally nearly laughed at the pleasure of seeing Sherlock demanding an answer and her in possession of it.
"Act like a friend, get treated like one," she said. "I was right stropped when you said I was the last person you wanted assisting you in that bathroom. Guess I'm not now, am I?"
She looked at John, whose expressive face was dawning with understanding and right behind that, overwhelming joy and pride.
"I'd tell you to get him drunk and take advantage of him, but I'm a bit late for that, aren't I?" she snarked, and surprised a school boy's grin from him.
"I…well," he said, face alight with mischief. "Not too late, actually. He was sober, before, wasn't he."
Her shoulders lifted in a silent laugh. So it was true. It was taken for granted that it was, but neither Sherlock or John had ever confirmed it before now.
"Won't keep you, then," she said back to John, smirking, for didn't she know what it was like, to have a good bottle and a man you wanted? First time she'd had that in common with a bloke, but it didn't feel as odd as you'd think. It made her like John.
She had turned to go when Sherlock spoke, still holding the bottle slightly aloft, as if not sure what to do with it.
"Ah, on the pavement, Sally…that…was unexpected."
She thought a moment, then looked back and nodded once.
"Yeah," she said. "It was."