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Chapter Text

All I meant to do was get a drink.

But--look, I guess the first thing you should know is that I did a tour in Afghanistan and then most of another one in Iraq, and when you come back to America after spending for-fucking-ever in the sandy deserts of hell, a shitty, empty bar is pretty much nirvana. There's something about the dingy, badly cast light and the taste of half-rancid tap beer that really feels like home, don't ask me why. The second thing you should know is that I've got so much shrapnel buried in my leg that I set off metal detectors in the goddamn CVS, not to mention the PTSD and the screaming bitch of a rotator cuff injury that I can't afford PT for right now. So yeah, sometimes it's a little difficult to resist the call of the drink.

And the third thing you should know is that the Tuesday bartender at The Clearinghouse is just the kind of asshole you don't want serving you if you only mean to have one beer.

I'd been going to the same bar almost every night since I moved to the city--not much to do while you're waiting for your transfer acceptance to go through, I guess, except win money off the stupid frat boys at the sports bar down the street. When I didn't feel like going down to The Yard and taking Lestrade for all he had, I ended up at the Clearinghouse; it was usually quiet, and Miles was behind the counter most of the time. He was a big guy, a little bit of a pusher, whip-smart when he bothered talking to me; I thought he owned the place, but I wasn't sure. He wasn't much for personal details.

Anyway, I only meant to get one drink and instead I had about six--the man kept pouring me shots to go with my beers, what could I do--and I found myself telling Miles of my woes. I was living in a motel at that point, pouring more of my saved-up signing bonus than I could afford on the night-to-night rental, looking for digs. City life had turned out to be more expensive than I'd bargained for, and the places I'd found in my price range on Craigslist were either decrepit or infested with undergrads or both; I was starting to wonder if I shouldn't just cut my losses and move home, med school be damned.

"Okay, I'm going to take all the whiny bullshit as a sign that I've given you too much to drink. Summary is that you're looking for a place?" Miles said, when I'd finished. I nodded, scowling, and Miles grinned and ripped a scrap of paper off an order pad.

"It's John, right? John Watson?" I nodded again, and he scribbled my name down on the sheet and tucked it into his pocket. Then he pulled off a fresh page and scrawled S. Holmes and a cell number across the top. He kept writing for a minute, then capped his pen with a satisfied grunt. "Here. I know a guy. He's a grad student, found a place he loves but can't afford it on his measly T.A. salary. He's been harassing me to find him leads for a week."

I glanced at the paper. "Nice guy?"

Miles grinned. "Not at all," he said, "but you strike me as his type. Give it a try, anyway. His next class is tomorrow at three--I wrote down the address and everything."

And yeah, I probably should have been tipped off by how fucking predatory that smile was, and okay, all right, I admit that the whole thing sounds a little crazy, but I'd had too much to drink, and I liked Miles! He'd always been decent, a friendly sort. I figured it couldn't do any harm.

Curse my trusting nature.

--

The first clue that this was a bad idea--well, okay, no. The first clue that this was a bad idea should have been being told that this S. Holmes was not at all a nice guy, and the second clue should have been the way Miles grinned like the whole thing was hilarious. So really the third clue that this was a bad idea was the fact that the time on the sheet of paper landed me in Holmes' class 45 minutes late.

I was relieved when the guy didn't turn around to yell at me, until I realized he was too busy yelling at everyone else to bother.

"It says elementary chemistry on the goddamn syllabus," he roared, throwing his chalk into the wall. It exploded. "That means it is easy enough for elementary schoolers. Congratulations, you're as competent as a group of children. I hope you're all proud of yourselves." A girl raised her hand timidly, and he turned his glare on her. "What?"

Even from across the room, I could see her quaver. "I, um, I don't think that's quite what 'elementary', in this context--"

"Shut up," Holmes said. He wasn't yelling anymore--his voice had gone quiet, disappointed. "Take a fucking semantics class with the time you're clearly not spending doing the work."

He walked down to the front of the room, pulled out a pile of what appeared to be test papers, and dropped into the desk chair. Then he whipped a red pen out of his pocket and began viciously marking them.

I could feel the classroom holding their breath. All was silent until he looked up.

"What are you waiting for?" he snarled. "Get out."

I was nearly knocked over in the ensuing stampede. When the rush of terrified undergrads cleared I was the only one left in the classroom; I moved up to his desk and, not wanting to disturb him, waited for him to look up.

He didn't.

"So," he said, still grading, "you're either a very tenacious new student or the potential roommate Miles texted me about. If you're the former, please don't bother--you're sure to be yet another fucking moron I have to attempt to herd towards competency, and I've got enough of those, thanks. If you're the latter, I can't imagine you want to live with me anymore in any case. Door's that way."

I stared at him. And yes, yes, I know that was when I should have turned around, but you have to understand--the guy was pretty hilarious. Hair standing up all over the place, flushed nearly purple and pissed off, using that red pen like he thought it was a fucking sword; he's not that big a man, and the entire effect made me think of Albert Einstein on meth.

So I opened my mouth and said "I'm shocked you're having such bad luck with the roommate search," and that, for whatever reason, made him look up.

"You don't look like an obnoxious drunk," Holmes said. "Miles oversold you."

I shrugged. "I have my moments. You seem exactly as unfriendly as he said you would be, so I probably got the more honest end of that stick."

Holmes cocked his head. Then, smiling slightly, he held out his hand. "Holmes." 

"Watson," I returned, shaking, and he froze.

"Oh, fuck no," he said, wrenching his hand out of my grip. "Miles must be dying over this--no. No. NO. I bet your first name is John, isn't it?"

"I--yeah," I said, "but what does that--"

"Oh my god," Holmes said, "my first decent lead and it's this. Look, man, we can't live together. We can't even consider it."

"Why not?"

"Because my name is Sherlock Holmes," Holmes cried. "Do you have any idea how hard it is to be taken seriously with a name like Sherlock Holmes? At least 'John Watson' could have been an honest mistake, parents not paying attention, no one thought about it til later kind of thing. Nobody's going to call you on that--but Sherlock Holmes, my whole goddamn life, and now my fucking brother sends me--"

"Miles is your brother?" I interrupted, because that couldn't be possible. Miles was huge, and this guy looked like a strong wind might knock him over.

"Mycroft," Holmes snapped, "changed his name when he turned 18, but yeah, he is. Our parents were a little off."

"I kind of figured," I said. Holmes ran an agitated hand through his hair; it got stuck there, and he yanked ineffectually at it until it came loose.

"Fuck," he said, "you seem like a smart enough guy, but I really--Holmes and Watson, we can't do that--"

There was a point in my life where I would have agreed with him, but my worry of public opinion had fallen away somewhere in the Afghani deserts. Still, I saw his point. I shrugged, oddly disappointed, and turned to walk toward the door. He caught sight of the cane in my hand then, looked at it curiously.

"Hey," he said, "what's wrong with your leg?"

Used as I was to people dancing around the question, it was actually kind of refreshing to hear someone ask straight-out. "I was an army medic," I said, shrugging. "Caught some shrapnel on my second tour; they got out as much as they could, but--"

"Oh, goddamn it," Holmes said, "now you're a wounded solider too. Tell me you're not a med student, please tell me that."

"Uh, I am, actually. How did you--"

"Is Miles paying you for this?" he asked, eyes narrowed. "Is this another one of his schemes to get me to change my name? Because I've told him a thousand times that it would kill Ma--"

"God, you're paranoid." When he narrowed his eyes further at my lack of an outright denial, I laughed. "No! You're a little crazy, I want you to know that. I don't think your brother even knows what I'm studying; he just said he thought you'd like me."

"Twisted bastard," Holmes muttered under his breath. Then he rolled his eyes and stood. "Come on, then. Best go check out Baker Street."

"Please tell me that's not actually what it's called," I said, hurrying after him as he all but ran toward the door.

"Might as well be," he said, and we were off. To this day I don't know what changed his mind.

--

The place was nice.

The place was, in fact, very nice, so nice I started worrying about how I would afford it. I mentioned that, and Holmes explained how low the rent was--it turned out Mrs. Hudson, the lady who owned it, had moved to Florida rather abruptly and was looking to nab a sub-leaser ASAP. There was a large living room, complete with cable and ethernet hookup, and two bedrooms with the same, not to mention the spacious kitchen.

"You see the draw," Holmes muttered. "But I can't afford it on my own, the pay as a T.A. is shit."

"Well," I said, "if you think you can manage to get over your literary hang-up--"

"Oh, fuck right off," he snapped, "like you don't think it's weird."

I shrugged. "I've seen weirder."

He looked me over. There's something about Holmes' stare--I noticed it even then--that makes a man slightly uncomfortable. How can I properly...okay. Imagine you're in class, right? And you get that creepy feeling at the back of your neck, like someone's watching you. So you turn around and look, but no one's there, and you feel crazy but the sensation doesn't go away, and you start wondering where this little fucker is hiding, because obviously someone is staring at you? You're there with me? Okay, now multiply it by six and then add the idea that someone is dissecting your brain from the inside out, and then you've got what it's like when Holmes starts with the scrutiny.

I coughed. He looked away.

"Right," he said, "time for a drink."

"It's two in the afternoon."

"Well, you can't expect me to move in with a guy without knowing what he's like after a couple of beers," Holmes said. "I'd ask you to buy me dinner first, but I get the impression you might hit me."

"Astute," I murmured, and he laughed.

"We'll go see my brother," he said, "I haven't harassed him yet this week," and I was following him down the stairs and up the street before I could really think about it.

The apartment was only a quick walk from The Clearinghouse. Holmes talked the whole way there, pointing out the best nearby restaurants, the quietest coffee shops, the tiny private park with the fence easy enough to scale. He spoke with a nearly manic speed, waving his hands, and his hair was even crazier than it had been in his classroom. He looked...well. He looked like a nutcase.

It was at that point that I realized, fuck it all, that I liked him.

"Are you trying to sell me on this idea now?" I asked, a block from the bar. "What happened to 'We can't do this?'"

"I--"

"'My name is Sherlock Holmes!'" I mimicked, admittedly throwing a bit more drama into it than he had. "'People will judge me! What will I do?'"

"You're a bastard," Holmes said, but the edge of his mouth was curled ever-so-slightly upward.

"Sometimes," I admitted. "You don't seem like the type to care, though."

"Yeah," he said, yanking the bar's front door open, "I'm not."

---

Miles' face was purple.

"I didn't say I was going to do it!" Holmes snapped, irritated. "We're just talking about it!"

"Holmes--and--Watson!" Mycroft gasped, doubling over and howling with laughter again. "This is the best prank ever, you crazy little shit, you can't honestly be considering-- "

"Shut the fuck up," Holmes said, and there was real anger in his voice now. Miles just laughed harder, and I decided it was probably best to intervene.

"I am taking my beer," I said, "and I am going over there." I picked up my Bud and moved over to a corner booth, and a second later Holmes slid in to the other side, cradling his Dos Equus lovingly.

Yeah, I don't know how I knew he'd follow me either.

"So," he said, taking a pull from his beer, "ignoring my bastard blood relation for a minute, what do I have to know about you to live with you?"

"What do you mean?"

He shrugged expansively. "Well, for example, I play the violin and I won't put up with stupid and I'm not very polite."

"Really?" I said, and then put up both hands in surrender when he glared. "Fine, fine. Uh--once my transfer stuff goes through I'll be a med student, and I won't have time to sleep much--"

"You don't keep normal hours," Holmes said, nodding. "That's okay, me neither. Next?"

"I don't do loud noises," I told him, which sounded idiotic, but was the closest I'd come to admitting PTSD to a total stranger. From the look that flitted across his face I could tell he'd figured it out anyway, but he refrained from commenting, thank god. "And I'm pretty neat--three years in the army will do that to you."

"I'm a fucking mess," Holmes said, spilling beer on himself to drive home this point. "But I don't care if you don't."

"So long as it's not in my room." I pulled a pack of cigs out of my breast pocket, and he grinned.

"So you smoke?"

I stopped myself saying No shit, Sherlock just in time, and then I had to nod an answer to him while holding back my laughter. He gave me a dark look, rife with suspicion, but I met him stare for stare. If I felt a little thrill go up the back of my spine the second before he looked away, I wasn't planning on telling anyone.

"Me too," he said, breaking the moment and bumming a smoke without asking. "These and weed, when there's nothing else to do. Go ahead and light yours, Miles doesn't mind."

"You sure?" I asked, bringing the cig to my lips anyway.

"Worst he can do is throw us out for ten minutes." Holmes lit his own--well, my own--cigarette, and took a long draw. I followed suit, mostly to appease him.

Sure enough, Miles wandered up a minute later. "That shit'll kill ya," he said, dropping two more beers on the table. "So, you boys roommates yet?"

Holmes looked at me, and I shrugged. "If he wants to be, I guess. I've been living in a hotel, so really I'd move anywhere--"

"Aww," Holmes said, "your enthusiasm is touching."

"Let me try again. Ohmygod, HOLMES, I'm just SO excited--"

"Fuck off!" he cried, laughing and leaning away, and then--

Well. Here's what I remember: Miles brought up a bottle of some kind of champagne from the basement while Holmes called Mrs. Hudson, and we drank that. And then Miles brought out a bottle of tequila and we drank most of that, and people started filing in to the bar and someone said something about Irish Carbombs and--

--then I woke up on the floor of an apartment I'd only seen once before, with a vicious hangover and wreckage around me.

"Holmes?" I called. I don't know what made me say it. I hadn't known him long enough to know that where he went, wreckage followed--instinct, I suppose, really is as strong as they tell you in Basic.

There was a groan from around my left knee. It was fucking deafening.

"Goddamn," I said, "can't you be a little quieter?"

"Maybe if you'd try being a little less bony, you shithead," Holmes muttered back, and it was at that point I realize his head was on my leg. My bare leg. My totally pants-free, open-to-the-air leg.

In retrospect, scrambling away that quickly and letting his head thunk into the hardwood like that was probably not kind. In my defense, though, the girlish scream he uttered on impact was really a little over the top. I cocked my head, looking him over.

"Shit, man, sorry--"

"You dropped my hangover on the ground!" he hissed, clutching his head. "...No, wait, that's not right. Fuck. Where'd I leave--"

He clawed himself to his feet, using my unsteady body as a ladder.

"Holmes--"

"You dropped me," he growled, still holding a hand to his head. "Not a word."

"But--"

"Not a fucking word, man."

I shut up and glanced around as Holmes disengaged himself from my arm and wandered toward one of the many cardboard boxes. He unearthed a jar of Advil first and whipped it at me without turning around; I caught it and threw back three before he could ask for them back. He didn't, though, just kept rummaging, and a second later he'd pulled out a long glass bong, walked to the sink, and filled the bottom with water.

"Ice," he said. "Need ice. You remember to make ice before Lestrade and his boys left?"

"Lestra--ice--Holmes, did we move in here last night?"

He gave me a bleary, exasperated look. "Hangover first, questions later. Ice?"

I wandered over to the fridge; there was indeed ice in the tray, although I had no recollection of making it. I offered it to him and he grabbed three cubes, shoving them into the mouth of the bong. They hovered there; the opening in the bottom wasn't big enough to allow them through, so they piled on top of each other in the tubular chamber.

"Softer," he explained. "The hit. Tore my throat up something awful last night." He walked over to the coffee table--where had we gotten that coffee table?--and pulled the slide out of another, smaller bong. He peered into it curiously, mixed the remnants with his lighter, shrugged, and popped it into the one he was holding.

"Bottoms up," he said, putting his lips to it. He lit the slide and pulled in a long breath, gathering smoke into the chamber. Then he removed the slide and sucked in, taking the massive hit cleanly and releasing in one smooth breath.

He sank onto the couch and offered me the bong. I shook my head.

"Suit yourself," he said, shrugging, and took another hit. "Best hangover cure in the world."

"I'll stick to the legal stuff, thanks," I said, brandishing the Advil bottle, and he smiled brightly at it.

"I forgot about that, give it here." Three Advils and two hits later, he was looking a little less wild around the eyes. "So, what do you remember about last night?"

"Not much," I admitted, plopping down next to him. The couch creaked ominously, but I ignored it. "Something about Ikea, and the people at the motel being really bitchy--"

"Yeaaaah," Holmes said, coughing a little. "You probably shouldn't go back there any time soon."

"What did you do?"

"I didn't do anything. You decided it would be hilarious to have a spitting contest over the balcony. I just went along with it."

"Oh," I said. A vague memory filtered through the haze of my headache. "Did we hit--"

"The manager of the motel?" Holmes laughed. "Yeah, and since we were only two floors up--"

"Shit, right." Shaking my head, I unearthed a pack of cigarettes from under the couch by dint of muscle memory alone, and that's when I actually got a good look at my left arm. "Uh. I'm sure I'm going to regret asking, but why does my arm say Johnny Appleseed?"

"You got everyone at The Yard to call me Sherwood Forest," Holmes muttered darkly, in the tone of a man brooding on his wrongs. "I had to retaliate."

I licked my thumb and wiped at the words; they didn't even smear. "Fuck, man, did you write this in Sharpie?

"Maaaaaaaybe," he hedged. When I glared he broke and cracked a smile. "Alright, yeah. It was the first thing I found in the boxes, and you needed to pay."

I flipped him my middle finger. He made an exaggerated gesture that mimed putting it in his pocket, and I rolled my eyes at him; if I'd known then exactly how many times in the course of our friendship we would unwittingly reenact that little moment, I might have taken it a bit more seriously. As it was I leaned my head against the back of the couch--futon? It was hard to tell--and stared up at the blissfully dull ceiling.

"So," I said, already kicking myself for doing so, "what else happened last night?"

Holmes shrugged while I lit my cigarette. "Mrs. Hudson got really bitchy when I called and said we were moving in, and then you swayed her somehow. I think something about a cake? And your war record or something, I don't know, I was drunk."

"Holmes--"

"And then we went down to the Yard because you said you could gamble free movers out of it and you were right--I think you won a bunch of other shit too, by the way, check your pockets--and then that Lestrade guy made all his pledges come move our boxes around--"

"--please tell me that's not a euphemism--"

"--and I got them all really stoned!" Holmes finished, grinning. "The little redhaired one is really funny after a few hits. It was a good night." He snatched the cig from me, took a contemplative puff, and then looked at me with wide eyes.

"Shit, dude," he said, "I think I'm high."

"Wasn't that the goal?" 

"Yeah, I just thought it would take more," he said, grinning when I stole the cigarette back. "D'you know your mustache is kind of weird?"

"My mustache is not weird, Holmes. It's a mustache."

"Yeah, but you're under the age of, like, 80," Holmes said. "I think you've gotta be 80 for that kind of 'stache."

"I don't--"

"Old man Aaaaappleseed!" he cried, leaning toward me. Then he stilled and looked at the bong like it had betrayed him. "Fuck, this is embarrassing. I'm not usually like this, man, I swear, I think I'm still a little drunk--"

"It's fine," I tried. He looked at me then, a little freaked out, and for whatever reason I remember that moment like it happened yesterday; I think it's because it was the first time I'd seen an honest emotion on his face.

"Really," he said, "I'm not like a, uuhhm, like a fucking novice smoker, I just, uh--"

"Holmes," I said, mostly to shut him up, "do you want to get some food?"

He brightened at once, grinning happily. "Dude, it's like you know me."

--

The first lesson of the Holmesian credo is this: do not take him to a restaurant high. He wasn't lying to me when he said he wasn't usually a rambling, obnoxious stoner; generally speaking, when not nursing a hangover, that shit just makes him less uptight. But fuck, get the man around food and it's an entirely different story.

"...and the sausage, and the hashbrowns, and I think another egg," he said to the waitress, snapping his menu with finality. She gave him a look that indicated very clearly that she knew what was going on, and he glared right back at her. It would have been very effective if not for the stifled giggles.

She sighed and turned to me. "And for you?"

"Is there anything he didn't order?" I asked despairingly. She glanced over the ticket.

"Corned beef hash?"

"That," I said wearily, handing her my menu. "And coffee. As much as you can legally give me. More, even."

She patted my arm sympathetically and was off; Holmes leaned across the table and grinned at me.

"I think she was checking you out," he said, in what he obviously fondly imagined was a whisper.

"I think you're out of your mind," I shot back, in a much more discreet tone. "And anyway--"

"Do you think it would be possible to design a universal palate?" he asked suddenly, picking up the salt shaker. "Like, a nationwide survey, and universally season foods accordingly. Do away with salt and pepper."

"Why would you want to?"

He didn't answer me, but licked the edge of his thumb and ran it across the few salt grains he'd shaken loose into his palm. "I have this theory," he said absently.

A word to the wise: "I have this theory" are the four most ominous words in the English language. Every time he says them he does something crazy--that time? The time with the salt shaker in that restaurant? Yeah, three weeks later he developed an automatic calling software that he ran off of an old laptop and actually surveyed five hundred people. And then he concluded that everyone liked too much salt on their food and that was disgusting but couldn't be helped, and scrapped the whole thing.

He's a crazy person. Allow me to repeat: he is a crazy person. Never in my entire life have I met anyone so crazy--and, actually, part of what makes it so insane is how committed he is to being insane and--

Anyway. I didn't know about "I have this theory" then, but my niggling instincts of terror had been right up til that point, and I was idiot enough to think I could distract him. Naivety is another curse of mine, I guess.

"So tell me about your thesis," I said. "You are writing a thesis, yeah?"

"For my PhD, yeah," Holmes said. "And it's--how much do you know about organic chemistry?"

"Enough to get me into medical school."

He smirked at me. "So as much as the underspawn, then?" He laughed outright at my horrified face. "Sorry, sorry. Okay, so, uh--okay. You know how molecules, atoms, have charges?"

"I think fifth graders know that, Holmes."

"Elementary," he agreed darkly. "You'd imagine everyone would know, and then you'd be really fucking surprised. But anyway--what I'm trying to do, basically, is find an interaction strong enough between the field and the induced charge to immobilize the molecule without permanently affecting it. And then I could wash it across--"

He stopped, looked at my face, and sighed. "I see I've lost you."

"Are you sure you're explaining it right? I mean, maybe I'm not stupid. Maybe you're just high."

"I eat, sleep and breathe this shit," he snapped, "I could explain this underwater. But don't feel bad; you're a little smarter than the gene pool rejects they give me to teach. I can show you."

"I'm touched," I muttered. He ignored me, glanced around wildly, and snatched two empty coffee mugs from the next table.

"Right," he said, turning them on their sides. "So, in organic chemistry, the point is to go from compound A to compound B in a series of chemical reactions, right?"

"Oh, look, you're making sense again."

"It's a gift." He twirled one of the coffee cups absently with a few flicks of his index finger. "So--imagine this cup is molecule A, and this other one is molecule B. Now, if they're just rotating freely all they're going do is--"

He spun them both at once and released them; they crashed together, making an upsettingly loud noise. Holmes and I, still hungover despite our best efforts, both winced; the waitress glared at us from behind the counter.

"They're going to get us kicked out of a restaurant?" I asked, catching one and stilling it. "Who knew a little molecule could do some much damage?"

"I am not even going to dignify that with a response," Holmes said. "As I was saying, they're going to bump together. Random motion. But if you could attach a charge to molecule A," and here he grabbed the first coffee mug and held it firmly in place, "you could orient it, and give it a set position, thus allowing you to guide molecule B into the right spot." He took the second coffee cup, pulled it back, and released it, sending it sliding indelicately into the first one.

They fit together perfectly, and held.

"Is that really all there is to it?" I asked, and picked up the cups bemusedly. "It's just...really?" 

"No," he said, laughing on it, "that's actually not at all what it's like, but it was the easiest way to explain it. And there's nanotechnology and quantum and shit, and the problem of how to create a temporary magnetic pull, and it's basically impossible, actually. But if I can figure it out it could create a wave of new drugs--a cure for cancer, maybe, or for Alzheimer's. New vaccines. The possibilities are pretty fucking endless."

"That's," I said, at a loss for words. He rolled his eyes at me.

"Try not to fall all over yourself in worship of my genius," he advised, "that'd be disgusting. We're roommates, dude! Get your shit together."

"You know what it's like?" I said, as the waitress came back to our table with a laden down tray. "It's like going out to breakfast with Albert Einstein and a five year old at the same time. How do you do that?"

He ignored me in favor of making rude gestures at the unimpressed waitress and then falling on more food that anyone--let alone anyone that skinny--should have been able to consume. I sighed and sipped my coffee and watched him, half out of affection and half out of terrible, morbid curiosity.

It was going to be interesting, living with him.

Chapter Text

Two days later, I got back from a meeting confirming my transfer, laden down with my class schedule and sixteen different forms I had to fill out by Monday. I was feeling pretty good about myself when I walked through the door to our apartment, where Holmes, predictably enough, was sitting on the couch, surrounded by crap. His favorite bowl, never far from his side, was sitting idle on the coffee table, and he appeared to be playing Dawn of the Dead on his Wii with one hand and typing on his laptop with the other. A cigarette was hanging from his mouth, the ash threatening to drop on to his leg at any time.

I crossed the room in two steps, pulled the cig from his mouth, ashed it into an empty cup and took a drag. "Hey."

"I was smoking that," he said, jerking his wrist to behead a particularly bloodthirsty onscreen zombie. Then he seemed to realize I was there, and hit pause. "Hey! How'd your meeting go?"

"I'm in," I told him, handing the cigarette back. He grinned and gave me a thumbs up, then took it, watching me drop my bag and head towards the kitchen. "Did you get the chance to go to the grocery store? I'm starving."

"Yeah," he said, turning back to the game. "Fuck, man, these zombies are gonna be the death of me."

"You might have better luck if you stopped with the computer."

"Multitasking!" he called. Smiling despite myself, I opened a cupboard, wondering what he'd bought.

I closed the cupboard. I opened the fridge.

"Holmes," I said, "what the fuck?"

"What the fuck what?"

"You said you went to the grocery store."

"I did!" he replied, twisting around on the couch to face me and still playing the game. "There's stuff in there!"

"As far as I can see," I said, glaring at him, "you bought four different kinds of beer--and one of them says 'raspberry' on it, what the hell, man--"

"I was intrigued!"

"--six kinds of cereal," I continued, ignoring him, "a container of fruit punch and three things I've never heard of. Did you buy toilet paper?"

"Shit, no."

"Coffee?"

"I knew I forgot--"

"Milk?"

"Yeah!" he said, brightening. "But I drank it."

I stared. "You drank an entire gallon of--"

"Don't be stupid," he said, as though this was a perfectly reasonable thing to say and not, given the context, madness. "I only bought a pint. I had cereal for lunch."

"You only bought--" I stopped. Repeating the facts to him would not make them any less insane. "Okay. I know you must have been dropped on your head as a child or something, but this? This is not grocery shopping."

"Why not?" he said. Something on the screen growled and he waved the WiiMote behind his back, killing an approaching zombie with perfect accuracy. "I bought food."

"Get up," I said.

"No."

"We are going to the fucking grocery store."

"You just got into medical school! We should celebrate with--"

"You are learning to grocery shop."

"Can I at least smoke a bowl before we--"

"I was at that restaurant with you the other day," I said, "do you think I am so quick to forget? The solution to this problem is not to let you get high and buy everything in the goddamn store. This is not that hard. Come on."

"I don't want to."

"Yes, well, I don't particularly enjoy having to play babysitter to a guy who's supposed to be my roommate--"

"Fine," he snapped, "but I get to drive."

--

"This is your car?" He glared at me, but I couldn't help myself. It was ridiculous. "You've got a complex about being named after a detective, and this is your car?"

"Shut up," he muttered. I laughed out loud.

"Holmes, this is the fucking Mystery Mobile!"

"No it's not!" he cried. "I know it's a little...van-ish...and a little, um, green--"

"It's not a little 'van-ish,'" I corrected, choking on my own mirth, "or a little green. It's a fucking turquoise van! Where did you even get it?"

"It used be Miles'--it was cheap, ok? Fuck," he added, swinging into the driver's seat. "Just get in, alright?"

The inside of the car--of the van, of the turquoise fucking van--was decidedly less horrifying, mostly because of the tricked-out speaker system adorning it. Holmes caressed it lovingly. "Installed her myself," he said, pulling his iPod out of his pocket and putting on a song I didn't recognize. It was loud, and I would have protested, but that's when he pulled out of the parking space.

A note: the craziest thing about Holmes? Yeah, that'd be his driving.

We screamed out of that parking lot--and look, I've been shot at and I've seen shit blow up and there is shrapnel embedded in my goddamn leg. I know from terror, okay? That said, you've never been in a car with this asshole. He laughs in the face of stop signs, he scoffs at pedestrians, and he keeps the music all the way up while he does it. I saw my life flash before my eyes as we made the first turn.

"Jesus Christ," I snapped--no, that's not right.

"Jesus Christ," I fucking YELLED, because it was the only way to be heard over the--I swear to god--subwoofer he had lounging in the back of the van. "Drive much?"

"Live a little," he cried back, cranking the volume up another two notches. I gripped the door handle and felt my knuckles go white.

"This is not a recipe for life, Holmes! Decidedly the opposite!"

"Yeah, yeah," he laughed. "C'mon, Appleseed, a little danger never hurt anyone. You love it."

We made the fifteen minute drive in eight minutes flat; given city traffic, that should give you some idea of what it was like in that death trap. Still, without any guidance he ended up at the cheapest grocery in town, for which I could only give him points.

"I'm driving back," I said, slamming my door and resisting the urge to kiss the ground. He just shrugged and wandered toward the store, and--

Okay. I suppose this is as good a time as any to mention that I'm not, uh, particularly interested in sex of the heterosexual variety. It's not for lack of trying--believe me, it's not for lack of trying. My family would be horrified if they were still around to find out, and the military isn't exactly tolerant, but there's nothing to be done about it. I like cock. I try not to let it run my life.

Which is why it was really fucking disconcerting to notice that I was staring at my crazy new roommate's ass. My crazy new roommates' very nice ass.

I shook off that ridiculous thought and followed him into the store, where he immediately reached for a basket. I grabbed him arm to stop him, and was surprised when he jumped at the touch.

"No," I said, trying to ignore my own reaction at how warm his skin was under my palm, "not one of those."

"Why not?" he asked, honestly confused. "I always--"

"Shop with one?" I finished dryly. "Because you buy enough food to last you six hours? Yeah, I kind of figured." I grabbed a buggy and wheeled it over, bumping him with it. "This is a cart," I told him, exaggerating my pronunciation a little--well, maybe a lot. "People use this when they need to buy more food. It has wheels--"

"I know what a cart is," he snapped, scowling. "And you suck."

"Awwww, did I ruffle Forest's little feathers?"

"Stop calling me that."

"Stop calling me Appleseed."

"You're already in my phone that way," he said, grinning triumphantly. "So it's much too late--ooh, starfruit. What do you think that tastes like?"

It took us twenty minutes to get out of the produce section. I wanted to buy bananas and apples and clementines, normal, regular food--he spent an inordinate amount of time making a case for a coconut. I was already regretting bringing him along (he has to learn, I told myself, he has to learn) when we turned the corner and ended up in the freezer section.

"I forgot to buy ice cream earlier," he said, his tone shocked and bordering on horrified. "Watson, I forgot to buy ice cream. What--I--I don't know who I am anymore."

I thought about his driving, and his wide eyed horror over ice cream, and his dirty habits, and a horrible thought occurred to me.

"Are you high?" I demanded. He looked up at me, dazed, and then smiled brilliantly. And I--well. It distracted me for a second. I might have blushed, a little. It doesn't matter, he didn't see it.

"You're right," he said, "I can't be blamed for forgetting the ice cream. I was stoned before, that's not my fault."

I was still reeling, unexpected attacks of libido being more than a little crippling, so he'd turned around to stare lovingly at the frozen confectionaries again before I processed that. "You DROVE to the store while you were HIGH?!"

He whipped around and glared at me. "Yell a little louder, why don't you, I'd love to get arrested--"

"Well I'd love it if you didn't fucking kill someone--"

"Maybe if you'd gone to the store yourself I wouldn't have had to--"

"Nobody has to drive stoned--"

"Okay!" he said, throwing his hands up. "We're arguing in front of the ice cream, that's not right. To answer your first question, no, I am not currently high. To present you with a second question: Rocky Road or Moose Tracks?"

"We're not done talking about how fucking stupid it is to--"

"You're right," he said, turning away and opening the freezer case, "we need both."

--

The deli section. How do I begin to explain Holmes in the deli section?

"Braunswager is not a food, it's a byproduct."

"It's a food," he said, picking up the tube and eyeing it speculatively. "They sell it in the grocery store, it has to be edible."

I despaired of my life. "They sell dishwashing soap at the grocery store."

"That could be edible," he said, poking at the tube of pinkish horror. "Given enough time in the lab--"

"I meant without chemically redesigning it."

--

"But I like pig knuckles!"

"Have you ever tried them?"

"I could have tried them, you don't know."

"But have you, in fact, tried them?"

"Well, not in so many words--"

"Leave them, Holmes."

"You're no fun."

--

"Watson. Watson, look."

"Is that....what is that?"

"I think it's some kind of...um. I think it's supposed to be a hamburger."

"But...but there's...there's olives in it."

"I know. Disgusting, isn't it? And look, bleu cheese chunks."

"That's horrifying."

"A crime against god and man, no question. Do you want to buy it?"

"You are high, aren't you?"

--

Then there was the thing with the checkout girl. I shouldn't say girl--I should say woman, because she was 40 if she was a day, and wearing a wedding ring, and obviously thought we were as crazy as we were, well, married and gay. But the whole drive home, with Holmes happily changing the music every fifteen seconds from the passenger seat, he talked about her--how into me she'd been, how everyone could see it, how I was blind to the call of love--

"Shut up," I snapped finally, and it's a sign of how pissed I must have sounded that he did. We didn't talk for the rest of the drive, but when we got home he flicked a seed from the apple he'd bitten into in the store at me.

He's lucky I was so quick to understand his language. No one sane would have taken that for the peace offering it was.

We split the load going up the stairs; even then, I appreciated the way he didn't pander to me, or treat me like I was a fucking cripple. He laughed at me when I stumbled trying to unlock the door with twenty pounds of food hanging from my arms, and he smiled when I smacked him on the back of the head as he was unloading the vodka.

"You wanna watch a movie?" he said, and I did.

♟

It was about two weeks later--well, shit. Before I tell you about that I should probably contextualize this story, huh? I should have done that first--look, I'm not a writer by nature, okay? And anyway, when you room with a guy like Holmes you learn to live without context, and sometimes I forget people need it.

But, anyway. When I met him it was--September? Yeah, that's right. I'd been in Iraq until I got shot in March, and then I spent a couple of hellish months at Walter Reed in DC, being treated by doctors who couldn't find their own asses with both hands. I knew I wanted to go to med school, but my grandfather, who'd pretty much raised me after my parents died, got sick in June, so I went back home to take care of him. I took classes there until the end of August, he died the first of September, I got the fuck out of dodge a week later, and that about catches you up.

So, yeah--where was I? Right, two weeks after the grocery store. Well, no--two days after the grocery store, I guess, would be more accurate, because that's when the dreams started. They were innocent enough at first--Holmes and me playing video games, Holmes and me eating chicken wings, normal, basic stuff.

Only then they got...less innocent.

First it was his hands. I had dreams about his hands, just his hands, hours and hours of these dreams, unavoidable. And then it was his cheekbones, and then it was his hands on my cheekbones--and then it was the dip of his stomach and the curve of his--

Well, I'm sure you get the picture. It's not like you have much time to sleep as a first year med student, especially when you're catching up on two weeks of missed material and living with Sherlock Holmes, but what sleep I was getting was, uh, fitful. Which is why, two weeks after--see, I knew we'd get here eventually--two weeks after the grocery store, I was sitting on the couch at 5 AM, playing online poker.

Oh, shut up. You try having gay dreams about your roommate every time you fall asleep. See if you can keep yourself from your vices.

Anyway, I was sitting there, right? And suddenly Holmes' door opened, and instead of Holmes tumbling out it was Clarkie, the little redheaded fraternity pledge that followed Lestrade everywhere. His hair was mussed and there were bitemarks on his neck and he was smiling, the way you do after you've been fucked rotten.

With a sinking sensation, I remembered Holmes saying how much fun this one was stoned.

He froze when he noticed me, the smile slipping off of his face. "Fuck," he hissed, "fuck, man, please don't Lestrade, he's a real dick about this kind of thing--"

"Relax," I said, turning back to my game. "I'm not really interested in outing you. You might want to cover up those hickeys before you see him, though."

Clarkie's hand flew to his neck, and he blushed a brilliant crimson. "Uh, thanks," he said. "And, uh, I have to go before Holmes--"

"Wakes up?" I finished. He blushed deeper, and I rolled my eyes at him. "Maturity in this kind of situation is advised, kid."

"Right," he said faintly, and ran.

I was still sitting on the couch, trying to convince myself that I wasn't jealous--because that would have been ridiculous, Holmes was my roommate and that was all--when the devil himself emerged from the bedroom. His hair too was tousled, and he was whistling cheerfully to himself, moving toward the fridge. It was clear the he hadn't seen me.

I thought it was high time I corrected that. "Sleeping with undergrads? Classy, Holmes."

He jumped about a foot in the air. "Shit, man, you scared the crap out of me!"

"Sorry," I said, not meaning it. He eyed me warily, and then sighed and flipped on the light, moving to the fridge.

"I guess it's just as well," he said. "Better now that later, all things considered."

I had no idea what he was talking about, so I watched him unscrew the top on the orange juice bottle, confused. "Use a glass," I said, "that's my orange juice."

He laughed a little bitterly. "Like you're not moving out this afternoon. Might as well take what I can get."

"Moving out? Why would I--" And then it dawned on. "Dude. You think I'm going to move out because I caught you scoring some underage tail?"

"It's more that he has a dick," Holmes said. "And anyway, he's not underage, I checked. He turned 18--ew, god, I can't believe I'm having this conversation."

"Neither can I," I said, laughing. "Let me be more precise--I don't really give a fuck who you're screwing, male, female or otherwise."

He eyed me speculatively. "Pretty much just male," he said, like a test. I shrugged. "Entirely male, actually."

"Is there a way to be clearer than 'I don't give a fuck'?" I wondered aloud, and he cracked a small smile and took a swig from the orange juice carton. "Hey! I do give a fuck about you using a glass."

His smile widened into a full-fledged grin. "No you don't," he said. I rolled my eyes and went back to my game, and I heard the fridge door shut and a few quick footsteps before I felt the couch sink under his weight next to me.

And then--well. I don't know why I did it, but I know that I didn't glance up from my screen, and I pitched my voice firmly in the realm of casual inquiry. "So. Are you dating the ginger?"

Holmes laughed. "No, man, fuck that. I don't date, really."

"Why not?"

I felt the back of the couch move with his shrug. "Waste of time, I think. People just want things from you; you have to call them and buy them shit and spend all your time with them--it's overrated. Fucking is all well and good, I go a little nuts if I don't get laid on the regular, but I don't see the point in doing anything more."

The sinking sensation in my stomach reached critical mass and exploded. On the one hand, it was a good thing--the army teaches you pretty fucking quick not to shit where you eat, and so the whole thing had been stupid anyway. Still, I had been thinking--

--but it didn't matter. I'm a commitment guy, always have been, and you can't have a one night stand with your own roommate.

"So," he said, "how about you? I've usually got a pretty good read on these things, but you've got the whole army-brat thing going for you. Jams up my gaydar."

"That's not what army brat means," I told him, exasperated, for the tenth time since I'd met him. "And I think the party line on the topic is 'don't ask, don't tell.'"

He grinned at me, his eyes going terrifyingly bright. "Welll," he said, looking me over, "we're going to have to take you to the clubs."

♟

I lived in fear over the next month, waiting for him to pounce and drag me out dancing, but I shouldn't have worried. Schoolwork, the bitterest of burdens, came upon us like something really fucking awful, and neither of us had time to think about anything else. And let me say this--Holmes without a ton of work? Terrifying. Likely to get into all sorts of trouble. Takes apart necessary electronic appliances. Blows things up.

Holmes with a ton of work? Entirely as terrifying, for entirely different reasons.

"That's my shirt," I told him on Tuesday. It was peeking out under his sweater and over his favorite cargos, the crisp white corner revealing its true owner. Holmes doesn't buy nice white button downs. I've learned that doesn't mean he doesn't wear them.

He shrugged. "I'm borrowing it."

"You're going to get explosion on it."

"Watson," he said, smiling at me, "that sentence didn't even make sense. You've got to start sleeping."

"No time," I said, groaning and grabbing an apple from the counter. "I'm going to fail out of med school if I don't stay awake for the next--uh--five days. Design me a chemical stimulant?"

"No time," he sighed, taking my apple and giving me a banana instead. I wanted to argue, but he gave me a look that spoke extensively about potassium and electrolytes, and I didn't want to have that argument with him again. "I've got to get four classes full of fucking idiots ready for the midterms I refuse to dumb down for them, and if I don't have the backup research to show Moriarty by Friday he's going to eat me alive."

"I still can't believe you work for a Professor Moriarty," I said, taking his backpack from him and adjusting the strap. He rolled his eyes at me, but I'd seen bigger guys hurt themselves with lighter bags by being idiots. "Jesus Christ, are you trying to give yourself scoliosis? What do you have in here, bricks?"

"Yes," he said, "bricks, that's right, to torment you for insisting on fixing the damn thing. And I told you before, I didn't know about the Holmes connection when I got accepted here."

"How is that even possible?" I asked, as he pulled the bag back from me, settled it over one shoulder, and gestured for me to follow him through the threshold. "Didn't you read them?"

"The Holmes books?" he asked, aghast. "Of course not!" I turned around the second I got outside, realizing I'd forgotten my cane, but he was already locking the door and bounding down the stairs. I sighed, decided not to make a thing of it, and followed him, albeit slowly.

"You never read the books?!"

"If your kind but bordering-on-sadistic parents had named you Beezlebub," he said, throwing a scowl back at me, "would you have read Milton? I don't think so."

"Still, they're--" I stumbled, let out a harsh breath and winced. It was raining; my leg was killing me.

Holmes took one glance back and raised his eyebrows at me. "Idiot," he said gruffly, and he was up the stairs and back down with my cane before I could stop him. "You're really fucking stupid in the mornings, you know that?"

"Yeah, well, that's still my shirt."

He threw me one of the strange half smiles that I'd learned meant he was pleased with himself. "Looks better on me," he said, "and I won't get explosion on it. Much, anyway."

"Right," I sighed, reaching the bottom of the stairs.

He grinned at me, then grimaced at the light outside and hastily pulled on his sunglasses. "Fuck, I need coffee. Give me a ride on your way to the library?"

"You're buying me some dark roast," I told him. He flipped me the finger, but he did buy me the coffee, so that was alright.

--

I didn't see him again until the following night. I'd been alternating between the library and the coffeeshop, popping the occasional pilfered Adderal to keep myself awake, so it was kind of a relief when I got a text.

Then I actually, y'know, read it, and was considerably less relieved.

From: Forest Holmes
Appleseed. Meet me @ this study session or bail me outta jail when i snap, your call. Gonna kill one of these fucking spawn. Just got asked to explain valence electrons--WTF??? Starved for intelligent convo, and i got your shirt dirty. Bring coffee.

I considered ignoring it, but there was always the possibility the crazy fuck actually would kill someone. I sighed, packed up my shit, walked across campus, and settled myself down in the back of Holmes' classroom. A student was standing in the front of the room, tremulously reciting an answer to a problem. She looked--well, she looked terrified.

Granted, that could have been because her TA was sitting at the desk behind her, beating his head against the wooden surface.

"Is that right?" she finished, when she'd gone through all the steps. Holmes rested his head against the desk and sighed.

"Yes," he said, "by some unholy coincidence, yes, though your reasoning was entirely wrong and I can't imagine--aaaaargh. You know what? Home. Go home. All of you go home, I can't do this anymore today, come to tomorrow's review session if you'd like to continue torturing me. "

They shuffled out, the 25 dedicated students who'd stuck it out this long, and I made my way up to Holmes' hunched form. He didn't look up, so I put the coffee down next to him and rested my hand on his back.

"Oh, Appleseed," he said, remaining entirely still, "you brought me coffee, you do love me."

"Don't read into it," I said. "How'd you manage to get the back of my shirt this filthy?"

"I made a miscalculation." He rolled so that his cheek was flat against the desk and he was looking up at my with one eye. There was a florid burn gracing the side of his face, and when my hand moved from his back as though to touch it, I realized I needed to put it in my pocket. He didn't seem to notice, though, just started rambling about experiments gone awry and physical damage sustained and how there was nothing that could have been done--

It took me a minute to realize that, in his roundabout way, he was trying to apologize. I smiled at him.

"It's okay," I said. "I don't even really like that shirt."

"Of course it's okay," he returned snidely, "I did it for the good of science. Fuck, my face hurts."

"Have you had anyone look at it?" He shrugged and sat up, gesturing at his face like he was Vanna fucking White.

"You're the doctor," he said.

I sighed, dropping my bags. "That's just not true," I said, but I tilted his chin up and took a look at the burn anyway. "You're lucky this didn't get you in the eye."

"Would've," he said, not without bitterness. "Googles."

"Useful things," I agreed, trying to keep my breath in check. It had suddenly occurred to me that being this close to a man I'd been fantasizing about for five weeks was probably not the best decision ever. Every time he breathed his jaw moved slightly, and I tried to focus on the burn, on what he was saying, on anything but tilting his chin up and kissing him.

It wasn't exactly easy, I've gotta tell you.

"I think you're going to live," I said, after a long minute. My voice was even, thank fucking god. "Just a first degree, it looks like--we'll stop and grab you some ointment. You should get it checked by a real doctor, though."

I released his face and stepped back. He smiled at me, pulled a long drink from his coffee cup, and said "I think I'm good. You wanna head home?"

"God, yes. There are so many fucking people in that library now--"

"Underspawn," Holmes agreed darkly. "Midterm season is such a bitch."

"They're so loud," I moaned. "At least in the apartment I'll be able to hear myself think."

We made our way back to the apartment--I think he drove my car, but I can't be sure. We climbed the stairs, discussing the benefits of a quiet and distraction free environment all the while, and then I stepped in front of him and opened the door.

"Oh my god," I said, faintly. Then: "Holmes, oh my fucking god."

"What?" he said behind me, elbowing me. "What is it? Have we been robbed? Let me see, you stupid--gigantic--"

He stood on tiptoe and put his head over my shoulder to peer in. "Oh my god," he said. Then: "Watson, oh my fucking god."

There was the television. The Wii. The Xbox. Holmes' collection of zombie movies. My collection of $5 dollar DVDs. The bong. The beer.

"How do we live like this," he managed, aghast. "Oh, fucking--we'll never get anything done."

"I know," I said, unable to step forward. "Fuck, we've got the DVR recording--"

"Don't talk about it," he moaned. Then he straightened and took a deep breath. "Okay. Okay. We can't panic about this. There's a logical solution. We'll just--okay. I'll use the desk in your bedroom, and you'll use the desk in mine. It's not our stuff, right? So we'll be fine. It'll be fine."

"You're a fucking genius," I told him, and made a beeline for his door.

Sixty seconds later, I met him in the living room.

"You have a bed in there!" he cried. "A bed, do you know how long it's been since I slept--"

"There's one in your room too," I returned, feeling terror itch its way past the exhaustion underneath my eyelids. "At least, I think there is, there was a lot of stuff on it--"

"We have to get all the stuff out of here," he said, ignoring me. "You take the Wii--no, you'll use it, you can't start beating me at MarioKart, I'll take the Wii--"

"You think I have time to play the fucking Wii?!"

"Right," he said dazedly. Between the circles under his eyes and the burn on his cheek and the hair everywhere, he looked about ready to snap. I was torn between the desire to punch him in the fact and the desire to pull him close and hold on to him until he looked more sane, or until one of us fell asleep.

Admittedly, that's kind of my general state, but it was particularly strong that night.

"I'll take the Wii," I said. "You take the Xbox, the DVDs can go under the sink and I'll throw a sheet over the TV. Do you think Clarkie'll run and buy us cigs if we let him borrow your bong for the night?"

"But--but my baby," he said, looking at it longingly.

"Your baby can't be here," I told him sternly. "It'll only distract you. Do you think we should padlock the fridge?"

"I'd just pick it," he said. "I need a fucking beer anyway."

"Point," I said wearily. "So--moving time?"

"Yeah."

We made quick work of it. When we were done--when Clarkie, looking like he couldn't believe his luck, had pulled the bong from Holmes' resisting fingers and handed me a carton of Camels, when the kitchen table had been turned into a makeshift lab, we settled down on the couch with books and laptops and highlights and beer.

"Wake me if I fall asleep," he told me.

"Ditto," I said, and we began.

Chapter Text

The next thing I remember is waking up on Friday night with Holmes' face like an inch from mine. I know I must have finished all my work and turned it in and gone to class and shit, but I don't recall it. I have a vague memory of doing jumping jacks to stay awake, but that might have been Holmes.

In any case, he shook me awake on Friday night and he was too close to me and I was really tired, so I told him to fuck off and rolled over. That in and of itself wasn't weird--it's the fact that I honestly believed it would work that makes me shake my head in despair.

Fifteen blissful, uninterrupted minutes later, I woke again. He was sitting on me.

"Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey!" he crowed, straddling and shaking me. I sat up at once and shoved him violently backwards, hoping he wouldn't notice my raging fucking erection. He landed haphazardly across the couch, laughed hysterically and launched himself at me, tackling me onto the ground.

"Pinned you," he said.

I flipped him easily, careful to hold him by the wrists without leaning into him enough to betray myself. "Pinned you faster, and I don't smell bacon, just weed."

Sparkling under me, even though the circles under his eyes were pronounced enough now to resemble bruises, he was pretty hard to resist. I bit my tongue to keep myself on the straight and narrow, forcing my gaze from his.

"I lied," he said, grinning.

"Did you sleep?" I returned, rolling off of him. He shrugged--I felt it more than saw it.

"Kind of," he told me. "A couple hours. But it's Friday! We're going out."

"You're going out, maybe. I am going to go pass out in a proper bed for at least eighteen hours."

"You're so wrong," Holmes said, propping his head up on his hand. "It's almost funny, really. Didn't I tell you I was taking you to the clubs?"

"I don't dance," I warned him. "And I'm not going. And that was like a month ago, dude. Threats expire."

"We can go see Miles first," he wheedled. "And I'll teach you to dance, and threats don't expire; they age like a fine wine. Come on! It'll be fun."

"You know what sounds fun? Sleeping sounds fun. It's this thing you do where you close your eyes and no one bothers you--"

"Like I'm going to let you sleep," he scoffed, rolling his eyes. Said action drew me to look more closely at his eyes, which--there was a slightly smudged quality to them, almost as though--

"Holmes," I said slowly, "are you wearing eyeliner?"

"You're a ridiculous person," he said, looking hastily away. I grabbed the back of his neck and twisted his face around to get a better look.

"You are!" I crowed. "Oh my god, how ridiculously gay can you possibly be?"

"Shut the fuck up," he growled. "It's just a little. A friend said I should try it."

"A friend, huh? Do you need me to clear out so you can do up your mascara?"

"I hate you," he sniffed, turning away from me and standing. "Now get dressed. Wheels up in ten minutes."

"That doesn't even--"

"You are coming to the fucking club!" he called, already at his door. "Put on something sexy, and don't bother trying to run."

--

Holmes hadn't been lying about stopping by his brother's. We ducked into the Clearinghouse on our way to the club, and Miles noticed the eyeliner almost as quickly as I had.

"You've got to stop listening to my girlfriend," he said, looking his brother over with a critical eye. "You look even more like a fag than usual."

"Three things," Holmes snapped, ticking off his points with his fingers. "One, stop saying fag, it makes you sound like a meathead. Two, no I don't. And three, is Irene your girlfriend again this week?"

"Who can say?" Miles shrugged, as a redheaded woman walked out from the back of the bar and wrapped her arms around his waist.

"I can," she said, grinning. "And yes, this week I am. Hi, Sherlock."

"Vixen," he returned. "You look ravishing as ever. I don't know why you waste yourself on my brother, he's such a tool."

"Well," she laughed, "I'd happily have taken up with the other Holmes, but he's tragically enamored of the male genitalia. Shame, really. Who's your friend?"

"John Watson," I said, holding out a hand. "How'd you get him to let you call him by his first name?"

She shook, smiling at me. "Irene Adler. We grew up together; he knows I don't put up with his bullshit. You must be the new roommate."

"In the flesh," I said, grinning. "God help me."

Her own smile deepened. "Miles," she said, "I might throw you over for this one. Just so you know."

Miles shrugged. "Wouldn't be the first time," he told us. "But I think he's also, uh, 'tragically enamored of the male genitalia.' Sorry, babe."

"You win some, you lose some," she said, sighing and letting go of my hand. "If you ever change your mind--"

"I'll be sure to let you know," I offered, flushing slightly. She looked delighted.

"Sherlock," she laughed, "look, he blushes! Where did you get him, I want one for my personal use."

Both Miles and Holmes looked torn between irritation and affection, though for entirely different reasons. "He's just freaked out because I'm taking him dancing," Holmes told her. "And by the way, everyone I've talked to says this eyeliner looks retarded, thanks for that."

"Don't listen to them, it's adorable--"

They got into a heated discussion about whether or not he should wash it off, and I turned to Miles, who raised an eyebrow at me.

"You're letting him take you clubbing?" he asked. "I thought you had more sense."

"You act like I have a choice," I sighed, sliding onto a stool. He laughed, grabbed a bottle Johnny Walker Blue from under the bar, and poured me a double. He shook his head at my shocked expression.

"On the house. You're going to need it, trust me."

"But it's Johnny Walker Blue!" I cried.

He shrugged easily, just as Holmes and Irene cut in with a simultaneous "He can afford it." They grinned brightly at each other.

"The ladies are right," Miles said. "Drink up." He poured himself a glass to match and we clinked them together, downing them in one go.

It burned deliciously, and did, admittedly, calm my nerves somewhat.

So did the tequila Irene handed Holmes from behind the counter.

So did the Labatt chaser.

By the time we left the bar, Holmes' eyeliner had been reapplied and I was finding everything hilarious. I was also, to my dismay, having a bit of trouble controlling myself--Holmes is a handsy drunk.

Well, no. Holmes is just handsy, but it gets worse when he feels like he has an excuse.

"Waaaaaatson," he said, "you have to promise to let me teach you to dance, I can't bring you out and have you be one of those wallflower types. It'll ruin my street cred."

"You don't have street cred," I laughed, leaning on him, He wrapped an arm around my waist, and I laughed harder at the ridiculousness of it all.

Then we rounded the corner, and I stopped laughing. The club--which I had naively imagined as a tiny bar somewhere, maybe including a stripper pole--was fucking huge. Neon pink lights, flamboyant guys smoking in groups around the door. There was a line. There was a bouncer.

"I can't go in there," I said, turning around. Holmes laughed, tightening his grip on my waist and steering me forward.

"I promise not to let any of the scary queens get you," he murmured, close to my ear. "You'll just dance with me, alright? It'll be fine, I promise."

I wanted to express my doubt as to the trustworthiness of his promises, but by that point we were inside the doors, and it was too loud to think anymore.

"Let's get a drink," Holmes shouted, grabbing my arm and pulling me forward. I followed, looking around in a mixture of curiosity and dismay. There were a lot of people. A lot of drunk, shirtless people. A serious overload of naked man-flesh, if you will.

Horrifyingly, I was still more interested in the off-limits skinny fuck dragging me towards doom with an expression of glee. It's like a disease.

Then we got to the bar. There were six bartenders. The first one we saw said "Holmes!"

...and then the rest of them, fuck my life and everything I touch, said "Holmes!"

I stared at him accusingly, and he smiled innocently at me. "Did I forget to mention that I used to work here?"

"Yes," I growled. "Yes, I think I would have recalled--"

"Kyle!" Holmes said, leaning across the bar to give the first guy an awkward man-hug. "This is Johnny, my roommate."

"He's some roommate," Kyle said, looking me up and down. I felt myself go bright red under his stare, and regretted letting Holmes talk me into coming out in a beater and jeans.

"I'd certainly like to take him home," another bartender said, walking by and leering at me. Holmes smirked and put a hand on my shoulder.

"Off-limits, Brett. And cleaner than you like 'em. Don't bother."

"Awww," Brett said, smiling prettily, and wandered off.

"Johnny?" I hissed, while Kyle--was it Kyle?--had his back turned. "Since when am I Johnny?"

"Well, I'm not going to call you Appleseed in front of all these lunatics," Holmes hissed back. "And being Holmes and Watson would--"

"Ruin your street cred?" I asked, glaring. He grinned at me, the shamelessly irritating fool.

"Kyle!" he said. "I need tequila. Johnny too. A shot for both of us?"

"I don't think that's such a good--" I started. Holmes pursed his lips thoughtfully.

"You're right," he said. "Doubles, then."

"Holmes!"

"You can take the nutcase out of the bar," Kyle laughed, grabbing the Cuervo. "I can't imagine living with him, you must be a hearty guy."

"He's a veteran," Holmes said in a conspiratorial whisper. "Even I'm not as bad as Iraq."

"Wanna bet?" I asked, grinning at him and knocking back my drink. He tried to scowl and ended up grinning at me.

"We're going to dance now," he said, "just for that. Still think the tequila was a bad idea?"

"Uh, actually," I said, "I think maybe one more--"

Kyle laughed at poured it for me, watching the line of my throat as I downed it in a way that was frankly predatory. "You're going to need it," he advised.

"Why does everyone keep saying that?" I asked desperately. He just smiled, and then Holmes dragged me out onto the dance floor and looked me over criticially.

"Give me the cane," he said finally.

"Why would I--"

"You won't need it," he said firmly. Then the little bastard wrenched it out of my grip and turned around, leaning into me so we were back-to-chest and he was resting his head on my shoulder.

"See?" he said in my ear. "Now put your hands on my waist."

I was panicking--achingly fucking hard and panicking, because there was no way he didn't feel it. Sure enough, he edged back a little and then smirked at me, like he was a fucking psycho, like he was the fucking Chesire Cat.

"Poor little repressed homo," he crooned, still too close to me. "It's okay, man--it's part of the process. You can stop imitating a beet."

"I am not--" I said, but I was cut off by a moment of sudden shrieking silence and a song change.

The bass was heavy and Holmes laughed; I felt his back rise and fall with it. "Perfect," he said, "I love this song. Just--follow my body, okay? I won't go down except when it says I should, give you a chance to get used to it."

"What--" I started, but he'd already pulled his head away. He was grinding his hips into my crotch and singing along ('cause I wanna take you downtown/show you my thing), his rough, strange voice mixing badly with the lyrics. But god, the way he moved was...it was...

Maybe I haven't talked about Holmes' weird graceful streak yet. I think I haven't; I try not to, because Miles and Irene say I sound like a lovesick puppy when I do, and anyway Holmes smirks too much when I bring it up. Suffice to say that when he's not tripping over his own feet in enthusiasm or falling-down tired, he moves like--like nothing you've ever seen before. It's actually kind of unbelievable, like he was a cat in a past life; he just slinks around, lithe and easy, like he owns the room, like he's a fucking model.

...God, I do sound like a lovesick puppy, that's horrifying. But look--he moves like that in his regular life, so on the dance floor, following the song's instructions to "go downtown" by dragging his ass up and down the length of my legs, he's intoxicating. I forgot to be self-concious in favor of being stupidly, blindly aroused, and by the time the song changed again I was molded to him, following his grind with more ease than I would have expected.

It was Shiny Toy Guns next, a song called Le Disko that a friend of mine in the service had loved to death. I had a better grip on the music because of that, months and years I'd spent listening to it in my bunk, and Holmes leaned even fucking closer somehow. My hands drifted down his legs of their own accord as he pulsed against me, laughing and bending down. And then--he still had my cane and he thunked it down in front of him, using it to hold himself as he bent double and ground himself into me. I hissed out a breath and bucked into him; he growled audibly, reaching a hand up to steady himself on my waist as he straightened. It was all I could do not to bend down and lick a long, dirty stripe up his exposed neck.

He smelled like sweat and weed and tequila, like that hair gel he used to try and manage the tangle, like cigarettes and his brother's bar. He smelled like home and I inhaled, his hair curling up and everywhere, brushing my face. He stepped forward and then back and I ran my hands up and down his hips, across the sides of his torso.

He turned around when that idiotic Ke$ha song--the one about love and drugs, I don't even fucking know, he plays in my car when he thinks I'm not paying attention--started blasting. I smiled at him; he was flushed and pleased, his eyeliner already starting to run.

He smiled back. It was as bright and uncomplicated an expression as anything I'd ever seen on his face, and we'd both had too much to drink; I caught my breath and felt my head spin. And his grin widened, a tinge of innocence to it despite the circumstance; pure, unmitigated pleasure, all for me. I felt my heart skip a beat, and then another, and wondered vaguely if I was having an aneurism as I rested my hands on his ass.

"Behold," Holmes said, leaning close, "all that whining and you're already on top of it."

"Holmes," I growled, half in fantasy, "did you imagine for a second that I wouldn't be on top?"

I realized what I'd said a second after I said it, and pulled away hastily; he was looking at me with wide eyes, the grin wiped from his face. "Wait," I said desperately, "I didn't mean it like that--not like, sexually--"

"It's fine," he said, the grin flickering back to life. It was considerably more complicated than it had been the moment before, and I wanted to kick myself. The song blared on, demanding to know if my heart was beating like an 808 drum, and I wanted to tell it to go fuck itself, to let me deal with this properly.

Did Holmes look disappointed because I'd implied that I wasn't interested in fucking him or because I'd implied that I was?

"I need a drink," he said. "Want something?"

"I'll meet you," I said, because I could tell by the look on his face that he needed a minute. "I'm going to grab a cig."

"Right," he said, and wandered off. Furious at my own idiocy, I realized that I did actually want a cigarette. I slipped outside and lit one up. I finished it and lit another, trying to puzzle through how to rectify the situation--if I even could rectify the situation, considering the nature of my own desires.

He doesn't want you, I told myself, over and over until I'd remembered it was true, erased any niggling, hopeful doubt. He doesn't want you, he's got his pick out there and you're his roommate and he doesn't do relationships and you're a crippled, wallflower war vet--he doesn't want you, this is a fun night out and nothing more, if you push this you're going to ruin--

My train of thought was abruptly derailed by a voice over the speakers, filtering through the just-opened door. "--an old friend here tonight, who we've missed dearly, and he's going to treat us all to--"

The door closed, but I was already tossing my third cig and heading towards it; I knew exactly who they were talking about, and I couldn't imagine he was up to anything sane.

Sure enough, when I'd pushed my way past the crowd of twits trying to get in, Holmes was standing on the bar. His shirt was off and being twirled over his head, and the DJ had put on "Pour Some Sugar On Me," which always led to shamefully Holmesian shananigans. I was beginning to understand why. He had a bottle of vodka in one hand and that discarded shirt in the other, and he looked--

Oh, god. Debauched? Ridiculous? Unbelievably fucking hot?

My mouth went dry, looking up at him, and he must have had enough to forget about our awkward moment. He saw me and snapped his fingers at me, and I walked towards him like the little shit had hypnotized me. I stopped at the bar, my head exactly even with his crotch, and gulped. He grinned down at me and tousled my hair.

"Hey," he said, slurring it a little, "you haven't had nearly--you nearly had haven't--you need to drink more." He nudged me gently with his toe and I turned around, thinking he was going to...oh, I don't know. Jump on my back and have me carry him away? Use me as his bottom in a chicken fight? I wouldn't have put either past him.

What I didn't expect him to do was squat down on the bar, bury his hand in my hair, tip my head back, and upend his vodka bottle into my mouth.

The music was louder, somehow, than it had been a second before, and he was grinning over me as the alcohol burned its path down my throat. People were cheering us, I realized vaguely, but I was having trouble doing anything other than remembering to swallow. His eyes were bright and crazy, the way he looked right before he did something really stupid, as he broke away.

"Pour some sugar on me!" he cried, almost on beat with the song, as he righted the bottle and stood up. "And pour me some water, it's fucking hot up here!" Someone handed him and glass and he dumped it over his own head, writhing with pleasure and relief as it dripped down his hair and over his face. I couldn't believe he was getting away with this, but then he was Sherlock Holmes. He got away with almost everything, really.

The song ended, and everyone sighed in disappointment as Holmes stopped dancing and scowled.

"Ew," he said, "this isn't Def Leppard. Watson, help me down."

"Watson?" one of the bartenders called--Brett, I think. "So you're Holmes and--"

"Shut the fuck up," we snarled together. Well, I snarled that; Holmes, I think, said "fuck the shut up," but he got his point across. Brett shrank back and Holmes grinned brightly at me.

"You're so awkward when you're too sober," he said. "I helped!"

I didn't answer him. I was staring at the edge of his hipbone, where the edge of what looked like a tattoo was poking out over the edge of his jeans.

"What," I said, pointing. I meant to finish the sentence, but all that vodka was starting to deploy ranks to join the tequila and Johnnie Walker already in formation. Holmes scowled at me and pulled down the edge of his jeans, revealing--

A pipe. A tiny pipe, complete with smoke. A little Holmesian pipe.

I couldn't help myself. I cracked the fuck up.

"It wasn't my choice!" he snapped. "There was--the tattoo dude--I was drunk and my name--"

I leaned onto him, howling with laughter, unable to breathe. After a minute he cracked a smile too.

"C'mon, you--uh--stupid--shit, I'm--oh, fuck it. Let's dance."

"Okay," I said, without even thinking about it. And he was right, you know, I had been too sober to have a good time before. With the extra alcohol coursing through me I could barely stand up straight, and I couldn't see anything wrong with clinging to him to keep myself up. He seemed to be of the same mind, because he was wrapped around me, our erections pressing together through our jeans, my hands in his hair.

I don't remember much about that part of the night. I know any number of songs came and went and we stayed wrapped together; I know I didn't kiss him, because it took every ounce of my willpower not to. I know I growled warnings to six different guys who tried to cut in, and I know he did the same to the few who were interested in me. I know he did the thing with my cane again. I know that I tried the thing with my cane, with him laughing behind me, smacking my ass and cat-calling.

I know at one point, choking on hysterics over something I'd said, he buried his face in the crook of my neck, and the sensation--the casual intimacy of it all, the what-could-be--nearly knocked me down.

 

I know too that we went out to smoke once or twice, that we had another couple drinks, that Holmes openly mocked a dude who was cross the street and nearly hit him. I wasn't drunk enough to black out entirely, but I was close, and so shit was pretty hazy for awhile there. Can't be helped, I suppose, undignified though it may be.

Here's the next thing I remember clearly: Bad Romance ended with Holmes facing away from me, and a new song came on. And you know, if I'd been less drunk, or he'd been more clothed, or we'd been less into the atmosphere of the place, I might have paid attention to what was playing. As it was, I felt a vague tinge of recognition and a brief flash of worry, and was then entirely distracted by Holmes, who'd turned his head round to stare at me as he went low. He was biting his lip and his eyes were almost shy, and so no, I didn't notice that it was Paper Planes playing.

At least, I didn't know it was Paper Planes playing until we hit the chorus, and that motherfucking voice sang out "And all I wanna do is--" and four gunshots rent the air, deafening and close.

Okay, folks. Here's the thing about PTSD that makes it a real bitch--it's hard to know what your trigger is going to be, or how intensely you're going to react. I had a buddy who, for whatever reason, lost it whenever a cat yowled; I knew another guy who freaked out at camera flares. There are all kinds of 'Nam vets who can't handle the sound of a chopper. It's a bitch of a thing, and it's hard to control, and it's worse when you let it build up.

I hadn't had a breakdown since a car backfired at my grandfather's funeral. And maybe if I hadn't been pushing it back--skipping the calming techniques I'd learned, brushing aside adrenaline spikes because I didn't have time for them--maybe it wouldn't have happened. Maybe if I'd had one less drink, or maybe if I hadn't been so worked up from holding back from Holmes, or maybe if I'd just walked out after those first four gunshots--

Ah, well. I suppose the what ifs don't matter now.

There are 16 gunshots in the chorus of the song Paper Planes. The chorus repeats three times. I made it through the first 16 wrenching noises by gritting my teeth and holding Holmes tighter, by telling myself it was just a song, it was just the fucking club speakers. And I rode out the verse with a desperate grasp on holding it together, and I thought I was going to be able to pull it off.

Then second chorus started. At shot three, I hissed "Get down," in Holmes' ear, unable to stop myself. He, naturally, misinterpreted that, laughing and going low, grinding into me for the thousandth time.

At shot four, time slowed down.

Bang

--and the HumVee was tipping from the weight of the explosion and there was blood in my eyes and my leg was on fire, white-hot pulsing agonizing fire and there was a hand, a lone hand, it was the most grotesque thing I'd ever seen and I didn't have the training to reattach a fucking hand but it didn't matter because I was never going to get up, because the fire was going to spread from my leg to my chest to my eyes and take me alive--

Bang

--and Jimmy O'Halloran was still smiling as the bullet cleared the other side of his brain and next to me Dave was screaming his fool head off, and I'd always hated Dave but the way he tackled me to keep me from trying to save the poor unlucky bastard was certainly the only thing that kept me alive--

Bang

--and I was staring at the pile of insurgent bodies, every medical instinct in me howling at the life lost, the scent of burning flesh heavy in my nostrils and I was going to kill someone, I practically had killed someone, just because you're not holding the gun or triggering the mine or wielding the machete doesn't make you less guilty and I was going to be sick, I was going to be sick--

Bang

I was vaguely aware that Holmes had turned around, that he was saying "John," and then "Oh, fucking shit, John," but all I could think about was clearing the blast zone, was getting somewhere safe to toss my guts. I shoved him away and ran, ran without my cane, adrenaline pushing me through the blazing pain of it.

God only knows how I made it to the alley behind the club without collapsing. God only knows how I held myself up, bent over and shaking, to retch against the cold concrete. It had started raining, the kind of pissing October downpour that'd freeze you as soon as look at you, but I wasn't paying attention to that. In my mind it was sweltering and sticky and there was blood on my hands, on my feet.

I couldn't tell you how long I was out there before I felt a milk crate hit the back of my knees. My legs buckled and I landed heavily on it, and I looked wildly around for the enemy--

--but it was just Holmes, wearing an employee t-shirt he must have snatched off someone to replace the one he'd lost. He looked furious.

"I'm sorry," I said, trying to pull myself out of it; his face kept flickering in and out, replaced with Jimmy's, still smiling with a hole in his head. I was horrified to realize that my eyes had filled with tears, but Holmes just glared at me.

"Shut up," he said violently, putting his hand on my back and pushing me forward a little. "Put your head between your knees--not in the fucking puke, John, over here. That's it. Throw up again if you need to. But breathe, for God's sake, you sound like you're choking."

I think--I really do--that it was how annoyed he sounded, how Holmes that was, that pulled me back to reality. I took a deep, choking breath and then another one, and then, with my head still between my knees, I threw up again; the adrenaline or the alcohol, I'm not sure.

I am sure that he said, "Fuck," and didn't take his hand from my back. When I'd finished, he leaned down and wrapped his arms around me from behind, pressing his weight into me. I wondered vaguely if he'd taken what small PTSD hints I'd thrown him and researched it, if he knew physical contact and pressure were some of the best salves for that particular ache, or if he'd known that before he met me.

Whatever the reason, he didn't let go of me until my breathing had evened out. Until a minute after that, even.

"Shit," I said, and my voice was shaky but real enough. I was ashamed of myself. "Holmes, man, I'm so sorry--"

"That I'm a fucking idiot?" he snapped. "Yeah, I'm sorry too, it's a real bummer."

"No--I--" I rubbed my face, still out of it. "No, for this, I shouldn't have--"

"John Watson," he said, his voice cold and terrible, "if you apologize to me again I'm going to hit you. Okay?"

"Okay," I breathed, staring up at him. It was, as I mentioned, raining, but that was the first I was aware of it. Holmes' hair was plastered to his forehead and his shirt was clinging to his chest and his eyes were blazing with--something, some fire I didn't know how to put out.

"Have you ever smoked pot before?" he demanded. I blinked.

"I--what?"

"Have you ever--"

"Yes," I interrupted, catching on. "Not since college, though."

"Did you ever get paranoid?" he asked, his eyes boring holes into mine. "And answer me honestly--even one time? This is important, John, look at me. Even once?"

"No," I managed. "Just--stupid, uh, and hungry."

"Right," he said, clearly mostly to himself. He pulled a box of cigarettes out of his pocket and carefully selected one that looked handrolled. "Calming. Stops it from cycling. Makes your heart rate chill out."

He leaned down, put the joint in front of my open mouth, and raised his eyebrows at me. "Close," he said, authoritative, like the dentist. I followed the directive, and he quirked the slightest of smiles at me and sparked the thing.

"Inhale," he said, and I did.

He made me hit the joint three more times. Then he looked me over with a critical eye. "Do you think you can stand up?" he asked in all seriousness. "Because I can call Miles--"

"No," I said at once. It was bad enough that he'd seen me this way, let alone his brother. "No, I'm good."

He smiled a little more and put an arm under my shoulder, hauling me to my feet and handing me my cane.

And you know what? I don't know why we didn't catch a cab--if we couldn't grab one or if I wouldn't consent to be seen by a cab driver. What I do know is that the whole way home, he didn't stop touching me. It was a hand on my arm or a pat on my back or a bump of my shoulder, but he didn't stop, not once. And he didn't stop talking either, the long, drawn out idea font that was his normal chatter, making me feel centered and alive and whole.

When we got home we were both soaked, and he was shaking like his life depended on it, but he pushed me toward the shower with a smile and a light touch. And when I came out, clean and feeling like myself again, a little stoned and a lot sore, he was sitting on the couch in one of my sweatshirts and a Snuggy, watching Planet Earth like nothing had happened.

"I made nachos," he said, smiling at me as I sank down gratefully next to him. "They taste like shit, but they're pretty good too. You should try one, they'll give you gas like you wouldn't believe."

And yeah, okay, I admit it: that's when I realized I was in love with him.

Chapter Text

The storm that started the night at the club lasted for the next month. My eleventh grade English teacher would've called that pathetic fallacy, and my grandfather would have called it a sign of my damned poetical streak, and when Holmes eventually finds and reads this he'll laugh at me for being an exaggerating fucktard. Of all of them, he's the most right; it didn't rain for a month straight. Still, almost all of my memories are tinged with that sense of chilled October and icy November, the rain that's not quite snow sneaking in around my collar and making our apartment feel more like home than ever.

Then again, maybe that growing sense of comfort had less to do with the weather and more to do with my roommate. Things between Holmes and I had gotten--odd. For a lot of reasons, I think; partially because you can't exactly go through a full-scale psychological breakdown in front of someone and not get closer. Partially because Holmes was under a lot more stress then he'd ever mentioned to me, and had a lot fewer friends than I'd ever realized, not that I knew any of that then. Partially because the longer you live with someone, the better you get to know them.

Partially--well, mostly, really, if I'm honest--because I'd let myself see how I felt about him, and it colored everything he did.

And oh, what he did. He was still Holmes, Holmes to his core, obnoxious and impossible and stoned off his ass and pissing me off, but he was also...kind. In ways I couldn't argue with him over, in ways I couldn't resent. It was like he'd been tailor fucking cut to deal with me in the tender weeks after, when I was ashamed to look at myself, when I couldn't sleep without nightmares.

God, the nightmares. How many times did he shake me awake on the couch and just--look at me? Look at me, and when I told him that I was dreaming about the zombies from the movie or the undergrads taking over the earth, he pretended to believe me but didn't leave, just looked at me. Some nights, he looked so long that I opened my mouth and told him things, stories I'd heard from other guys and things I'd seen, and he listened, for once in his life.

And then in the morning he'd be eating my Cheerios in handfuls and drinking milk from the carton and laughing hysterically about how my hair was sticking up. Like nothing had happened. Like I hadn't turned into a pathetic mess the night before.

There were other things too. I got sick the first week of November, sick enough that I should probably have been in bed and wasn't--class was class, and it was just a cold. But he met me after each lecture, telling me ridiculous lies about how he didn't know how he'd gotten so stoned that he'd ordered himself tea instead of coffee but did I want it? And also, you know, he'd totally grabbed too many oranges this morning and would I please just fucking eat one, and "Hey man, I'll finish that cigarette--no, dude, not because you're coughing, because I want a cigarette."

It--god, it really didn't help my situation. Because, you know, I loved him when he was driving me up a fucking wall, I loved him when he was taking apart the air conditioner and duct taping "mysterious pieces" to the fridge. This other side of him, this side of him I was beginning to suspect was actually him--it was hard to bear. Where before I'd wanted to slam him into the door and kiss him quiet, I found myself longing to press against him in the frigid November squalls, covering my lips with his for long, tender minutes.

And look, the damned poetical streak after all.

But, I guess the other thing is this--it wasn't all one-sided, the strange soft kindness. When he got sick a week after I did, the same thing that I'd had but worse, I found myself in the grocery store at 4 AM, choosing between brands of canned soup. And then I found myself dragging him out of class when he almost collapsed--which I saw because I went to his class to make sure he wouldn't collapse--and putting him to bed on the couch, where I could make sure he wasn't working experiments. He said silly, half-mad things to me that day, feverish and crazy, while I played movie after horrible fucking movie and ignored all my schoolwork to talk to him.

When he got better, he changed all the passwords to my online poker accounts. "I don't want to watch you waste your money, dude," he told me, when I freaked the fuck out about it. "And you can have your email password back when I've figured out how to hack into the 'forgot your password' coding. You're welcome!"

He's a little bastard, right? I'm not crazy, right? He's a little bastard and I hate him, except when I don't, and at least I had the excuse of being hopelessly fucking in love with him to make my madness understandable. It got worse, you've got to understand, it got worse with every minute I spent in his company. Because--

Goddamn it. I can't explain him properly. I keep trying and I'm fucking it up, but I guess the best way is--he's like a car wreck, sort of, in the sense that you can't look away because he's such a disaster. But he's also like...like thinking you've stepped in dogshit only to lift up your shoe and find $20 instead. Because he surprises you, and actually even when he's impossible he's not, because he's smiling and smiling at you, and all you can think about is how to make him keep doing that, only closer. Much closer. Dangerously close.

But look, the point of all of this is: we went camping after I forgave him for the thing with my passwords and he forgave me for throwing out all of his socks in a fit of impassioned revenge. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Okay, I lied. I am not a stupid man, regardless of my choice in roommate, and so I had known it wasn't a good idea at the time. Going camping in November is never a good idea, no matter how freakishly warm the day. Going camping for one night only is never a good idea, no matter how limited your time.

Going camping with Sherlock Holmes is never a good idea, and I knew it well.

But when he pushed his way into the apartment on Saturday afternoon, he looked--defeated. Worse, he was clearly trying not to, forced smile firmly in place, head held high. It was only because I'd come to know him so well that I was able to see the hard line to his jaw, the knotted curve of his shoulder. The fucking circles under his eyes, ever-present and worrying.

"I want to go on vacation," he said, flopping down on the couch. "Immediately."

"It's Saturday," i reminded him. "No class, that's almost a vacation, right?"

"I want to get out of town," he complained. "I can't think of a single thing to do in this city except waste away in my lab or waste away on this fucking couch."

"You usually like wasting away on this fucking couch," I said, grinning softly. He caught my eye and smiled a little himself, a real smile, which was encouraging. "Besides, we're broke as shit. Where would be go?"

"Camping!" Holmes said at once, and I groaned.

"Holmes, it is November."

"It's like 70 outside!"

"Yeah, for today. But tomorrow it could go back down to--"

"Oh, don't be a pussy," he snapped, the hard line coming back to his jaw again. I stopped myself wincing at the expression just in time; he'd hate that.

"I'm not being a pussy," I said, in what I thought was a reasonable voice.

I expected him to reply with some variety of his usual snark, or sulk at me, or pack a bowl, or flip on the T.V. and mutter. Instead he looked at me, and replacing his normal slate-grey nonchalance was--fear? Fear or something decidedly like it, clouding his normal expression.

He opened his mouth and said, "Please," and he sounded--desperate. And, yeah, scared, which didn't make a lot of sense to me. What was I supposed to do?

I sighed and threw up my hands, and was rewarded with a full grin. I realized it was the first one I'd seen him give me in a couple of days, and started to wonder in earnest what the fuck was wrong with him. He was still a little bit sick, carrying the last dregs of that cold with him, but I didn't imagine that would freak him out. He hadn't been freaked out when he'd had a fever of 104, after all. I had been freaked out, and he'd called me a ninny. Stupid little shit.

"We don't have a tent," I told him. He dug his phone out of his pocket.

"No problem," he said, "Miles loves to camp."

Miles didn't love to camp. Miles hated to camp. I discovered an hour later, loading the car at the Clearinghouse. Irene loved to camp, and so Holmes had enlisted her help.

"I don't even know why I own a tent," he complained bitterly, helping me shove it into the tiny trunk of his convertible. That would have been a lot easier without all the alcohol in there. "I certainly don't own a tent to take it out in November."

"It'll be fun!" Irene cried from the passenger seat. She was filing her nails and calling helpful instructions to us occasionally. Holmes had been helping, and then he'd said "I have this theory," and Miles and I had shooed him away at once. He'd gone back into the bar to get more alcohol.

"Hey," Miles said, pitching his voice low, "before he gets back. Is everything okay? He looks kind of--"

"Crazed?" I returned, equally soft. Miles smiled sadly and nodded.

"Not that he doesn't always look that way," he returned, "but, yeah."

"I think he just needs to get out of town," I said. To my extreme surprise, Miles' face froze.

"Did he--say why?" he said, slowly. I stared at him.

"Noooo," I replied, equally slowly. "Well, actually, yeah--something about being bored with everything on the planet--"

"Oh!" Miles laughed, his face unfreezing. "The normal stuff, yeah, he gets that way. Just--just keep an eye on him, would you?"

"I always do," I returned, without even thinking about it. Under his sudden sharp stare, I blushed bright red; I could feel myself glowing like a goddamned tomato. "Uh, I mean, you know. Because we live together and stuff. No other reason."

"Right," Miles said, managing to keep a straight face about it, and discontinued his line of questioning.

We managed to get the tent into the trunk the same moment that Holmes came back out of the bar, holding two bottles of champagne.

"Veuve or Moet?" he asked.

"Neither," Miles snapped, at the same time Irene laughed "Both."

They glared at each other for a second. Then Miles sighed and waved a hand. Grinning, Holmes hopped into the car, tossing me one of the bottles. "Let's go," he said, leaning his head against the back of the car. "It's November, you know. This weather might not last."

His prediction turned out to be apt. By the time we reached the campsite the sun had gone down, and it was freezing--still warm for November, but freezing all the same. Miles and I wanted to head back, but Irene and Holmes blazed forward.

"You know, this hike would be easier in my own socks," Holmes complained, a mile from the car. "I mean, which I would have, if someone hadn't--"

"Shut up," Miles said, smacking him across the head. "You totally deserved it."

"I can't believe you're taking his side," Holmes grumbled. "Aren't you supposed to be my brother?"

"You're kind of a shithead, though," Miles said, his tone measured and reasonable. "I like him."

"Traitor," Holmes spat. "Going against your fraternal duties--"

"I don't think my fraternal duties extend to supporting you being ridiculous," Miles laughed.

"And I did replace the socks," I reminded him, poking him in the shoulder. "I thought we'd decided to let bygones be bygones." He glared at Miles and then smiled at me.

"You know," he said, "in the face of this new betrayal, I'm actually totally cool with you now. Miles is the common enemy."

"Hey!" Miles protested. He looked ready to put some more force into that protest, but then Irene was calling his name from up ahead.

"I found it!" she cried. "The perfect spot. Come on."

She was right--the place was perfect. There was a little stream and a hill within walking distance, a large flat space that would be perfect for a campfire. Holmes glanced over it, nodded his approval, and then turned to Miles and Irene.

"Right," he said. "Are you two planning on fucking on this trip?"

"No," Miles said, at the same time Irene said "Yes."

Miles' eyebrows shot up in surprise. They stared at each other, Irene grinning faintly.

"Are we?" Miles asked, sounding hopeful. Irene laughed and nodded. "But I thought--"

"No, I dumped him," Irene purred, stepping close. "He snored."

"I snore," Miles pointed out, putting his hands on her waist anyway. She snorted indelicately.

"You're built like a linebacker," she pointed out. "It's normal when you do it."

"Maybe you just don't like another man snoring," Miles said, reasonably enough. "I mean, a new snore would be hard to adjust to. Especially after you've gotten used to my…snore."

Irene blushed, Miles grinned, I looked away hastily, and--

"Um, ew," Holmes snapped. They broke away from each other at once, grinning and flushed. "Thus my point. You go set up tent over there. Way over there. I don't need to hear you grunting and groaning all night, and neither does Appleseed here."

"We don't--" Miles started.

"'Ohhhh, Miiiiiiiles,'" Holmes mocked, doing a dead-on impression of Irene. "'Yeah, like that, haaaaaarder--'"

"Hey!" they snapped together.

"I lived on your couch for two week, brother dear," Holmes said, eyeing Miles with distaste. "I know what you're like. Over there."

"Brat," Miles said. "You get the small tent."

"Like you weren't going to give me that anyway," he said snidely. Then Miles tossed it at him; he caught it by the stomach and started coughing. I rolled my eyes and snatched it from him.

"Camping in the cold still sound like a good idea?"

"Y-yes," he managed, glaring at me. "Just--winded me. I'm fine."

"Right, genius," I said, deciding to ignore everything else for now. "Do you have any idea how to set this thing up?"

Holmes had no idea how to set it up. He did have an idea of how to get both drunk and high while setting it up, which largely involved tossing a bottle of schnapps between the two of us and occasionally hitting the first of several joints he'd pre-rolled for the trip. I took a hit or two, partly to appease him and partly to assuage the fear already creeping up my back at the memories that came along with sleeping on the ground.

Yes, I know that it's ridiculous, but there you go.

We were still done before Miles and Irene, but I think that's because they'd been fucking while we'd been drinking. The tent didn't look much like it was supposed to--Holmes had decided to do some "functional redesign" with a large stick and a length of rappelling rope--but it held up, at least. We smiled proudly at our handiwork and then I went to build a fire.

"I think," he said, fifteen minutes into this endeavor, "that you're doing it wrong."

"Really?" I snapped. "Do you think that because of the lack of fire or because of the lack of fire?"

"Think it's the lack of fire, actually," he said idly, moving to try for himself. The laws of the universe being what they were, the damned sticks sparked immediately for him. He smirked at me and smirked at me, insufferable bastard. He smirked at me and I was, as always, moved to rip the expression right off his stupidly beautiful face.

Admittedly, my preferred methods of doing so probably wouldn't have done much to make him less cocky, but I could live with that if I had to.

Irene and Miles tumbled out then. Her hair was mussed and he was grinning, looking a lot like his brother despite their extensive differences. And in that moment I begrudged them both their happiness, my jealousy was so strong. In that moment I think I would have killed someone, to have the younger Holmes smiling that way at me.

Then I remembered that I was going to be sleeping approximately five inches from him when we went to bed, and promptly finished the bottle of schnapps. And a beer. And some more of that joint. It wasn't wise--I know that, I do. But it was all I had, man.

Holmes tells me that we smoked a lot of weed that night. Holmes tells me that I stripped naked and danced with the wolves, too, so it's hard to know what to believe. I remember roasting marshmallows with him leaning over me, shouting directions: "No, not like that, you'll burn it!" and "Waaaaatson, you're not doing it evenly!" and "Haven't you ever practiced this on a Bunsen burner before?"

I remember Miles jumping into the river on a dare and coming out with his lips blue. I remember realizing that we hadn't brought any food except marshmallows. I remember Holmes' face across the campfire, bright at laughing at a hideous hour of the morning, looking for all the world like he was part of the forest itself. I remember wanting him, wanting him with an aching, blazing yearning so deep I thought I was going to going to fall over in the throes of it.

And I remember when it was just the two of us, Holmes and me, huddled together close to the dying embers of the fire. I remember telling him, haltingly, about my family--about how my parents had died when I was a kid. About how my grandfather had raised us. About my brother, so deep in the heroin hole that he hadn't come to Granddad's funeral. About how much I hated the holidays, how much I was dreading them. I don't recall what brought it up. I don't recall what he said. I just remember feeling better, afterwards; better and worse, because I had him, but would never have him.

I woke up to the sound of birds chirping, two inches from Holmes' face.

"Fuck," I hissed, though I managed (barely) to keep my voice to a whisper. My head was pounding with hangover and it wasn't light out yet--probably just before sunrise, if I was any judge. I rolled myself carefully away from him, resisting the urge to close my eyes and give in to being so close for a little longer. We're in sleeping bags, I reminded myself, slipping out of mine and crawling toward the front of the tent. It's not like you'd actually be touching. That's just creepy behavior with no reward.

Reeling with the headache, I walked blindly toward the hilltop. What I wanted to do was go for a run, but that was out of the question, so I thought maybe I'd watch the sun rise and clear my head. It was viciously cold, but that actually felt good. Cleansing.

I had to get hold of myself, I thought, climbing the hill carefully to avoid sliding in the dew-damp grass. This was getting out of hand--if I couldn't go camping with him how the hell was I supposed to live with him? If all I could think about was kissing him and sucking him and taking him roughly from behind then how the fuck was I supposed to--

"Hey, kid," Irene said, and I must have jumped about a foot in the air. She was sitting at the top of the hill, arms curled around her knees, red hair knotted behind her head loosely. "Didn't mean to scare you, sorry."

"No," I said shakily, "no, you're fine. Do you mind if I--" I gestured broadly at the ground, and she smiled.

"Please," she said, patting the spot beside her. I sank down onto it, crossing my legs.

"You come to catch the sunrise?" I asked. She sighed, pulling a cigarette out of her sweatshirt pocket and lighting it.

"Kind of," she said. Then: "The Holmes men are complicated creatures."

"Really," I said dryly. "You shock me."

She laughed, tired circles under her eyes. "Some days I think I love him," she confessed, after a long moment of silence. I had no idea how to process this new piece of information, but I'd always been a good listener, so I waited her out.

"He just--" she sighed again, pulling another drag from the cig. "He's so--"

"Inscrutable?" I offered, admittedly talking about the wrong Holmes. "Irritating? Really fucking confusing?"

"Impossible," she decided, ignoring me. "Yesterday he was--excited, you know, to be with me. And then last night when we went to bed he--"

She sighed again, and then she looked up at me with too-bright eyes.

"You must think I'm stupid," she said, her voice going sharp. "Sherlock does, I know he does. And I'm not, I'm not stupid, I call half the shots in our--whatever it is, I just can't help but--"

"Irene," I interrupted, taking a ridiculously unnecessary risk but full of too much fellow-feeling not to, "if I were to call you stupid, I'd be an awful hypocrite."

She looked stunned for a second. Then she smiled, a slow, knowing thing, but a sad one too--like she pitied me my lot. Or…no, not pity, I guess. Like she empathized.

"We should run away together," she offered, looking out over the hill. The sun wasn't up yet, but it was hinting at its arrival, shooting beams of pink and orange into the sky as a warning. "We'd be better off."

"No we wouldn't," I said, sighing and playing at a blade of grass.

"I guess you're right," she said, after a long moment. We didn't say anything after that; eventually she stood up, stretching. I glanced up at her quizzically.

"You've got company," she said, jerking her head and grinning. Behind her Holmes was climbing the hill. Now that I was listening for it, I could hear him muttering.

"Hey," I said, "thanks."

"You too," she grinned, and then she was gone.

He plopped down next to me a second later, wearing a sweatshirt that had once been mine and the glasses he usually never let anyone see him in. "Whose idea was it to go camping in November?" he grumbled, curling into himself. His voice was hoarse. "It's fucking cold, did you know that? I'm going to freeze to death before we make it home."

"It was your idea," I said, slinging a friendly arm over his shoulder. "It's always your idea."

"Not always," he muttered, scooting closer to me for the body heat. He moved like he was going to put his head on my shoulder, and then stopped himself. I wished, absently, that he hadn't. "I'm tired."

"Why didn't you sleep?"

"Couldn't," he said shortly. "Birds. Going home. You know."

"Holmes," I said, after a minute.

"Mmmm?" Even his voice was exhausted, strained and a little sick and hungover. I hesitated, but plowed ahead.

"Was there a--a reason you wanted to get out of town?"

He jerked his head up from where it had been drooping forward. Then he stilled, and I thought he was going to yell at me. Instead:

"You know," he sighed. "I was a weird kid."

That didn't answer my question and didn't surprise me, but I held my tongue. He was holding himself taut, all his muscles thrumming with the energy of it, and so I just sat there, waiting, my arm still around his shoulder.

"A name like mine," he continued, his voice detached. "A family like mine--well. Mycroft got off okay because he's always been huge and he cared less, but I was this little scrawny kid in glasses, and I was sick most of the time, and I was--heh. I was smarter than everyone and bad at hiding it."

"I'm sorry," I said quietly.

"Oh, don't be," he returned scathingly. "They teased me, I got over it. And I was fucking smarter than those little bastards, so it doesn't really matter. But--well. Some days, when it was really bad, when I just needed to get out…Miles had this pup tent he'd gotten for Christmas one year. He'd set it up in the backyard, and we'd go camping."

My heart, as fucking cliche as it sounds, was in my throat. Partially because of the idea of Holmes as a kid, the butt of a thousand jokes, and partially how ridiculous and horrible it was to hear him dismiss years of teasing as the price he paid for being brilliant. Before I could even think about it, I drew my hand into a fist and ran my knuckles down his back. He sighed and relaxed, if only marginally.

"Moriarty asked me to get him some data," he said softly. "And I wouldn't--I couldn't do it. And my experiments are going wrong and there are things I should have been paying attention to that I haven't been, and I--fuck. I just needed--"

"To get out," I finished quietly. He nodded mutely; when I chanced a glance over at him, he was biting his lip, carefully looking away from me. I thought about all the things I wanted to do in that moment--none of my desires, myriad though they were, were as strong as the urge to pull him against my and fight off whatever was eating at him until he could breathe again.

"Thank you," he said, startling me.

"What for?"

He sighed. "For agreeing to come with me. Most people wouldn't have."

I actually laughed; it was a sad, strange little chuckle, but a chuckle all the same. "Most people don't have PTSD breakdowns in front of their best friends. You give what you get, man."

He stiffened again, all the tension that had seeped out of his shoulders jumping back to life. I glanced over, wondering what I'd said wrong, and he met my eyes; there was such an open, vulnerable expression on his face that I almost jumped.

"I'm your best friend?" he asked, his voice cracking on it, like he honestly didn't know the answer. But that's Sherlock Holmes for you--not even fucking me, still managing to break my heart.

"Holmes," I said, stunned, but he'd already turned away.

"Never mind," he spat viciously; there was spot of color growing on his cheeks. "Never mind, what a stupid thing to say, you've only known me a few months--"

"Yes," I interrupted him vehemently. "Yes, Holmes, of course you are. Don't be ridiculous."

The sun crested the hill then, but I missed it. He was smiling at me, smiling like he meant it, his eyes sparkling and happy and bright. When he put his head down on my shoulder a minute later the frames of his glasses dug into my flesh, but I could feel that grin, warming me from the inside out. I rubbed my hand down his back and inhaled, taking in the scent of him: cigarette smoke and campfire, spilled beer and home.

On the drive home his head fell onto my shoulder again, this time because he was fast asleep. Miles was snoring away in the passenger seat and Irene was driving, humming absently along with the song playing and smoking a cigarette. I didn't figure anyone would notice when I quietly pulled his glasses off his face and sneaked one small, soft kiss, pressing it into his hair as we bumped along. But Irene met my eye in the rearview mirror, smiling sadly at me.

"Complicated," she said, flicking the end of her cigarette out the window.

"It's the fucking truth," I agreed, settling back against my seat and letting the road, the feeling of him breathing against my neck, lull me into sleep.

Chapter Text

From: Forest Holmes
dude, breakthrough. you're in class, right? can you bring chalk when you come home? as much as you can snatch and then like six more pieces, thx

To: Forest Holmes
Why do you need chalk? What did you do?! Is this going to be like the time with the Molotov cocktail? Because I told you that wasn't cool.

From: Forest Holmes
the molotov thing was an accident. and how could i make a molotov cocktail with chalk? stop snatching medicine from your observation sessions it's fucking with your mind

To: Forest Holmes
What did you DO, Holmes?

From: Forest Holmes
have you noticed that you take the time to make your texts grammatically correct? i think thats probably ocd, you're a doctor, look into that

To: Forest Holmes
Not a doctor. Concerned with state of apartment. Coming home now.

From: Forest Holmes
CHALK

To: Forest Holmes
Yeah, yeah, I've got it.

I got home twenty minutes later, laden down with enough chalk to--I don't know. To do something involving a lot of chalk, the fuck if I know what. But I opened the door and Holmes was in the corner, plucking a nervous pizzicato on his violin. He jumped up when he saw me.

"I can explain," he said.

"What do you need to--" I started, and then I actually looked behind him. "Holmes."

"Well, I needed--"

"Holmes," I repeated, dropping my bag and staring. "That wall was white when I left!"

"It's chalkboard paint!" he said, grinning brightly. "My lab was stifling me and I think I've got--"

"We're not allowed to paint the walls in here!" I cried, moving forward. I reached out two fingers to touch it, but the paint was already dry. "Oh my god, Holmes, do you not understand that we signed a lease?"

"Pffft," he returned, gesturing broadly. "We'll paint it back before we move out."

"That not how it works," I moaned, looking at the wall with despair. "Fucking hell, you got some of this on the carpet--"

"It'll come out in the wash--"

"It's a carpet!" I cried. "How do you intend to wash it?"

"Lye?" he offered. "I don't know, dude, we'll figure something out. Gimme the chalk--you got the chalk, right?"

I gestured wordless at my bag and sank down onto the couch. "I want you to know that I hate you."

"Well," he said, "you brought me enough chalk that I think I am prepared to forgive you."

I didn't want to get into the fact that it wasn't me that needed forgiving. It wasn't worth it. He'd just talk in circles with me for fifteen minutes and then, inevitably, distract me with a well-placed smile or an adorable comment. It was maddening.

We'd been back from the camping trip for a week and a half. There was still some odd tension around his eyes, a sharp twitch to his jaw when he thought I wasn't paying attention, but by and large he seemed better. Not great, but better.

Then again, I hadn't seen that much of him. Thanksgiving was a few days away, and he was going home, so he'd sort of thrown himself into his work. One wall was covered entirely with pieces of printer paper, tacked up and taped together. They were scrawled over with notes, diagrams, and equations in something that didn't look like English. He'd found double-sided duct tape--god only knows where--and had stuck a piece to the wall to hold up his pens and Sharpies.

I'd say it looked like a war zone in our apartment, but that expression really doesn't mean what people thing it does. Still, it was a fucking mess.

I watched in morbid fascination as he took the chalk and dropped it into a cup. He then placed the cup onto a wooden board he seemed to have rigged onto a pulley next to the wall he'd painted. A bowl of water joined the cup, then a pile of rags, then six pencils and a Cliff bar and his iPod.

"Feet off the table," he said. Surprised, I obliged; he wasn't usually particularly fastidious. I shouldn't have thought it of him, as it turned out--he simply pulled the coffee table over to the wall.

And then stood on it.

"What are you doing?" I asked, bewildered. He gestured at the wall.

"I needed more space," he said absently, dipping a rag in water and stuffing it into his back pocket. "Couldn't be in the lab. I think I've nearly got it."

And then he put his headphones in and was lost to the world. I sighed, smiling a little, and pulled out one of my own textbooks. It was hard to focus on it, though; Holmes would shake his ass occasionally and he was nearly running across the table, scrawling madly with the chalk. His glasses were on again, and it shouldn't have been sexy--I didn't have any idea what he was writing, after all. Still, it was, and so I half-studied, keeping an eye on him.

After a while the intervals between sessions of dancing shortened. I think he'd kind of forgotten I was there. To be honest, I'd kind of forgotten I was there--kind of forgotten everything but his ass, really--when I got a text from Lestrade.

From: Geoff Lestrade
poker game @ the yrd. 10 min. u in?

I sighed. On the one hand, I didn't relish the idea of leaving dancing Holmes behind, or the idea of getting nothing done. On the other hand, it would probably be good to get out, if only for a couple hours. And if I won money I could bring food back for him. He'd like that.

Then I realized I was justifying my decision to go out based on whether or not Holmes would approve and wanted to kick myself right in the ass.

"I'm going to play poker with Lestrade and the boys," I called. He waved a hand at me and then resumed what he'd been doing for the last five minutes--specifically, standing with a hand on his hip, tapping a piece of chalk against his thigh with one hand and smoking a cigarette with the other. A few times he'd accidentally stuck the chalk in his mouth--that had been hilarious.

"Hey," he called, as I opened the door. "Try not to gamble away the rent."

"You got it," I said, closing the door gently behind me.

Poker with Lestrade was a good time. I beat him soundly, as always--the man has a terrible poker face, and his pledges were even worse. I got a special joy out of taking Clarkie's money, not that I let on. And then, yes, I did use part of my winnings to buy Holmes some fucking Chinese food--I can't help myself, alright? I just can't.

When I got back he was still on the table, and his headphones were still lodged firmly in his ears. He was--I guess the best word for it is gyrating, even though there wasn't exactly anything for him to gyrate against. But his hips were moving of their own accord, in steady, sensual circles. After a moment he bent down to make a correction, but he did it like a dance, keeping himself balanced. My mouth went very, very dry.

"Daddy I'm so sorry, I'm so-so-sorry yeah," he sang, totally unaware I was there. It would have been hilarious if it wasn't so goddamn hot. I don't even know why--oh that's such a lie, his ass was why, it's always his ass. "We just like to party, like to pa-pa-party yeah. Bang, bang, we're beautiful and dirty ri--YAAAAH!"

That last, of course, was what happened when he saw me. He'd half turned, reaching to rewet the rag he was using as an eraser, and met my eyes, shrieking his horror a second later. Probably too late I schooled my facial features into amusement rather than arousal, but he was already windmilling his arms and then crashing to the ground, tipping the table over with him.

"Motherfucker," he spat, while I laughed myself sick at his expense. What? I felt bad, I was mildly worried about him--but it was hilarious, and I'd told him the table was a bad idea. "Trying to give you a heart attack?"

"Why would I need to help you with that?" I asked, catching my breath. I offered him a hand and he took it; I hauled him to his feet, grinning. "I'm sure you'll give yourself one, one of these days."

"Fuck off," he said. Then: "Why does it suddenly smell awesome in here? Are you wearing Eau De Lo Mein Noodle? What is that?"

"I beat Lestrade and his boys in the poker game," I said, shrugging. "Ran down to the Chinese place up the street. Figured you could use a break."

"I don't have time for a--which Chinese place down the street?"

I grinned. I knew I had him. "Come on," I said, "who do you think I am? Emerald Duck."

He groaned audibly. "I can't," he said, looking lovingly at the plastic bags, "I can't, I really can't, I have too much to do--"

"Forest," I said, giving him a stern look. He grinned a little at the nickname and then resumed staring woefully at the bags. "You're going to have to eat. It's like midnight, I'm just going to bother you if you don't, and I got beef with broccoli."

"My one true entree!" he cried pitiably, putting a hand to his heart and leaning against the wall. "Oh how could you, you know I cannot resist the call--but it's good cold, you can put my darling in the fridge and I'll eat her in couple of hours--"

"That's disturbing, and also no," I said firmly. "You're eating. Deal."

He looked at me for a second, then sighed loudly and took the bag from me. "Oh, fine. But only because I should probably have stopped hours ago anyway," he admitted. "I've pretty much just been dancing out my frustration and forgetting to guard myself against my creepy lurking roommate."

"But I brought you beef with broccoli," I reminded him. He pulled the container out of the bag and caressed it lovingly.

"It's the only reason I let you survive," he agreed. "Is this house special fried rice? Did you get me house special fried rice? Oh, Appleseed, you're too good to me."

"We're sharing that," I told him firmly. "And believe me, I know I am."

He smiled at me, tossed me some chopsticks, and moved to the couch, cradling his beef with broccoli like it was a child. His favorite bowl was already half packed with weed; he sparked it and drew in a few long hits, exhaling heavily. Then he flipped on the television, scrolling through our DVR list idly.

"Why'd I record 28 Days Later?" he asked, cocking his head. "I own like four copies of it."

"You said it would be more suspenseful if you had to fast forward through the commercials," I sighed, grabbing two beers and sitting down next to him. "Pass the soy."

He tossed me a packet, grabbed the second beer and put the movie on. We chatted amiably through the opening credits. He wanted to know about my last class and the poker game ("Did you make Lestrade cry, Watson? I want to see that little fratboy weep, he's too cocky") and I wanted to know about his crop of undergrads. It was nice. Really nice, actually; we'd both been so busy that shooting the shit had become kind of a rarity. I'd missed him.

"Hey," I said, after a few minutes, "get your dirty chopsticks out of my cashew chicken."

"But I need it," he said. "You yourself told me I had to eat. You were very insistent."

"I told you that you had to eat your food," I reminded him. "This is my food. I thought beef with broccoli was your one and only."

"We have an open relationship," he shrugged. "Oh, shit, patient zero!" He turned to the screen, riveted by the angry chimpanzee biting the shit out of some poor scientist. He was still shoveling Chinese food into his mouth, washing it down with beer, and I could see him figuring out when he was going to pause for a smoke.

I relaxed further into the couch, enjoying the normalcy of it. And then:

"Hey," he said, burying his chopsticks in my chicken for the fifth time, "are you packed yet?"

"For what?" I asked, looking at him with confusion. "Am I going somewhere? I don't follow."

"Thanksgiving," he said slowly. "It's in like two days. I know how you are about packing--you were so pissy when you forgot stuff on that camping trip, I just don't want to go through that again."

"I forgot my underwear, probably because you rushed me--" I started, falling into the pattern of an already familiar argument. Then I stopped. "Wait. Thanksgiving? Holmes, I told you, my family is--"

"Yes, and I told you that I'd be fucked if you were going to spend the holidays by yourself getting drunk and watching shit movies," he said, staring at me like I'd grown a second head. "Oh, god, I knew you were drunk but I didn't think you were that drunk. Watson, come on. Of course you're coming home with me."

"Oh," I said. The thought of having someone to be with--of having Holmes to be with--over the holidays was already swelling in my chest, easing the anxiety that had been building there. I hadn't been looking forward to wallowing in my own dread aloneness while he and Miles were off with their family, I had to admit. But…

"Holmes," I said softly. "That's so nice of you, but I really don't need--you don't have to--"

"Shut the fuck up, it's nice of me," he growled, snatching my Chinese food container and slamming it onto the table. He was, I realized, actually upset. "My family isn't any fucking picnic, I'm not doing you any favors. I want you there for me as much as for you, so don't be a shit about this and just say you'll come, alright?"

"I--what--why would you--" I said, stunned into speechlessness. He waved a frustrated hand, but when he spoke his voice wasn't angry as much as--raw. Beaten in.

"You make me feel like me," he sighed. "My parents--well, you'll see. There's no point ruining the night by getting into it. But you're coming or I'm skipping it, that's the end of it."

"Holmes--"

"Fuck off!" he snapped. "John, I swear to god this isn't pity or--or obligation. I want you to come with me. So just fucking agree, okay?"

I stared at him for a minute. Then, slowly, I nodded; he sighed his relief and leaned back, taking a long pull from his beer.

"Thank you," I said, after a minute. He snorted.

"You won't be thanking me after you meet them," he said, chuckling darkly. "I should be thanking you, actually."

"You could give me the cashew chicken back," I offered, chancing a small grin. He met my eyes and the blackness lifted from his a little; he smiled too, handing me the container.

"My bad," he admitted. Then: "Oh, shit. Zombie hoard!"

He didn't seem to want to discuss it anymore, so I leaned back with my own beer and lit a cigarette, trying to ignore the battle between dread and affection taking place in the pit of my stomach.

Two days later we were at Miles' bar, laden down with bags. I was expecting his tiny convertible to turn the corner when he said he was going to get the car; the yellow Lamborghini that pulled up to the curb was, as such, a bit of a shock. Holmes didn't seem remotely phased, just walked back to the trunk, but I stared like a man possessed.

"Is this yours?" I asked finally, when Miles caught me looking and raised his eyebrows. He grinned and nodded, patting the door.

"My baby," he said easily. "Get in; there's a lever on the side of passenger seat, and the back's bigger than you'd think."

I crawled back there, shell-shocked. Holmes got into the front a second later.

"I think your roommate thinks I'm selling drugs," Miles said conversationally, pulling away from the curb. "How opposed are you to letting him continue to believe that?"

"Very," Holmes said, scowling. "Though I can think of at least 15 people I'd love to convince of that, if you're looking to try on the persona." He turned to me, smiling. "I thought I'd told you," he said, "Miles only owns the bar for fun."

"I work for the government," Miles added, when I just blinked at Holmes. "Tech infrastructures, mostly, but I've got a couple of defense contracts going too. Nothing I can actually talk about, which made it hard to get laid. So I bought the bar. I always liked the idea of being a bartender."

"I--you--what?" I said, finally. Holmes laughed.

"He's twice as smart as me," he said in an undertone. "Don't tell him I said that, though, he'll get a ridiculously swelled head."

"And I'm sitting next to my brother," Miles said amiably. "This car's not big enough for two massive egos."

"Oh, like your ego isn't twice as big as mine," Holmes started; I left them to their friendly bickering and ran my fingers along the edges of the leather seats. I'd never been in a car that nice. It was kind of distracting.

"I pulled your pillow out of your bag," Holmes said suddenly; I registered this only because he smacked me in the face with it a minute later. "You should try to get some sleep, we'll be in the car for awhile and I know you were up most of the night."

"You know that because you were up most of the night," I pointed out. "Maybe you should try passing out."

"He's on music duty," Miles said. "And seriously, man, you look like shit."

"Thanks," I returned dryly. Still, I knew it was true--I'd realized the morning after the Chinese food incident that I wasn't going to have two days without distraction after all, and had been scrambling frantically to get myself to a decent stopping point in my classwork. Thinking about it, I realized that I couldn't remember the last time I'd slept. And there's something lulling about the backseat of a car, the steady forward motion of it, the world streaming by.

I stretched out, leaning my head against the pillow. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Holmes give me a strange, soft look--the kind of looks I gave him when he wasn't looking. I wrenched my head around to see, but he was facing front, talking to Miles.

Just my mind playing tricks on me, then. I sighed and turned into my pillow, falling into a deep and blissfully dreamless sleep.

"You have to tell him," Miles was saying, the first time I opened my eyes. Tell me what, I wondered, trying to force myself awake.

"He'll find out soon enough," Holmes responded, as I realized they might not even be talking about me. What other him, then? I tried valiantly to resist the call of sleep and find out, but I felt it dragging me under, violent and strong.

The second time I woke up it was a slow, soft thing, almost like I was dreaming. Twilight had fallen; the world rushing by was a palette of grey and gold, edges of the sunset filtering in across the clouds. Holmes was driving, which sent a jolt of alarm through my body, but he seemed to be doing alright. Miles was on the phone; it sounded like he was running tech support with someone. I looked up at the rearview mirror only to find Holmes' eyes on me. They were soft, the grey in them reflecting the weather, but they widened a little when he noticed I was up.

"Hi," he said, very quietly. I wasn't awake long enough to respond.

The third time I woke up, it was because we'd come to a dead stop. I sat up, rubbing my face; Holmes was in the passenger seat again. He turned around, giving me a smile that flickered and died so quickly I almost missed it.

"I was just about to wake you," he said. "We're here."

I looked at him; he looked drawn and exhausted and Miles, opening his door, just seemed resolved.

"I'm going to grab the bags," he said, climbing out. We followed, catching out bags as Miles tossed them to us. Holmes leaned against the car, playing nervously at the duffel strap.

"I knew I should have brought my violin," he said, nonsensically. "Not that I could play it, but I'd feel better just having it, you know?"

"What's wro--?" I started, but Holmes sighed heavily, sounding old and effectively shutting me up.

"There are some things I didn't tell you," he said, "about my family. I didn't want to--"

"Boys!" I heard someone calling. "Boys, over here! "

I glanced up as Holmes sighed again, turning around. But when he spoke, his voice was warm, not nearly as tired as it had been a moment before.

"Dad," he said, letting his father hug him. Mr. Holmes was tall like Miles, but thin like Holmes; I could see a bit of both of them in his face. His hair was a burnished gray, but he would be been something of a silver fox if not for his eyes, which looked closer to 90 than 65. He hugged Miles when Holmes released him, and then turned to me.

"And you must be John," he said, smiling warmly when I nodded. "Sherlock has told me so much about you; it's nice to finally put a face to the name. I'm Edward."

We shook hands; his grip was firm. I was at a loss as to what all the distress had been about, but I figured I'd find out soon enough. Edward led us back toward the house, and it was then that I actually took in the sheer size of the place; a massive house on sprawling grounds that seemed to go on forever.

"Jesus, man," I said in a good-natured undertone, "you might have told me you were the heir to a vast fortune. See if I ever let you bum my cigarettes again."

I felt his hand close on my arm before I turned to see his face; it was white, almost panicked. "Watson," he said, "I really should have told you about--you know, we can just get out of here, man, we can turn around right now--"

In that same moment, I heard Miles say "How is she today," to his father; widening my eyes, I noticed the signs of a regular medical presence in the home. Things I recognized from the house I'd left behind when I lost my grandfather. My heart sank, realizing and wishing I hadn't.

"Holmes," I said, wanting to reassure him that I wasn't going anywhere; I was cut off by the front door opening. The woman who walked out was polished, beautiful for her age--but looked considerably older than Edward, now that I thought about it. The line of her jaw resembled Holmes' to an almost shocking degree, and her eyes were identical to Miles'; clearly their mother. Aside from the fact that her lipstick was a little off, she looked completely fine.

I'd already started to feel the sweet relief of being wrong when she opened her mouth. "Edward," she said, looking over us and sounding confused. "I didn't know we were having guests for dinner. Clients?"

Miles' jaw was set and Holmes' grip on my arm went achingly tight. "No, love," Edward said, sounding resigned. "Not clients."

"Well," she said, still sounding confused but clearly trying to breeze by it. "It's lovely to meet you, in any case. Do come in. Could I possibly get your names…?"

Holmes grip got inexplicably tighter for a second; the he released me and stepped forward, holding his hand out to shake. "I'm Sherlock," he said, his voice admirably even even if his eyes were shining. "It's so nice to meet you."

--

The table was set for five, though the staff presence in the house was considerably larger. Compared to my own remembered Thanksgivings, which usually involved my grandfather and I tucking in to a rotisserie chicken from the place up the street, the spread was magnificent. Still, I could see by the way Holmes was twitching that it had one been a much grander affair. The house bore a number of signs of worn-down extravagance, now that I bothered to look; paintings were crooked on the walls, and there were strange scratches on the antique furniture. As though someone long since had stopped caring about the upkeep, another thing that I recognized from my own childhood.

It was obvious what was wrong with Mrs. Holmes. Her son, much later, would show me her medical charts and let me see for myself, but even as a first year med-student Alzheimer's is easy enough to diagnose. By my guess she'd been in the throes of it for 7 or 8 years, maybe more--and, fuck, this is making me sound like I'm the one of the two of us who's good at reading people. I'm not; that's always been Holmes' arena. But my grandfather spent three months dying in a ward of a hospital filled with people over eighty, and he was only awake about half the time I was there. I'd spent a fair amount of time with the condition, even then.

"So," I said, fifteen minutes into the first course, "Mrs. Holmes. What do you do?"

She smiled at me, charming, if a little lost. It was clear that she'd once been a self-possessed woman, good with people--brilliant, even. Considering her sons, that wouldn't have surprised me. She chatted amiably with me, discussing the literature class she was teaching, her husband's fledgling architecture firm. They were going to spend sixth months in England, she told me, once the baby was old enough to travel.

Miles' hands clenched tightly around his fork when she said that; he'd hardly spoken since we'd arrived. Holmes, for his part, refused to look at me, but smiled sadly when I went along with this. I remembered, thank god, what to do in these situations, and was able to speak where they couldn't.

And Holmes' poor father--she remembered him, clearly, knew who he was, but it was also clear that she didn't, some days. The joy that lit his face when she addressed him by name was heartbreaking, wrenching to watch. He told me about their wedding, and she laughed, soft peals that sounded like bells, as he recounted it. Miles and Holmes, who'd obviously both played this game with them before, nodded along as best they could.

First course was followed by a second, and then a third; Mrs. Holmes complained bitterly that attendance was so small this year, but apparently it couldn't be helped. "You'll have to come back next year, Mr. Watson," she said, her eyes glinting. "Normally this is quite a lavish affair, but I'm not quite myself this season."

"Please," I said, resisting the urge to take Holmes' hand in my own as he made a small, pained sound beside me, "call me John."

I won't say it was the worst two hours of my life; I've spent more time in worse circumstances, to say the least. But god, I can't remember the last time I felt so fucking helpless, watching my friend suffer through it. He'd twisted his napkin in his lap so many times that it was knotted and tangled when he spilled his wine down his shirt at his mother's inquiry into where he'd grown up; I handed mine over wordlessly, smiled as best I could when he caught my eye.

I won't say it was the worst two hours of my life. I was still relieved when it was over, when a round-faced nurse led an exhausted Mrs. Holmes--Amanda, as she'd told me to call her--up to her bedroom. Then it was just me and the Holmes men, Miles and his father and my roommate, who'd trained me not to call him by his first name long before.

"Shit," Miles said, pouring himself a large glass of the brandy that had been laid out on the table. He downed half of it in one go. "Was she this bad last year?"

Holmes laughed dryly. "She was worse this summer, not that you were here for that. Thought Dad was a burglar one night, that was a good time. Fuck."

"It's not so bad, boys," Edward said, trying for joviality and coming out flat. He turned to me. "And thank you, John. You were very good with her--she's better than this some days. I'd hoped--anyway, I'm very sorry."

"Please don't apologize," I said, feeling sick to my stomach. "Really, it's--"

"Watson," Holmes said suddenly. I looked up; his face was drawn and haggard, that same look he'd had before we went camping. Now that I saw it again I realized that the quality hadn't really left him--he'd just gotten better at hiding it from me, I guess, or hiding it from himself. He was too thin, I realized, and the circles under his eyes were darker than ever. I wondered what else I'd been missing as his mouth worked soundlessly for a second.

Then: "You shouldn't have to be here for this part," he sighed, the edge of his lip quirking up in a strange, bitter half-smile. "There are some thing we've got to talk about, I don't want to make you sit through it."

"Holmes," I said, surprising, "really, I don't--"

"Please," he said quietly. "Please leave. My room is right upstairs, and I really don't want you here for this."

"Sherlock," Edward snapped, "I understand that this is trying for you, but that conversation can wait. There's no need to be rude to our guest--"

"It's fine," I said at once, standing. He opened his mouth to protest, but I cut him off with a smile; I've always prided myself on my ability to be achingly polite when necessary. "Really. It's fine. I'm not offended, I swear. I'd actually love to take a walk around the grounds; this is a gorgeous estate, Edward. Anything in particular I should check out while I'm out there?"

He stared at me. Miles, however, smiled. "There's a garden out behind the left wing," he said. "Sherlock and I used to climb the trees out there. You'd like it, I think."

"It's freezing out," Edward protested. "You'd be more comfortable--"

"I'll be fine," I repeated firmly. God forbid I be trapped inside without the ability to smoke a sorely needed cigarette. And then I turned to Holmes, who was staring at the table. He met my gaze after a second. "I'll be out there if you need me, okay?"

"Yeah," he said softly, managing a slight grin. "I'll come get you when we're done."

I wandered out, leaving them to it. Miles was right; there was a lovely garden, with a flat, unbacked bench that I stretched out on, staring up at the sky. I hadn't been so far from the city lights in months, so I entertained myself with counting constellations. I worked my way through half a pack of cigarettes like that, trying to distinguish between the smoke and my breath, visible in the chilled night air.

It had been about an hour when Holmes came out of the house and joined me. He sat down facing my prone form, legs crossed--his back was stiff and straight. We must have painted quite the picture of opposites in that moment, me flat on my back with my legs straddled, him a tight sketch of tension.

I handed him my half smoked cigarette. He took it, busied himself with finishing it while I righted myself, facing him. Then he sighed.

"I'm sorry I was an asshole back there. We were just--Miles wants Dad to get her put in a nursing home because the 24/7 care is going to bleed him dry, no matter how much fucking money they've got. He's not wrong, but--ah, I don't know. It's a big fucking mess," he said, rolling the cigarette across his fingers. He was going to burn himself, so I took it from him gently, handing him a fresh one. He smiled at me and lit it, then rubbed his face with the palm of his hand.

"I should have told you before," he said, at great length.

"Holmes, it's--"

"Shut up!" he snapped. Immediately regret washed over his face and he winced, looking up at me through hooded eyes. "Sorry," he said, "I'm sorry, I don't mean to--I just, you know. Don't want to fucking talk about this."

"You don't have to," I said. He sighed again.

"Yeah, I do." He took a long drag from the cigarette, tipping his head back to stare at the sky. "She wasn't always like this, you know. When I was a kid she was fun--funny. They named us after Doyle characters because they met at a costume party. My dad was rocking a deerstalker and Mom was trying to pull off--heh. A female doctor Watson, actually. They thought it was hilarious."

"They were always--well. They both came from really old money, especially my dad. He still thinks I'm wasting my life going into chemistry; his firm is one of the top in the country, not that he does much beside consult and sign the papers anymore. When Miles moved out he decided that I was going to take up the family business, and he's never really let go of it. He loves me, of course, but he told me when I graduated from school that I'd have to pay my own way if I was going to--"

"Ah, fuck. I'm not going to explain them right, you know? It's too much to just--I should have told you before, there's--they're not bad people, they've never been bad people, just eccentric." He paused, laughing dryly. "It was weird, though. I was that kid who lived in the giant house, the one whose parents whisked him off to England every couple years, the one who was sent to school in three piece suits. Miles did what he could, but there was no helping it. Not that I wasn't weird enough on my own, I guess."

He laughed again, humorlessly. "She started losing it when I was in high school. Did you know that early onset Alzheimer's is genetic? Three genes, three little fucking genes that can make you lose your mind at 50. And I guess I thought--god, it sounds so stupid. I mean, by the time I started working on the concept for my thesis she was too far gone for any help, but there's Miles, you know, and me, and I just--"

He stopped and shuddered, a full-body tremor. "I'd risk anything," he said, fierce but afraid too, like I had a gun to his head. "I would, I fucking would, but things have gotten--it's so fucked up, Watson, I've--"

His voice broke at the same time that my control did. With every instinct in my body screaming violently against it, I scooted forward and put my arms around him, pulling him close. I guess I expected him to shove back, to punch me, to run--instead he clung to me, his hands going to fists around my jacket.

"I'm sorry," he said, and his voice was clipped with strain, thick with some emotion that sounded more like fear than grief.

"It's okay," I said, because I had no idea what else to say. He laughed into my neck, that horrible humorless laugh that I'd already realized was my least favorite sound in the world.

"It's not," he said, and his voice trembled. "It's not, it's--I've done it all wrong, I've made--it's all choices and I should have--I can't keep hold of it, I can't, I need--"

And then he was crying--and fuck, if that's not the worst description in the world of what was happening, I don't know what is. There were tears, I know that, because I could feel them against my neck, dripping down under my shirt. And he was trembling, his back heaving with the sobs, but--but. Crying is normally an expression of grief, and this wasn't like that. He shook against me like he was drowning, like he was fighting something, like he was frustrated, and I sat there, rubbing his back and not wanting to pry.

Goddamn it, if I'd only--but I guess it doesn't matter now. I let him ride it out instead of pushing him to tell me, instead of pushing him like I should have done. I think, in retrospect, that he wanted to tell me that night. That he would have, if I'd only pressed the point a little harder, and then maybe I could have helped him, could have stopped the tide of the inevitable.

He says I'm being ridiculous when I ask him about it now, but he's always cared too much about my fucking feelings.

He pulled away from me that night after a long, long time, and apologized for himself. I told him not to, told him he was being stupid--and then I told him other things. About my grandfather's bad habit of leaving the stove on when he was drunk, and how I'd burned myself on it one time. About how my brother and I had built a treehouse in my backyard when I was six, right before my parents died. About how many shots I did on my 21st birthday; about some of the crazy nights I'd had while I was on leave. About whatever I could think of, really, to distract him. He laughed and smoked my cigarettes and, after a few hours, complained of the cold.

We went inside. There was an air mattress set up on the floor of his room that I collapsed onto; he crawled into the bed he'd spent his childhood sleeping in and flipped off the light. It must have been a few hours later that I woke up to the mattress shifting, opened my eyes to see him climbing in next to me.

"Not a fucking word, John," he said, turning away from me and pulling the blanket up over himself. "This is not something I want to fucking talk about."

"Okay," I agreed softly. He fell asleep a few minutes later, his breathing deepening and evening out. I don't want to think about how long I laid awake that night, relishing the feeling of him next to me, platonic comfort or no.

Chapter Text

The three days following our return from the Holmes estate involved some of the worst sleep I've ever gotten. Partially it was that I wasn't getting much opportunity to sleep; Holmes was working, playing the violin at four AM and blasting Gaga through the speakers, pounding his fist into the wall in frustration and jolting me awake. I couldn't bear to tell him to stop because he looked so close to completely losing it. There were lines on his face that I could swear hadn't been there before, and his hands were shaking constantly, which he was trying to hide from me.

He stuck closer than he had before too, pressing near me in the street, letting his hands linger too long when we passed things between us. He was at his homemade chalkboard wall except when I made him leave it, when I forced him to come outside or put some food in his stomach. I didn't bother trying to make him sleep; I begged him to, once or twice, but he just sighed and looked at me like I was hurting him, so I stopped.

The scrawling across the board was taking up more and more space. There were pieces of paper everywhere, the apartment was a fucking mess, I was studying when I could and trying to keep him together and--

Well, when I'd dreamed of him before I had limited basis for comparison. Certainly his body against mine at the club had generated a fair number of dirty fantasies, but now I'd shared a bed with him, had him close to me under the sheets. So for those three days, when I did manage to close my eyes, he was there with me, sliding into my bed and then--asking for things. Pulling my shirt over my head and tracing his way down to my cock with sticky kisses, murmuring frantic nonsense and swear words, chemical equations.

I woke in a haze every time, hating myself and him, hating all the stupid fucking circumstance. I'd never gone so long without sex; in high school and college I'd had boyfriends, if closeted ones, and in the service--well. Don't ask don't tell is all well and good, but we had a way of finding each other. Watching a guy you've been fucking occasionally take a bullet to the femoral artery is a pretty good way to cure you of having casual sex, which was why I hadn't partaken since I'd been home. But he was so close, close and gorgeous and coming apart next to me, and I was stressed and underslept and--

Well, shit. I guess I'm making excuses for myself. I'll be honest; I really don't want to tell this part of the story, but I have to. For the sake of honesty, I have to.

On the fourth day after we got back, he figured out his chalkboard. I'd slept 15 hours out of 96 and Holmes had slept less, and so I was nodding off on the couch with a book in my lap and wondering idly how he was still standing when it happened.

"Fuck," he said, very quietly. And then, "Oh fuck, fuck, Watson I'm such an idiot, how could I not have--oh my god fuck, oh my god--"

He was writing frantically, erasing with broad swipes of his sleeve. When I tried to speak he snapped at me, so I waited him out. Fifteen minutes later he stepped back, the chalk falling from fingers.

"I've got it," he breathed. "I've got it, Watson, look."

I looked. I looked some more. "Holmes, is that even in English?"

"No," he said, laughing a little. "No, it's--I do all my notes in code because--it's a long story. But fuck, that right there is--it's--oh god, I have so much to do."

He paled at this last but turned to me, his eyes wild. He moved, for a second, like he was going to kiss me; my heart jumped to my throat, but he didn't. He just gave me a quick, exuberant hug, like he couldn't contain his enthusiasm, and ran right out the fucking door.

I tried to wait up for him, I really did, but it had been days since I'd gotten proper sleep. At nine I gave it up and crawled into bed, relieved, at least, to be so exhausted. When I really need it I'm an incredibly heavy sleeper, and I was looking forward to a night without the dreams.

I should have known better; I don't have any fucking luck.

I opened my eyes in the hazy darkness of unreality and he was on my bed, his expression one of agonized indecision. This is a dream, I told myself firmly, trying to fight it, go back to sleep, this is only going to make it worse, you know that, but then he met my eyes.

"Please," he said, strained and desperate and too fucking beautiful for words, and all my resistance was lost. I sat up and put one hand behind his neck and dragged him in, kissing him with raw abandon. He moaned into my mouth, and I could feel the sound slip down my throat--and oh, this dream was more detailed than usual, each perfect accuracy poising itself to eat at me in the morning. I buried one hand in that thick hair and he fisted my t-shirt, breaking the kiss to pull it over my head.

"I can't tell you," he said, and his eyes were bright even in the darkness. "I can't tell you, John, it's not safe--"

"Shut up," I said, catching his mouth again. I didn't want to hear his cryptic nonsense, a product of my own hyperactive subconscious. If I was going to go down with this ship I wanted to fucking do it, wanted to feel everything I could of him, wanted to drink him up in the only arena that he was truly mine.

I pushed him back onto the bed, the wrong way. His feet were on my pillows and he was under me, writhing and bucking against me, biting at my lips. His hands were everywhere but I stilled them long enough to get his shirt off. There was a makeshift gauze bandage wrapped around his upper arm; I touched it, running my fingers across it, wondering what the hell my mind was trying to tell me.

"Don't," he said, biting his lip, "please don't, I can't--"

"Okay," I said, "okay, shhh, okay." I leaned in and sucked mercilessly at the hollow of his neck and he groaned aloud, running his nails down my neck.

"John," he said. And then, like every time, like every fucking dream, torture: "Do you know how long I've wanted, how fucking long--"

And you know, even though my brain was furious with me, even though I wanted to tell him to shut up and let me get on with it, I couldn't. Even the idea of confessing to a spectre was better than keeping it in, better than hiding it any longer. I cupped the side of his face, ran the pad of my thumb across his cheek. He shuddered against me.

"Me too," I said, very softly. "Since the day I moved in here."

"Why didn't you--"

"Tell you?" I said, laughing bitterly at myself. Oh, was I going to be miserable in the morning. "Because you--because I'm like this. Scars everywhere and a fucking cane and we live together, and it would be so embarrassing to have you turn me down."

"John Watson," he said, looking like he maybe wanted to hit me, "that is the stupidest fucking thing you've ever said to me."

I didn't answer him. I couldn't bear to know what he said next, what ridiculous thing I'd use to beat myself up with when I woke up. So I kissed him and kissed him, tracing the inside of his mouth with my tongue until he was breathing too hard to talk.

He pushed me, and we wrestled for control for a second; then I gave in and laid back, and he smirked above me, looking like himself for once. He pulled down the boxers I slept in and sank low, trailing those damned sticky kisses across my chest, and then ran his tongue along the full length of my cock.

He whistled, long and low, a second before pulling me entirely into his mouth. I moaned out his name--his last name, I think, although it might have been Forest that came out--I'd never thought of him as Sherlock. He responded by pulling me in still deeper, letting me scrape the back of his throat.

I fisted one hand in his hair as he sucked me, doing things with his tongue that I couldn't begin to comprehend. I wanted to tell him that I loved him but I bit my lip nearly bloody against it, against the goddamned indignity of confessing that to my own sick fantasy. So I rode him out, relishing just how well I could construct a farce, until I felt myself reaching the brink.

"Holmes," I gasped, "Holmes, I'm--I'm going to--"

In response he pulled all the air out his cheeks, pulling at me harder and with more intensity than any real partner I'd ever had. I felt my eyes roll back into my head as I came in long, fierce pulses down his throat, as I yanked at his fucking hair.

He was smiling when he pulled away, and he leaned across me, kissing me with his filthy, filthy mouth. Well-sated as I was, I still felt my cock give a tiny twitch at the taste of myself against his teeth, but then he was pulling away.

"Let me--" I started, but he put a hand to my lips, silencing me.

"I wish I could," he whispered. "I wish I could, please believe me, I would, but I don't have time," and that was like all the other dreams too, him running off before I could return the favor. I closed my eyes and nodded, and he ran his hand through my hair once and kissed me again.

"Sleep," he said, "I'll be here in the morning."

That's what I'm afraid of, I thought, but the dream slipped away from me before I could say it.

I jolted awake what felt like a second later; the sun was streaming in through the window, bitter and too bright. I blinked myself awake and it came rushing back to me--Holmes beneath me, feeling so real, sucking me dry. It hurt, worse even than usual, because it had seemed…ah, fuck. The anger came a moment afterwards in any case, that ridiculously potent rush of rage that's only heightened by the fact that it's not justified.

I dragged myself out of bed to get myself some coffee; Holmes was sitting on the couch, his head in his hands. He jerked himself upright when he saw me, looking vaguely guilty.

"Watson," he said, "I didn't expect you to be awake."

"I'm not," I growled. "Coffee. Required."

"There's some in the pot," he said. Then he gave me a strange, soft smile that made my heart ache and stood up, walking up to me.

He put his hand on my arm. He put his hand on my arm and, oh, god, I don't want to write this out, I don't even want to think about it--

"Don't touch me," I snapped, jerking away from him. His face registered shock for a split second, and then guarded confusion.

"Sorry," he said, putting his hands up.

"No," I said, sighing. It wasn't his fault I was making myself crazy over him. "I'm sorry. I just--I had a really weird fucking night."

I expected him to understand and back off. Instead the confusion on his face twisted into something like hurt, and why I didn't see it, why I didn't figure it the fuck out, I'll never know.

"Do you," he said, tripping over the words, "do you want to talk--"

"Do I want to talk about it?" I finished, laughing bitterly. He flinched at the sound. "No, Holmes, I think you're actually the last person I want to talk to about this."

He jerked back from me like I'd slapped him. Then he narrowed his eyes, taking two clear steps away from me. "Fine," he spat, "that's actually fucking great. Because you're the last person I want to talk to right now too, so everything's perfect. I'm sorry your night sucked so much, that must be really fucking rough."

"Oh, fuck you," I growled. "Like you have any fucking right to be pissed that I don't want to talk, like you haven't been keeping secrets from me--"

"You don't have any idea what the fuck you're talking about," he hissed, moving like he was going to step forward. Then he stilled, looking me over with dark, furious eyes. "You know what? It doesn't fucking matter. I have shit to do. Enjoy your goddamned coffee."

"I fucking will," I shouted after him as he left, grabbing his bag on the way and slamming the door behind him. I fumed through my coffee, through half a pack of cigarettes, and was just considering throwing something into the fucking wall when the door opened.

I turned around, expected Holmes, but it was Miles. I couldn't remember the last time he'd been at the apartment--if he'd ever been at the apartment--and that startled me out of my fury for a moment.

"Miles," I said, "what--"

"Look, you little fuck," he snapped, stepping inside and closing the door behind him. "I am only here because I have a lower opinion of your intelligence than my brother does. See, I don't think it's possible that you're as much of an asshole as you seem to be, because you'd have to be pretty fucking calculating and I just don't think you have it in you."

"What--" I started, but he cut me off.

"If I'm wrong," he growled, "I am going to beat you until you cannot do anything by bleed. And then I'm going to do it again. Are we clear?"

"Crystal," I said faintly, more than a little frightened. Miles, though generally kind, is seriously fucking gigantic.

"Alright," he said, taking a deep breath. "I am going to do you a favor now, and tell you something you apparently do not know. How that's possible, I just don't know, because it's not like it isn't obvious."

"It's not like what isn't obvious?"

"My brother," he said, staring at me like I was the stupidest fucking person on the planet, "is in love with you. In. Fucking. Love. WIth. You. Like nothing I've ever seen, and if you don't explain your behavior right fucking now I swear to god--"

"No he's not," I cut him off, my tone harsh. "He--he doesn't even date seriously, thinks it's a drain on his time--"

"Is that what that little fuck told you?" Miles asked incredulously. "Oh my god, that's so far from the truth that I want to puke. He stole that line from me, the little shit--what, did you just miss the whole Victor thing? Did that not get through that thick head of yours?"

"What the fuck are you talking about?" I demanded. "Who's Victor? What--"

"Oh my god," Miles said again, staring at me. "He never told you about Victor?"

"Who the fuck is Victor?" I cried, having reached the end of my rope.

"His ex-fucking boyfriend," Miles shot back, fuming. "God, it didn't fucking occur to you to wonder why he was looking for a place to stay after the semester started? Don't most people have that shit figured out by then?"

"I--" I started hotly. Then I paused, thinking that over. When I spoke again, it was less sure. "I--he told me that his housing arrangement fell through--"

"He caught his boyfriend cheating on him, more like," Miles snapped. "I always knew that cocky little fuck was trouble, but Sherlock wouldn't listen to a damned thing I said. And then he comes to my bar one night with all his shit, says he came home and there was someone else in his bed--all the fucking insecurities out to play all fucking over again. That little prick told him he needed someone who could satisfy him--"

"I'll kill him," I growled, standing up. Miles looked at me like I'd grown a second head.

"What you did was fucking worse!" he cried. "He's been in love with you for months and he's such a mess that I don't even want to think about it and you take him into your fucking bed and tell him you've wanted this the whole time and then tell him it was weird--"

"What the ever-loving fuck--" I started. Then it hit me, a horrible, resounding wallop. "Oh, god, oh my god--oh god, I thought I was dreaming--"

The honest distress on my face softened Miles' expression somewhat. Before I could tell how much I was assuaged with images of Holmes' face--Holmes during our fight--what he must have thought I meant--

"Excuse me," I said, as calmly as I could manage, "but I think I'm going to be sick."

I slammed the bathroom door behind me and then, yes, did actually retch twice into the toilet. I'm not proud of it--it was a weak, ridiculous thing to do, a time-wasting thing to do, but I couldn't help myself. All I could think about was the sharp shock on his face when I told him not to touch me, the anger that was so clearly masking hurt--

Fuck, even now it makes my stomach turn.

When I opened the door, Miles was sitting on the couch. His expression had shifted to one of sympathy, and he smiled sadly at me.

"You're a fucking idiot," he said, kindly.

"Where is he," I managed. "I have to go fix this, I have to--"

"He's at his lab," Miles told me. "At least, that's where he said he was going. You'll want to be quick, though, he moves fast when he's hiding from something."

"Right," I said, heading for the door. I'd almost made it when Miles' voice, genuinely amused now, stopped me.

"Watson," he said. I turned, and he raised an eyebrow at me. "You might want to put on some pants."

I looked down, realized I was still only wearing my boxers, and flushed. I grabbed a pair of jeans off the floor of my room and yanked them on, and Miles was already at the door when I got there.

"Hey," he said, "I don't really think you're stupid."

"You're the only one," I told him faintly. He grinned at me then, just the edge of it going dangerous.

"You know I'll kill you if you hurt him, right?" he said, putting a heavy, massive hand on my shoulder to drive home the point.

"What makes you think I wouldn't beat you to it?" I asked, and then I was down the stairs and running out the door.

I tried the lab first. Holmes wasn't there, but there were signs of him--a leftover coffee cup, a trail of cigarette butts leading to the building door. I rifled frantically through the papers on his desk--which, yeah, I know, makes me sound like a fucking stalker. I didn't care, I had to find him, and so I started making a list of places he might theoretically be.

His cell phone was off; I know because I tried him ten times running from his classroom to his favorite coffee places to six different bars. "Holmes," I said in the first message I left him, "Holmes, I'm so sorry, I thought--I didn't realize what was happening last night, I thought I was dreaming, I didn't mean to--please call me, man, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

I won't bother recounting the rest of the messages, because it's humiliating. Suffice to say they only got increasingly desperate as the hours wore on, as I didn't find him and didn't find him and didn't find him.

I even tried the club, ignoring the way my heartbeat sped up as I walked through the threshold. It was early evening when I got there, so it was me and the bartenders. Brett, my least favorite of the lot, took one look and me and pursed his lips in mock-sympathy.

"Trouble in paradise?" he asked, leaning in and leering. "He's a hard man, our Holmes. Maybe you'd like to burn off some frustration with--"

"Fuck you," I growled, glaring. He stepped back at once, looking furious. "Have you seen him? Has he been in here?"

"I don't know why I'd talk to someone so fucking rude--" he started, but Kyle, the one Holmes had seemed to like the night we were there, came over and cut him off.

"We need more vodka, Brett," he said. Brett stared at him incredulously.

"No we don't," he said, "I just picked up--"

"Well go get more," Kyle snapped. "Now."

Brett's mouth fell open. Then he glanced between the two of us, sniffed, and stalked away, muttering darkly under his breath. Kyle put a friendly hand on my shoulder.

"Sit down," he said, pushing me onto a stool. "Have a drink. Tell me about it."

And--god help me--I did. I didn't know what to do with myself and I couldn't think of a single place I hadn't tried, so I told Kyle the whole story over a few beers. He was a good listener, and like all great bartenders he reserved judgement until the end. I couldn't help but be reminded of Miles months before, watching me with something between amusement and disdain as I told him of my housing issues.

God, and how different my life would have been, if not for the fucking bartenders I let talk me into lunatic bad ideas.

Kyle waited till I was through. Then he laughed, long and low, and I was too exhausted to even be pissed at him for it.

"John," he said, "has it occurred to you that you live in the same place that he does? He'll have to come home eventually."

"There are a million places he could go," I protested. "Miles or Irene would take him, he could sleep at his lab--"

"But all his shit is at your apartment," Kyle said reasonably. " Am I right? He'd have to come get it eventually. And it sounds like this Miles guy would call you if he showed up there, so I wouldn't worry about that."

I looked up at him with bleary eyes. He sighed and returned his hand to my shoulder from across the bar.

"You've made a big fucking mess," he said, "I'm not going to tell you different. But you're a good guy, John, and you're cute, and it's obvious he loves you. You know the night you were here he offered me fifty dollars for the shirt I was wearing so he could follow you without getting hassled by anyone?"

"He doesn't have fifty dollars," I said, blinking. Kyle laughed.

"And I fucking knew it, which was why I let him have it free. But Jesus, man, I don't think you've screwed yourself beyond belief. It's a mix-up. It'll get sorted. You just need to talk to him, and your best bet is to go home and wait him out."

"You think?" I asked. He sighed.

"I know it, man. Go home. He'll come back eventually."

I shouldn't have taken his advice. I should have gone to Miles and told him I hadn't found his brother; I should have kept calling, should have checked everywhere again. It might not have mattered, considering--I might have already been too late. If I could go back in time I would grab myself that morning and beat my own ass, just to--

Fuck, there's no point, is there? Holmes is right, I can't beat myself up over my goddamned mistakes forever.

I did what Kyle told me to do. I went back to the apartment; he wasn't there, but I told myself he'd have to show up eventually. I collapsed on the couch, flicking blankly through the DVR, figuring I'd catch him when he came home and explain everything, bare my fucking soul and make it right.

But Holmes didn't come home.

Chapter Text

I didn't mean to fall asleep, I really didn't. I'd positioned myself specifically to avoid that eventuality, but somehow the stress and the sleep I, as it turned out, hadn't gotten the night before coalesced into the perfect storm. I woke up five minutes before class, with a crick in my neck and my legs splayed haphazardly across the couch. There was no sign of Holmes.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," I muttered, looking around. I assumed he'd crashed out at Irene's or found someone to go home with, but I was worried about him. Worried that he was out doing something self-destructive, or thinking that I hated him, or any number of other things.

I seriously considered skipping class, but I remembered that I'd ignored my academic responsibilities to hunt Holmes down the previous day. Cursing under my breath and not bothering to shower or change, I threw my laptop bag over my shoulder and hit the door. My body was screaming at me--too much walking the day before, I guess, and not enough stretching afterwards. I ignored it, grabbing a cup of coffee and then moving as fast as I could to try to minimize my lateness.

I don't know why I answered the phone when it rang. It was a number I didn't recognize, and normally, running late to class and caught up in my own thoughts, I would have ignored it. But something compelled me to answer it, and when I said hello the voice on the other end stopped me dead in my tracks.

"Are you in the apartment?" Holmes said. He sounded breathy and terrified, but I was so excited to hear from him that I didn't register that for a second. "John, tell me you're not in the fucking apartment--"

"Holmes," I interrupted, "Jesus Christ, I'm so glad it's you, I'm so sorry--"

"We don't have time for that," Holmes hissed. "Are. You. In. The. Apartment?"

"No," I told him, confused. "Why does that--"

"Thank fucking god," he breathed, and then I did pick up on the terror in his voice. "I need you to listen, okay? I don't know how long I've got before they realize I've tapped into the phone lines and I need you to get Miles. I need you to tell him that I let his dog out last night and now I can't find it."

"Holmes, Miles doesn't--"

"Shut up," he snapped. "Don't ask me any fucking questions, John, you can't, okay? Tell him about the dog and tell him I forgive him for breaking my arm when I was 13."

"What the hell--"

"They have me," he hissed. "They have me and I should have called him but I--" and his voice broke, then. "I wanted to hear your voice, I know it's stupid, I know you don't--"

"Holmes," I said, my heartbeat quickening. "Holmes, I made a mistake, I didn't mean--who has you, what do you--"

"The only thing getting me through this is knowing you're not gambling anymore," he said, his tone in shards. And that didn't even make sense--I'd just bought him Chinese food with poker winnings a week before. I was going to point this out when he continued: "Watson, please--it's life or death, you have to go tell Miles about the dog, they're going to--"

"Tell me who has you," I said, confused and terrified for him. "Holmes, please, I don't know what's going on but I'll--"

"Don't go back to the fucking apartment," he snapped. "Don't go back and smash your cell phone when I hang up, and make Miles take you with him, say I told him he had to take you--"

"Where am I going? Where are you? Holmes--"

"Oh god," he said, a sharp spike of fear in his voice, and then the line went dead.

I stared at my cell phone for a second. Then, ignoring the fact that I wasn't physically capable of it, I ran, six blocks up and two across to the Clearinghouse. The door was opened and I pushed my way inside, barely standing and breathing hard. He wasn't behind the bar.

"Miles," I called, and then "MILES?"

"Is that Watson I hear?" an amused voice called out. He appeared from around the corner, carrying a box of booze. "I thought you'd be busy screwing my brother by--"

Then he saw me. His face went slack for half a second and then--I'll never forget it--he dropped the box. The sound of bottles shattering nearly triggered me as he ran to me, grabbing me by the shoulders, but I pushed past it. This was too important--Holmes had sounded too desperate--

"What's happened?" Miles demanded, shaking me. "Where is he, what's happened?"

"Called--me," I gasped, trying to catch my breath from the run. "Said--life or death--let your dog out--what the hell--"

"Fuck," Miles snapped, shaking me again. "Fuck, fuck, what did he call you on? Your cell? Did he call your cell? Did you destroy it?"

"No," I managed, "he told me to but I--"

"Motherfuck," he growled. "Give it to me. Now."

"What--"

"Give me the fucking phone," he screamed, and I handed it over. He dropped it and jumped on it, once, twice, four times, until it was reduced to smithereens on the floor. Then he grabbed my arm.

"We have to get out of here right fucking now," he snapped. "We won't be any use to him dead. Come on."

"Dead?" I said, running out the back door after him. The Lamborghini was parked in the back spot and he hopped in, gesturing for me to follow. I climbed in and he sped off before I even had a chance to shut my door. I slammed it quickly and turned to him.

"Miles," I said, "what the fuck--"

"When's the last time you saw him?" Miles demanded. I stared.

"Well, uh--yesterday, I guess, before he came to see you--"

"You haven't seen him since YESTERDAY MORNING?" Miles shrieked. "What the fuck is wrong with you? Why the hell didn't you tell me?"

"You told me he'd hide from me!" I cried back. "I didn't know there was any kind of life or death--"

"Stop talking," Miles snapped. "What was your cell number?"

"I think you should explain--"

"Your fucking cell number!" Miles snapped. I gave it to him, and he flipped open his phone, dialed something, and pressed it his ear.

"It's me," he said into the speaker. "I need you to pull transcripts from a cell number and get the team together; my brother let the dog out. Sometime yesterday, I'm not sure when, my intel is shitty."

He paused for a second, listening. Then he snapped "I don't give a fuck about chain of command, this is my brother we're talking about--"

He paused again. "No, you little fuck--well put him on the phone if you're going to be that way--no? You don't want to get him? Well then run the goddamn cell number and tell them I'll be there in 10."

He rattled off my phone number and hung up. Then, to my unending surprise, he reached underneath his seat and pulled out a bubble light, which he turned on and slapped onto the roof of his car.

"What--" I said, for what felt like the fifteenth time.

"Shut up," Miles snapped. "This is your fucking fault. If you hadn't fought with him I would have known he was gone faster and that would have given him a better fucking chance, so you're gonna sit there quietly and take what information I give you and like it. If you're good about I'll let you in on the briefing and if you're not I'll lock you in a goddamn padded cell and make you wait it out until we find him. Are we clear?"

"Yes," I snapped. I wanted to say a lot more, but I didn't want to be left in the dark any more then necessary. He shot me a cold glance as he sped through an intersection

"Good," he returned curtly. "Okay, first of all, when I said 'I work for the government' a few weeks back, I meant 'I work for the FBI.' Only I'm not allowed to tell you that since I only really consult anymore. There are a couple cases I've kept open and this is part of one of them, and it's all very illegal that I'm even involved, but I'm the best they've got and so they waive some stuff."

"I--"

"No talking," Miles snapped, turning a hard corner. "We are going to this particular case's headquarters. You will not remember where it is. You will not tell anyone you have been there. You will not repeat any names, information, or locations that you may hear discussed. When this is over, it will never have happened. Do you understand?"

"Yes," I snapped again. He was silent for a moment. Then:

"Do you love my brother?" he asked, turning another corner. I opened my mouth and then shut it, blinking at him.

"What?"

"Do you love," he repeated, speaking more clearly, "my fucking brother?"

"Yes," I growled. "Yes, of course I do, how can you even--"

"Right. Okay. Good. This is entirely your fault but I'm going to bring you along anyway, because he'd want that. Don't say anything or I'll change my mind."

"Where is--"

"I don't fucking know!" Miles cried. "I don't fucking know where he is and I happen to love him too, so you need to chill the fuck out. I'll be brief you with the rest of the team in attendance. Now shut up."

I shut up. We sat in furious silence for five more minutes, and then we pulled into a parking lot. I followed Miles into what looked like an abandoned warehouse.

It was, in fact, not an abandoned warehouse. Inside there were fifteen people, about thirty computers, and a massive selection of weapons. I stared, my mouth working in disbelief.

"Right," Miles said to the room at large, "Sherlock's been taken. We knew this was a possibility, but we need to work fast since we don't have a timestamp. Best guess is yesterday, sometime after eleven. This is his roommate; I'm granting him full clearance and I don't give a fuck if you object. Who has the cell transcript?"

"Uh," someone said. I turned to find a small man in thick black glasses next to me. "I'm trying, but there's some kind of encrypted--"

"Damn it," Miles hissed. "Hack it and hack it fast, they'll have it erased from the records soon if we're not careful. If you can't manage it get me, I'll do it my fucking self if I have to."

"I'll manage it," he said grimly. I glanced between them incredulously.

"How do you have transcripts of my cell phone conversations?" I asked. "Has my phone been tapped? What the hell--"

"Don't tell me you haven't heard of the Patriot Act," the little man said, giving me a disparaging look. I blinked at him.

"Today, Dante," Miles snapped, and the man scuttled off.

"Right," he said, turning to me. "I'm going to explain this as best I can. Don't ask questions. Don't blink at me like a beached whale. Don't yell until I'm done."

"Fine," I bit out. "I just want to know where he is."

"Can't tell you that," Miles sighed. "Wish I could. Here's what I know--the guy Sherlock's been working for is not a professor, and his name isn't Moriarty. It's Mihailov; he's the head of a powerful Russian drug cartel."

"What?" I cried. Miles glared at me.

"Did l or did I not," he said, his voice dangerous, "tell you not to fucking yell?" I closed my mouth and met him glare for glare. After a second he broke his gaze and continued.

"Mihailov was my biggest case when I was an agent. He's clean--suspiciously clean. We've got no idea how he's done it, but for everything he's had a hand in--and he's had a hand in a lot of shit--he's never gone down for anything. I landed my first big defense contract and left the Bureau three years ago, but they kept me on for this case and a few others."

"As best we can tell, Mihailov's sales have plummeted in the last few years. He needed a new angle, and so he started fishing around for promising pharmaceutical work. Basically, I think, he's looking to design the next big drug--like E or meth, you know. He might want to do worse, there are a lot of possibilities with what's being developed. In any case, when you've got the connections he does, they can lead you anywhere--even to some kid claiming to be the next hotshot in organic chemistry, looking for someone to take him on as a grad student with a thesis topic that's all but impossible to actually prove--"

"Oh, Holmes, goddamn your stupid ego," I breathed. Miles nodded grimly.

"He figured Moriarty wasn't Moriarty a few weeks in and came to me. I wanted to pull him out, put him into Witness Protection, but he fought me. Said no one else would fund him, that in a lot of ways it was the best we could hope for--he could develop drugs that would cure diseases and we could get Mihailov on something that would stick."

Miles coughed, then. It took me a second to realize he was covering a break in his voice. "I let him convince me it would be fine, and we trained him as best we could--illegal as shit, but we had fuck all to go on and he promised me he'd tell me if he was getting in over his head. And I knew it had been bad over the last few weeks, but I had no idea--"

"Wait just a goddamn minute," I said, glaring at him. "You're telling me that you, knowing how stupid Holmes can be, knowing how ridiculously invested he is in this project--you knowingly sent him to work for the head of a Russian drug cartel. Is this what you're telling me?"

"Yes," Miles snapped. "And I know how it sounds, but he's always been too smart for his own good and he did really well in the training--"

"You sent a fucking civilian into the line of fire," I growled at him, "and you think this is my fucking fault?"

"If you hadn't been such a bastard--" Miles started hotly.

"Fuck you," I managed, and then I punched him in the face.

Now, look. Miles is a lot bigger than me--a lot bigger than me--and both of his legs work. He had also, as it turned out, been trained by the goddamn FBI. So the fact that he reeled back for only a second and then hit me so hard I saw stars doesn't really dent my pride much. It was only to be expected.

I did leave him with wicked shiner, though. I'm pretty fucking proud of that.

When I'd recovered from the blow to my face I growled and made to launch at him, but a pair of arms was suddenly on me, holding me back. I struggled against them for a minute, then noticed that someone was holding Miles back as well. That slowed me, and I glanced up to see a large man standing between us. Everything about him screamed "officer," and some hardwired part of my brain immediately responded to that. I stood straighter and stopped fighting against the person restraining me entirely.

"You ladies wanna cool your jets?" the man asked. Miles, too, had straightened up, and was looking at this new person with something approaching remorse on his features.

"Sorry, sir," he mumbled.

I felt my as-yet unseen captor release me at the same moment I saw Miles' do the same. The man standing between us smiled ruefully, patting Miles on the shoulder.

"It's okay," he said. "Emotions running high, I know how it goes. Though I will point out that this is exactly why I wanted to pull you from this case."

"Yes, sir," Miles said, "I know, sir." The man sighed, removing his hand from Miles' shoulder and turning to me.

"And you must be John Watson," he said, smiling. I nodded once, still holding myself ramrod straight, and he laughed. "At ease, solider. I appreciate the gesture, but I've been out of the military for fifteen years."

"Respect is respect, sir," I said, but I let myself relax. He looked me over, nodding his approval.

"Alright, son," he said, "I'm not going to tell you my name, because this is operation is so far rogue at this point that it's disgusting, and security's my primary goal. But I like you, and I like what I've seen in your file, and you clearly mean a lot to my favorite civilian, so I'm not going to shut you out of this. You can call me Joseph."

"You know Holmes?" I asked. Joseph laughed again.

"I trained Holmes," he said, "what little training he had, anyway. Smart kid--a little off, but definitely brilliant. I'm a big fan."

"Me too," I said quietly. He gave me a small, sad little smile. Then he turned to Miles, his face serious.

"Right," he said, "do what you have to do. I'm giving you full control of this, but if you fuck it up it's my head that's gonna roll. So don't fuck it up, yeah?"

"Yes sir," Miles said, standing a little straighter. Joseph sighed, looking us over.

"I'll be on premises," he said, "because if I'm not and this case gets out, it'll be fifteen jobs instead of just mine. But I'm not getting any more involved than I need to be, because I just don't know the material. Let me know if you need clearance for anything."

"Sir," Miles said, "thank you, sir."

"You're welcome," he said. "Get to it."

He left. Miles and I stared daggers at each for a minute, and then he sighed and gestured at the table.

"Sit," he said. I did, and he followed suit, sliding into the chair next to mine.

"Alex," he barked. A woman skidded to a stop in front of him a second later. "Give me everything we've got."

Chapter Text

Everything they had, as it turned out, wasn't much.

It took Dante nearly an hour to hack into the blocked mainframe and access the transcript of my conversation. I insisted that I could remember all of it, but Miles dismissed this, telling me I'd undoubtedly miss something important. I would have fought him on it, but the fury that had kept me moving forward had abated, and I was left a terrified, unhinged wreck. Of course, once he had the file in front of him, he swore, throwing it aside and claiming it useless rambling. I hardly heard him.

If he dies, I thought, looking over file upon file of Mihailov's alleged misdeeds, I am never going to forgive myself. If he dies I am never going to get over it, if he dies I'm going to lock myself up in a mental hospital and never ever come out, he can't die, he can't die--

Eventually, all the noise in the room faded out--Miles' furious barking and frustrated dismal of the transcript, Dante's frantic typing, Alex's clipped, elegant brainstorming. All I could do was stare at the photos in front of me, mutilated bodies and exploded buildings, and think, he can't fucking die.

Night had fallen when I felt someone put a hand on my shoulder. I looked up; Dante was standing over me, sympathy written across his features.

"You need a break," he said, "come on."

"Shouldn't you be--" I started, surprised by how raspy my voice was. He shook his head.

"Alex took over what I was doing. Come on. You smoke, right? We'll grab a cig and then get some of the pizza they ordered."

"They ordered pizza?" I asked, my voice small. He sighed.

"See? And you've got the crazy eyes, too. You need to get out, come on."

Almost blindly--he can't die, he can't die, he can't die--I followed Dante outside. He sat down on a window ledge, hoisting himself up a little to do so, and gestured for me to follow suit. I did, and offered him a cigarette; he turned it down, smiling slightly.

"Thanks, but no," he said. "I don't touch the things unless circumstance demands it."

I looked at him askance, but he just shrugged at me. He was a strange little guy, bald and round-eyed, but he seemed nice enough. I smoked my way through half of the cigarette wondering about him, and then the chorus started again--Holmes pulling away from me, Holmes looking at me like I'd slapped him, Holmes' face on those bodies--

"Hey," Dante snapped, jerking me out of it. I turned to look at him, and he sighed heavily. "Your friend. He reminds me of a guy I know, and so believe me when I say this--you're not going to get anywhere driving yourself crazy over the shit he gets himself into."

"I--" I sighed, taking a drag. "I made a really bad fucking mistake right before he left, and I just--"

"You're worried about him," Dante finished. "I get that, I do. But you've got to shut it out if you want to get anything done."

I looked at him for a long moment. He shrugged at me, as if to say "I don't make the rules," and I actually laughed a little.

"You're not really anything like I pictured an FBI agent," I said after a moment had passed. He snorted out a disgusted laugh.

"Ugh, and thank god for that. I'm not one. I'm here as a favor to Miles--he got me and some friends of mine out of a tight spot a few years ago, and it's hard for him to find people who will work with him."

"Why?" I asked, genuinely curious. Dante shrugged again.

"Because he's a dick? Because he thinks he's smarter than everyone? Because he punches people in the face if he feels like they deserve it?"

My hand drifted up to my already blackened eye, and I smiled, a sad, rueful thing. "He's not a bad guy," I said, sighing. Dante nodded at me.

"That's true," he said, hopping off the ledge and brushing himself off once. Then he paused, looking me over.

"John," he said, giving me a strange look.

"What?"

"I don't want to get your hopes up, but…" he paused again, clearly weighing his words out. When he spoke again his voice was measured, careful. "If your Holmes is anything like my friend, there's a message in that transcript. I know Miles didn't catch it--but you might. He might have meant you to. You should take a look."

"You think?" I asked, breathily. He held up a hand.

"Don't get your hopes--" he started, but I was already running inside.

I spent hours staring blindly at the sheets of paper, running every connection I could possibly think of. It had to mean something--none of it made sense and it had to mean something--and eventually even Miles took pity on me. He leaned over into my personal space and gently pulled the paper away from me, putting a heavy hand on my shoulder.

"John," he said, very quietly. "I know this is hard, but there's nothing there. I've already gone over it myself, and I've had Dante hack every connection I could think of--"

"Hack," I repeated suddenly, cutting him off. Miles looked at me quizzically, but it took me a second to pull my thoughts together. I could have been wrong, of course, but--

"Miles," I said, "why did you break his arm when he was 13?"

"I didn't," Miles scowled. "He likes to say I did because he's an obnoxious little shit, but I didn't do a damned thing to him. I was chasing him and he fell and broke his arm. It's an in-joke."

"Fine, fine," I said, brushing him aside. "Why were you chasing him, then?"

"He'd just learned to code," Miles said, shrugging a shoulder. "Hacked into my computer and changed my email passwords--"

"Oh my god," I breathed. I shoved back from the table and stood, looking frantically around. "Where the fuck did my laptop bag go? Where'd you put it?"

"Anything you need a computer for--" Miles started.

"No!" I said furiously. "He hacked my fucking passwords too, about a month ago. Blocked me out of all my online poker accounts--the thing about gambling--"

"You think he left a message on your computer," Miles finished, his eyes lighting up. "Oh my god--would he really have been that stu--of course, it's him. Where the fuck is that bag?"

We looked around for a minute, knocking over piles of paper and very nearly an entire pot of coffee before we remembered we'd left it in the car. Miles ran out and got it, whipping it out of its case and opening it the minute he got inside. He pulled up a black screen somehow--hey, I never claimed to be good with technology--and then started typing with a crazed fervor. Everyone in the room stopped what they were doing to watch him; I leaned over his shoulder, desperate and entirely at sea.

"Lazy code," Miles muttered, "no backdoor--Sherlock, damn it, where did you--"

He typed in a string of letters and hit enter, and suddenly the black screen gave way to a video. Holmes was in our apartment, sitting on the couch; the room was almost entirely dark, and he was wearing what he'd on in my "dream." It was all I could not to reach out and run my fingers along the screen, but I shoved my hands in my pockets and watched.

"Hey," he said, glancing around and then focusing on the camera. "So, uh, if I'm wrong about this I'm going to feel really fucking dumb about this Spy vs. Spy shit--but I really hope I'm wrong. I'd love to be wrong, actually, but I really don't think--ah, fuck. Look, if you're watching this then Moriarty or whatever the fuck his real name is has grabbed me, so I'm going to tell you everything I know and shit, and then hopefully you can come rescue me before they kill me."

He laughed a little then, a desperate, wheezing sound, and my heart clenched. "I really fucking hope I'm wrong," he muttered, and then he sighed and continued.

"So, right. I figured out how to make my thesis work today, only took me a year and a fucking half, and there's some shit I need to go get out of my lab tomorrow, some quick tests I need to run. I've been working at home to keep him from keeping tabs on me, but I know he wants me to divert into designing--I think it's some kind of mind control drug he really wants, actually, which is just great. But he'd settle for mind-altering, and anyway I think he's been waiting for me to get to a point where it's clear I could start doing functional design work. Which," and he paused here, laughing hollowly again, "is the point I've gotten to."

"I know he's bugged the lab, and I know he hasn't bugged the apartment--but there's a homeless dude living up the block who wasn't here a week ago, so I think we're being watched. Miles, fuck, I bet you're tearing your fucking hair out--I've got no way to know if the bar is bugged or not, but I'm sure he's gotten into your surveillance feed. I'm pretty sure he's tapping my phone too, and homeless dude is following me and I don't know how to tell you--and I'm probably not gonna. If you're watching this now I didn't tell you, and I'm sorry, man. I should tell you, I should, but--"

He rubbed a hand over his face and then tilted his head back, blinking at the ceiling. "This is such a fucking mess," he said quietly. "I don't want you to be--I don't want you to get hurt, and you'll just pull out a gun and come down to my lab and these assholes--they want me. They need me, they don't need you, they'll just kill you--"

He stopped again. Then he pulled up the sleeve of his shirt, and I felt my breath catch when I saw a gauze bandage around his upper arm. I'd forgotten about that, let that slip to the back of my mind in the face of everything else that had been going on--but he'd been wearing it that night he climbed into my bed.

"Right," he said. "Remember that GPS chip you gave me that I wouldn't carry? I modified it, kind of, and, uh, installed it. Sorry, I know that's gross. It won't send out a signal constantly because that would be too easy to pick up on, but every 48 hours it'll send out a pulse to this computer with my location. So, you know, you can find me and stuff if you need to."

"And hey, Appleseed--" I choked on my own spit, but he only smiled sadly into the screen. "I'm really sorry to have put you through this, I'd fucking kill you if you did it to me, but it's--you know, the more time I spend hiding from them the more likely they'd be to bust into the apartment and grab you or something, and I couldn't--they can't do that. So just--when I finish this I'm gonna do something that's probably really stupid. If it is stupid, just forget everything I say in there, okay? And if it's not I mean every fucking word, John, and either way I'm sorry."

I felt my eyes stinging; I felt everyone in the room carefully not look at me. I wanted to look up, but I couldn't bear to tear my eyes from his face. He tried to smile; his mouth quirked strangely and fell flat, and he ran an agitated hand through his hair.

"Okay," he said, with one more burst of hollow laughter. "I'm--I'm gonna go. Just, uh, try to get to me quick after the pulse, okay? If they figure out that I'm doing that it's going to be really fucking unpleasant. If they even take me, heh. If this isn't just some paranoid delusion."

"I'm sorry, guys," he said, and then the video cut out and he was gone.

--

We all stared at the screen for a minute. Then Miles made a strangled kind of noise and pushed back his chair, running into the other room. For a second, I had a detached, irrational thought he was just trying to get away. Then I heard him yelling for Joseph, screaming at the top of his fucking lungs, and I shuddered back to myself.

I could barely breathe as I heard Miles explaining what had just happened, as I heard him say "helicopter," and "safehouse," and "mobilize." When he and Joseph came back into the room I looked up at them with wide eyes.

"It's a waiting game now," Joseph said, giving me a horribly kind look. "There's nothing you can do until we get the signal."

"If we get the signal," someone muttered. I was just with it enough to see Joseph shoot a murderous glare toward the direction of the voice; then I swallowed hard and stood on shaking legs.

"I need--" I started. My voice broke, and I coughed and tried again. "I need a cigarette," I managed, and I turned and walked out before anyone could stop me.

I leaned against the outside wall of the building, pulled a cigarette out with trembling fingers, and tried to light it. I couldn't get the damned thing to catch, I couldn't get the fire to make it to the right spot, couldn't align anything, so I kept trying. Every click of the lighter reminded me of a cocked gun, of a grenade pin, of Holmes' terrified face, and after the tenth one I hurled the thing away from me, furious.

My fury shattered a second later, and my legs gave out under me. I sank to the filthy ground, covered in glass shards and cigarette butts, and shook there for a long, long time.

It was Miles who finally came out after me, just as dawn was beginning to break. "John," he said, and his voice was as thick as my thoughts were, heavy with the weight of it, with the finality of that message. I looked up at him and could see the fear in his eyes, and that--for whatever reason--was the last straw.

"He's," I tried, but the word got twisted into a tangled sob. I choked on it, trying to reign in back, but I couldn't; the noise of it burst out from me, shameful and raw. I pulled my knees to my chest and covered my face with my hands and tried to control myself, hoping Miles would leave me to my own embarrassing display.

He sat down next to me instead, put a broad hand on my back. "I know," he said, and the fuck if I didn't let it go. I wept wrenchingly into my palms, hating myself for it and unable to stop. I couldn't breathe--I couldn't breathe--he'd come into my room and he'd told me he loved me as best he knew how and then he'd given himself up for me and I'd let him, I'd let him think that I hated him and he'd still done it--

"We're going to find him," Miles said. He didn't sound sure but he did sound fierce, feral even, like he'd kill anyone who got in his way. It was a comfort of sorts. "We're going to find him and he's going to be fine, and then this is never going to fucking happen again. Never."

I nodded into my hands; the tears had stopped but my breathing was still hitching, in that horrible, unstoppable way it does when you've only stopped crying because you have to. I wiped my face as best I could and then he was pressing a Kleenex into my hand, patting me on the shoulder.

"It's not your fault," he said softly. There were birds chirping vaguely in the distance and even that made me think of Holmes, Holmes scared and unsure on the top of that hill, asking me if I was really his best friend. "It's mine, I shouldn't have--"

"Don't," I said. "He'd fucking hate that. I'm sorry I punched you."

Miles gave me a sad half smile. "I'm sorry I punched you too," he said. "That's a hell of a black eye you've got there."

"Yeah, probably not making it better by bawling like a pussy girl," I joked. The levity in my attempt fell more than a little flat but he snorted out something like a laugh anyway.

"Irene'd kill you if she heard you talk like that," he said. Then he sighed. "And frankly, man, if I that wasn't a room full of men who have to follow my orders--" he coughed, blinking up at the sky.

"Yeah," I said softly. "Yeah, I figured as much."

We smiled at each other--sad, strange things in the early morning light. Then he stood and offered me his hand. I took it, and he hauled me up, and we went inside, ready to weather the most miserable fucking wait of our lives.

Chapter Text

We waited.

We waited.

We waited, and we started to give up hope. He'd said 48 hours and it had been longer than that since he'd recorded the video--what if we'd missed it? What if we'd taken too long to figure out the message behind his phone call? What if the pulse had been sent out before we'd even bothered to get the computer open, and he was prone on the floor somewhere, already lost to us?

We waited, and we all dealt with the stress differently. Miles kept clenching and unclenching his fists, his grip on whatever he was holding going white-knuckled and then slack. He broke two coffee mugs by dropping them, and crushed a full soda can between his fingers absently, looking shocked when the spray hit him in the face. Dante, in the corner--who didn't even know Holmes but seemed to have taken a personal hold of the case--kept muttering under his breath, trying random hacks into his own copied version of my hard drive. Joseph twitched, little jerks of his arms and legs betraying his tension.

For my part, I sat still, tracing the grain of the wooden table with my thumb and hoping, hoping, hoping.

We waited and waited and waited, and at 9:15 my computer started beeping. We all jumped and ran to it, and watched with baited breath as a loading screen came up. We watched, and the screen coalesced into a map, with a small, blinking green dot on it.

We were all still for a minute.Then Miles let out a whoop of joy and I nearly fell to my knees. He was far--nearly two hours away--but there were a helicopter waiting on the roof, a pilot at the ready, and ground units ready to mobilize all over the state. We scrambled over each other, grabbing the weapons and bags we'd laid out, and then Miles was screaming "Go, go, go," and those of us who were flying headed up to the roof.

To this day, I am sickeningly, heart-wrenchingly grateful that I was one of those people.

Miles Holmes takes up a lot of space in a helicopter. So does Joseph, whose last name I have never once been told. So do I--I'm not fat by any stretch of the imagination, but I am tall, and my shoulders didn't stop being broad when I got shot in the leg. Our pilot wasn't a small guy, and the other two team members who'd come with us were both build like linebackers. It was a tight squeeze, and I've never been more okay with being uncomfortable. All I could think about was getting to Holmes, was finding Holmes alive, was pulling Holmes into my arms and--

Well. I'm sure you can imagine the rest of that sentence.

Both Miles and Joseph were on the phone for almost the entire 45 minute ride, barking orders to the local police departments in the area. I wondered idly how they could hear themselves think with all the noise, with all the stress, but that might have been because I was barely holding it together. When I look back on it, I remember that I was shaking; I remember getting concerned looks from the pilot, from the agents we'd brought with us. At the time I wasn't aware of much except how fast we were going. I kept leaning over to check that, to confirm it was as fast as possible.

I don't know what I thought I was going to do if it wasn't, but it helped, god knows why. I think Miles and Joseph stayed on their phones for the same reason--any distraction was a good distraction. What a hash those other agents must have thought we were making of the thing, three emotionally invested people on a rescue mission, two of them not even members of the Bureau, one of them not even trained. I didn't worry about that then. I didn't worry about much, then, other than getting to Holmes.

Ten minutes before we landed, Miles and Joseph ended their calls and turned to us. "Okay, boys," Joseph yelled into the headset he'd finally put back on, "this is what we're going to do. The tracking pulse was coming out of a private compound about 15 clicks up. We're going to land before that and go on foot so we don't spook them--the place is surrounded, but they've got a hostage, so they've got an advantage."

"We think he's probably in the middle building," Miles continued, "based on the data, but it's nearly an hour old and they couldn't move him. He's still in there unless they've got tunnels out, but we don't know his condition--nobody moves until our word, you got that?"

Everyone nodded but me. I was suddenly very focused on my own shoes.

"You got that, solider?" Joseph yelled. I looked up at nodded curtly at him, but I knew it was a fucking lie. I knew I'd move whenever I thought I had to.

I knew I wouldn't be able to stop myself.

We landed a few minutes later, the plan firmly in place, and got out of the chopper as fast as we could. Miles led us forward, crouching low and moving through the trees. I was the last person behind him but still making damned good time for a guy with one bad leg, for a guy who had never been trained in this particular brand of mission before. They'd given me a gun--a small revolver, nothing fancy--and made me sign about 15 documents saying I wouldn't sue them. I was still getting looks that said "liability," but I ignored them.

The area was heavily wooded. There were brambles and bushes to duck under, trees to slide behind. But we were soon in view of the compound; two guards were at the front gate, chattering nervously between themselves. It was clear that something had them on high alert.

"Shit," Miles hissed. "They've been tipped. Last I talked to the locals there weren't any front guards."

"We'll have to take them out," Joseph whispered back. "Blake, Ferguson, on my mark. Minimal impact--we don't want to alert anyone. Go!"

At this last Blake and Ferguson--and I'll be honest, I might be remembering those names totally wrong--moved soundlessly. I couldn't see them for a second and then, suddenly, they were each grappling with a guard. It felt like the fight took ten minutes, but it probably took three. It probably took one, really; no one had a chance to make any noise and soon we were slipping inside, looking around.

The lights were out in every building but the center one. I was already walking forward when Miles put a hand to my chest. "Shhhh," he hissed, and then--

The last time I had heard gunfire, real gunfire, was in Iraq. Based on my reaction to the facsimile of it in the club, I'd imagined I would fall to pieces if I ever heard a real close-range shot again. I was wrong--or then again, maybe I wasn't. Maybe I was already so far gone that there was nothing more my PTSD could do.

In any case, I was already on the ground when Miles gave the order to get down. He and Joseph were already rolling, responding to the source of the noise--the direction of the crossfire made me think sniper, but I wasn't sure. I didn't bother stopping to check, just dragging myself forward in a frantic, cramped crawl.

"You stupid fuck," I could hear Miles yelling. I could hear sirens too, the local guys bursting through the gate, but the gunshots had stopped. Before anyone could grab me I threw myself up onto my feet and half-ran, half limped into the main building. Miles was at my back in an instant, Blake and Ferguson behind him. I could hear Joseph outside, screaming orders to the local cops.

"You motherfucking suicidal little--" Miles began, but there were guards bursting out from behind closed doors. He swore again and started firing.

"Watson," he yelled, "don't you fucking dare--"

"You've got this, right?" I called back, and ran down the hall.

No, I have no idea how I didn't get shot. No, I have no idea how many of those fuckers I wounded--I know I drew my gun, know I pulled the trigger more than once. My brain was running on adrenaline and sleeplessness, and all I knew--all I could remember ever knowing--that if there were this many guards out here, the person they were protecting had to be at the end of the hall. And maybe that person didn't have Holmes anymore, maybe Holmes was somewhere else, but he would know where that was.

Some days I think that it was some kind of divine providence that got me through that hallway. Some days I think it was luck. Holmes says it was obviously the driving force of my everlasting loooove, but I think he just doesn't like to talk about it. Considering everything, I can't really blame him.

There was a door at the end of the hallway. I didn't even try the doorknob--I know because my shoulder wasn't doing awesome before I shoved my way through it, knocking it off it's fucking hinges. I'm still in PT for that, and it is still, to the day, motherfucking worth it.

There was a man in a business suit standing there. He looked--well, he looked a lot like I imagined a Russian drug king might look. Dark hair, a hooked nose, a cocked gun in his hand, an expression of inexpressible malice across his face.

"Oh," he said, laughing a little on the word. "Isn't this just like the movies. At the last minute, the hero bursts in to save the day. Well, Mr. Watson, I'm afraid you're a little too late. It's a shame I'll have to kill you too."

And you know, it might have stopped me. The expression, the clearly murderous intent in his tone, the obvious loaded weapon in his hand. It might have stopped me, except that I could see a body behind him, crumpled and bleeding on the floor. His face was turned away from me, but I'd have known him anywhere--and even if I wouldn't have, the hair was a dead fucking giveaway.

Holmes.

I looked at Mihailov like he was a bug on the bottom of my fucking shoe. "You motherfucker," I hissed, "do you think you fucking scare me?"

I don't know what happened next--it all happened too quickly for me to tell. He fired, I know that, but I don't remember if I moved before or after his shot. Logic says before; logic says at that range, if I'd moved after, it would have killed me. But logic said I wouldn't have made it through the hallway, too. Logic said I would never have moved in with a man named Sherlock Holmes, fallen madly in love with him and followed him into a den of fucking thieves.

Logic said a lot of stupid things.

He fired and I moved; who knows which came first. I do recall the look of surprised fury that crossed his face right before I hit him in the side of his neck with my cane, dropping my gun to swing it like a baseball bat. Some people might have gone for his head, I guess. Some might have gone for his stomach. I was training to be a fucking doctor; I knew where his pressure points were.

God, in retrospect, I can't believe I didn't stop to see if I'd killed him. I'm a lot of things but I'm not a murderer, no matter how enraged I was. But I was too far gone by that point to care; I watched him crumple and then I dropped my cane and stumbled over to Holmes' body, sitting him up and feeling desperately for a pulse, hearing the words too late over and over and over, a hideous echo.

The moment that his eyes fluttered open was the single best moment of my life, bar none. Fuck graduating college. Fuck my military commendations. Fuck every little victory that's ever come to me--that moment, seeing his eyelashes move, still nearly brings me to tears.

He coughed, once, twice, and blinked up at me. There was a haze of pain in his gaze, but he was still him, he was still fucking breathing. I smiled at him, my cheeks hurting with the effort of it, as the gunfire in the background faded out of my hearing.

"John," he rasped. Then: "I'm alive?"

"Fuck, I have never been so glad to say yes to something," I whispered, checking him over as I did so. A couple of broken ribs, definitely, and there was a cut on his face, right under the faded scar of the burn he'd made me look at months before. The fingers on his left hand were badly broken; I wanted to cry, looking at them, but my buoying joy at the sheer sounding of his broken breaths wouldn't allow it. He was bleeding heavily--cuts up his arms, across his legs--but nothing that indicated he was going to bleed out before we got him to a hospital.

"I didn't tell them," he choked. "I didn't, I didn't give them anything, they don't know--"

"Holmes, I don't care if you sold them every state secret we've got," I told him, and then I took his face between my hands and kissed him. It was a gentle kiss, probably more than he could handle, but I couldn't help myself--I was so relieved, so fucking glad he was alive, that I had to do something. He moaned softly; in pleasure or pain, I'm still not sure. I pulled back from him, cupping his face in my hand.

He looked at me for a long moment. Then he winced and lifted his hand--his right hand, the hand they hadn't mangled--and touched the tender skin underneath my blackened eye.

"You're hurt," he whispered. It was the single most ridiculous thing he'd ever said to me, and he's said a lot of ridiculous things. I laughed, a broken, sobbing sound.

"Holmes," I said, the words strangled, "I love you so fucking much."

He smiled then. There was blood on his teeth and I couldn't bear it, all the emotion, all the fucking adrenaline crashing around me, so I turned my face so my mouth met the inside of his palm. I kissed him again, tasting the salty undersides of each of his fingers, trying to keep myself together for long enough for the team outside to--

"You motherfucking--" Miles started, bursting through the door. Then he took in the scene in front of him--the crumpled body on the floor, his brother in tatters, me crouched next to him, unable to stop kissing his palm. He was quiet for a long moment.

Then: "Well," Miles said, sounding like he might cry himself, "let's hope this bastard is alive. I want the chance to kill him my fucking self."

--

It took less time than I'd imagined it might to get a clean-up crew in, to round up the last straggling henchmen. Miles, after a cursory check as to his brother's livelihood, had more or less taken control, barking orders at anyone in range. For my part, I'd pretty much stopped paying attention to everything when Holmes' eyelids started to droop.

"I'm tired," he said, leaning toward me. I wanted nothing more than to let him sleep, but the was the chance he was concussed--I couldn't risk it.

"Hey," I said, tilting his chin up. "Hey, hey, you've got to stay awake, man. You've got to stay awake--"

"This isn't midterm season," he told me crossly. "I can sleep if I want, there aren't any whiny undergrads to stop me." Then he winced, looked me over with confused eyes. "That didn't make sense, did it? Shit, I don't--maybe I shouldn't sleep, but I'm so tired--"

His eyelids drooped again, and I started to panic. I knew, of course, that an ambulance was coming, but I couldn't let go of the idea that he was dying, that he was already dead. To have come this close to lose him--

"Tell me a story," I said. I wanted to shake him to keep him up, but I didn't want to hurt him, didn't want to jostle his ribs or his broken hand. He smiled up at me with bleary eyes.

"One time there was this crazy dude who planted apple trees," he started, and I laughed, pressing our foreheads together. "He wandered around in forests and then one time he planted too many seeds or some shit and then everyone ate apples instead of bananas, which are better for you--because--electrolytes. The end?"

"You lunatic," I murmured, so flush with relief that I could hardly bear it, "that's not how that story goes at all." He nodded, and then swallowed. From the sound he made, I could tell it was painful.

"John," he said, and he suddenly sounded a little scared--or at least, as scared as someone could sound with a voice that seemed to have been dragged across shards of glass. I pulled back and looked at him, pushing the hair out of his eyes. He gave me a quivering smile.

"I think I should be sorry about some stuff--I think I shouldn't have--"

"Don't," I said softly. "There's nothing you shouldn't have done."

"That's so not true," a third voice cut in. I glanced up sharply, but it was Miles standing above his with his arms crossed. There was a large gun in his right hand, dangling idly. I edged away from it a little.

"First of all," he said, "you shouldn't have told me you could handle this job, because I fucking believed you, Sherlock, and when I say 'I fucking believed you' I mean 'even the part where you said you wouldn't get hurt.' Secondly, you shouldn't have kept shit from me, because I could have helped you. And thirdly, you definitely shouldn't have set yourself up for capture without fucking telling me about it."

Holmes craned his neck up. It looked like it took a lot of effort.

"You're really fucking tall," he said, blinking. "Like, really tall. When'd you get so tall?"

"Goddamn it," Miles growled. Then he looked at me; I shrugged. "You're getting a lecture again when you're going to remember it," he told his brother, pointing a finger. Holmes smiled up at him, his mouth still bloody, and Miles winced.

"His ambulance is here," he said to me. I nodded, unwilling to move away. Miles sighed.

"Watson," he said, "I can't let you get in the ambulance."

"Mmhmm," I murmured, smiling reassuringly at Holmes. Then I actually processed what he'd said and whipped me head around, careful not to move any part of my body that was touching my injured friend.

"I'm sorry," I hissed, "what?"

"I can't let you go with him--wait, wait, let me explain." He sighed, scrubbing a hand across his face. "I have to get you to the safehouse, Watson. These guys--we have to hide you for awhile. I'm not sure how long. It's not safe."

"But it's safe for him?" I cried, looking back at Holmes, who was blinking up at the ceiling with a vacant expression. Miles sighed again.

"We've got a cover set up for him. A guy just died en route to the closest hospital. We've worked out a way to swap him out with that identity, but we have to get you out of here. We're not going to keep him there any longer than we have to--a couple of hours, maybe. Overnight at most."

"I am not leaving him--"

"Well you're not going to be any good to him dead--"

"I'm happy to take that fucking risk, as you may have noticed--"

"Running through a hallway of half-cocked guns is not the same as avoiding a trained fucking hit man--"

"Appleseed," Holmes coughed. I turned back to him; his eyes were slightly more focused than they had been, but not much. He smiled weakly at me.

"Do what he says, man," he murmured. His voice was almost entirely gone, and I wondered if he'd been screaming, wondered what had left it so raw. "I don't want anyone to hit you more."

He touched my eye again, and I shuddered under his fingers. "I don't want to let you out of my sight," I admitted. "Not for…uh…for the rest of my life, actually. Like, ever. Ever."

"I know I'm a lot of trouble," he said softly, which wasn't what I'd meant at all. "But Miles wouldn't take me anywhere bad. My bong's probably lonely, you should go see it."

"Holmes," I started.

"Shhh," he murmured. "You make this weird face when you're freaking out, did you know that? It's like--like, uh--" He scrunched up his face, trying to imitate me, and then let out a little gasp of pain when that aggravated the cut there. "Fuck, that was a bad plan."

"The longer we argue about this the longer it'll take to get him to a doctor," Miles cut in tersely. "The EMT's are here. I've got a guy ready to take you to the safehouse. Let go of him, Watson."

And, god help me, I did. Holmes smiled up as the medics rushed in, loading him onto a stretcher. I took his hand, squeezing briefly as he passed me, and he bit his lip, giving me a look that said a lot more than it should have been able to.

"Thank you," Miles said quietly. He pressed a cell phone into my palm. "I'll keep you updated. Dante and Joseph are going to take you home."

I walked out after them, watched Holmes get loaded into an ambulance bay, watched Miles and two agents climb in after him, flanking him. A cop climbed into the front, and then they were gone.

"C'mon, kid," Joseph said, "time to head out."

Chapter Text

The ride to the safehouse was a quiet one. I sat in the back, wringing my hands and wanting more than anything to be able to teleport myself, to have fought Miles harder and gotten into that ambulance. I knew, on some level, that he was right; my being with Holmes was an unnecessary risk to both of us. Still, it was all I could do not hurl myself out the door at every stoplight--it was all I could do to bite my tongue and keep from screaming.

Then, of course, we got to the safehouse. And actually, that's a bad way to describe it--it wasn't a safehouse so much as a saferoom. It was about the size of the living room at the apartment. There was a television, a kitchenette, a bookshelf and--to my mild amusement--a king sized bed. At least Miles knew what he was getting us into, I thought wryly, looking at it.

"Holmes is going to go crazy in here," I murmured, glancing around. "No movies, no Wii--"

"I can pick up anything you need," Dante said, smiling at me. Joseph coughed and turned away and then Dante leaned closer, pitching his voice low. "And I mean anything, man."

I looked at him. "I, uh," I said, "I don't have any cash on me, and I don't know where my wallet--"

"Don't worry about it," Dante said, grinning and pulling a credit card out of his pocket. "Miles gave me this, said I could set you guys up. He won't mind. "

I thought that over for a second. Then: "Okay," I said, smiling slightly. "I'm going to have to write you a list."

--

It took Dante two hours to round up everything I'd asked him for. When he came back, checking in with the guard at the door and smiling at me, we had a couple of the beers he'd brought with him, shooting the shit. It had been days since I'd slept at that point, and I was having a hard time focusing on anything other than how very badly I wanted Holmes to come back. Dante knew that; he was nice to me without pushing, wasn't offended when I checked the cell phone Miles had given me in the middle of one of his stories.

Twenty minutes after he'd left--"You should sleep, man," he'd said, shutting the door softly behind him--the phone rang. I jumped about a foot in the air and grabbed it, slamming it to my ear.

"Hello?" I said breathlessly.

"You spent a lot of money on my credit card," Miles said crossly. "And Dante said I owe him like $200 more in cash."

"I'll work it off," I snapped. "How is he?"

Miles sighed. "He's okay," he said. "He isn't concussed--they drugged him with something, that's why he was so out of it. We won't know for sure what it was until the bloodwork comes back, but we're thinking roofie. He doesn't remember much of what happened, which is probably for the best."

"Yeah," I said, even though my heart was sinking a little. Then a horrible thought occurred to me. "Wait, a roofie? He wasn't--they didn't--"

"No," Miles sighed, "no, he wasn't raped or anything, thank god. His left hand is a fucking mess, and three of his ribs are cracked, and he needs stitches in a few places. They pulled out one of his molars, too, but just one. I think that was their next tactic after his fingers, but I can't be sure--he doesn't remember which came first."

My hands went to fists, and I held myself back from throwing a punch into the wall. It wouldn't do any good, and he'd only yell at me when he got here. "Can I talk to him?"

"He's," Miles started. Then, in the background, I heard a very familiar voice yell out MotherFUCKER, followed immediately by Oh, FUCKING FUCKITY FUCK WHAT. I smiled, despite myself.

"He's getting his hand set," Miles finished, sounding torn between amusement and horror. I was right there with him. "Shouldn't be more than an hour or two before we get there. Sorry to put you through this, man."

"It's okay," I told him, even though it wasn't. "Tell him not to get explosion on my shirt, he'll like that."

"You two are weird," Miles informed me. "We'll see you soon."

We hung up, and then I…busied myself. Took a hot shower, letting the spray run over me until it ran ice cold. Set up some of the shit I'd had Dante procure. Got to know the guard outside a little, and then his end-of-shift replacement. By the time I heard footsteps on the stairs it was pitch black outside and I could barely keep my eyes opened, but I jumped up when I heard a knock at the door.

Miles was holding Holmes up, hunched over to cover the height difference. He--Miles, that is--looked annoyed. Holmes himself looked battleworn and pissed off and exhausted. There were stitches in the cut on his face, on his arm. He had a black eye to match the ones Miles and I were sporting, his cheek was slightly swollen, there was a massive cast on his left hand, and I could see the faint outline of heavy bandages under his shirt.

He was, in short, a fucking mess. I've never been more in love with anyone.

"Let go of me," he snapped to Miles. "Like it wasn't enough that they had to wheel me to the fucking car, I'm not a baby, I can walk."

"You can stumble," Miles agreed, his voice bright and dangerous. "And then you can break one of those cracked ribs and maybe your face! That'd be fun."

"I fucking hate you," Holmes spat.

"Yeah, well." Miles turned to me, rolling his eyes. "Good luck. He's very pleasant when he's injured, I've discovered. Very pleasant."

"He'll be fine, I like him more than you," Holmes muttered under his breath, not looking at me. Miles laughed outright.

"You'd think I hadn't just rescued you from your biggest fuck-up ever!" he returned. "And you're not even supposed to be out of the hospital, I'll take you back there if you're not careful."

"Watson rescued me," he shot back, still avoiding my gaze. "And you don't hear him lecturing me for hours on end, do you?"

My hands twitched as Miles disengaged from him, putting both hands on his brother's shoulders.

"I am glad you're alive," he said, "even if you're an obnoxious little fuck."

"I am glad you're alive," Holmes returned, the edge of his mouth twitching around a small smile, "even if I kind of want to kill you right now."

Miles laughed and removed his hands; Holmes took a step toward me and then, yes, stumbled. I caught him before Miles had a chance to move, steadying him carefully, trying to avoid jostling anything painful. He looked up at me, entirely still, and I stopped moving, staring down at him.

"See, Miles," he said, without breaking our gaze, "I like him better than you."

Out of my peripheral vision I could see Miles glance back and forth between us and then shake his head. "I'll be back tomorrow to explain how this is going to work," he said, moving to the door. "Don't leave this room."

"Not likely," I murmured, my eyes fixated on Holmes' mouth.

"Oh, ew," Miles snapped, and then he was slamming the door behind him.

Holmes and I stared at other for a long minute. I had a hand underneath his arm and one resting lightly on his hip; his good hand was on my waist, shaking slightly against my belt loops.

"Hi," I said softly.

He kept staring at me. Then he made a strangled, raw sound and leaned close, closing the distance between us. I was expecting him to kiss me, I guess, but he buried his face in my neck instead and held on to me, shaking, twisting my shirt underneath his fingers. I pulled him close, holding him as tightly as I could without hurting him

"I'm sorry," he muttered. It was muffled against my shoulder, but I heard him all the same. "I'm sorry, I know this isn't how this is supposed to--but I'm just so happy to fucking see you, John, you've got no idea--"

"I've got some idea," I growled roughly, pressing my face into his hair and breathing deeply, trying to ground myself. "Shit, I was so fucking scared--"

"I know, I know, I'm sorry--"

"Shut up," I managed. "Don't be sorry, it's okay--"

"I should have--"

"Shhh," I said. "It doesn't matter. You're alive, you're here. Don't apologize."

He pulled back from me, smiling shakily. Then his knees buckled and fell forward a little, swearing, and I sighed.

"You need to sit down," I told him, helping him over to the bed.

"I'm fine," he protested, and then he stumbled into me again. "Fuck, that hurt."

"Sit," I instructed, pushing him down. He collapsed onto the soft surface and I sat next to him, smiling when he glanced up at me with hooded eyes.

"I know I'm kind of," he said, gesturing to himself and grimacing, "I mean, this is not the best I've ever--

And I'd had about enough of that. I reached up to cup his face in my palm, running the pad of my thumb across his unscathed cheek. "I love you," I said, "you stupid, stupid fuck. You do kind of smell like a hospital, but I'm prepared to let that go--"

But then he was kissing me, dragging my lower lip between his teeth and moaning against my lips. And I buried my hand in his hair and tilted his head back a little, leaned away to drag a few light kisses along his jawline. He hissed his pleasure at this, running his uninjured hand along my back.

"I'm sorry I was an asshole," I murmured into his ear, scraping my teeth along the tender skin of his neck. He moaned aloud and arched as best he could, raking his fingers down my spine.

"I'm sorry I snuck into your room like a creeper and then got kidnapped," he gasped, as I pushed the corner of his shirt aside to lick at his collarbone. "And I'm sorry I can't--there are things I want to do but I can't, it's not that I don't want to--"

"Shut up," I growled, pushing him gently back against the pillows. "I seem to remember owing you a blowjob."

I'm not going to bother describe the technique I used to blow him; that seems narcissistic and weird, and anyway it isn't the point. The point is that Holmes has a huge cock, way bigger than any guy that skinny had any right to be walking around with, and he made these--noises. These little gasping mewling noises, like he couldn't get enough, like he was drowning in the want of it. I was so underslept that my cock only half-responded, but every time he moved a little shiver ran down my spine. For all he was injured, for all neither of us had gotten any sleep, it was one of the most perfect moments of my life; his cock in my mouth, his hand in my hair, his voice rasping out my name, over and over and over again.

When he finished I pulled away, grinning at him. "Jesus," he gasped, looking at me with wide eyes. "I should have let you do that the other night."

"Yeah, well," I sighed, moving up so I was next to him. "I thought I was dreaming, so I don't know how good at it I would have been."

"Is that why--?" he started, his eyes lighting up. I kissed him briefly--well, not so briefly, really.

"Yeah," I admitted, when we broke from each other. "When I woke up and you were in the kitchen, I thought--you know, that you were never going to want me and I'd just be torturing myself with these ridiculously vivid dreams forever--"

"And you say I'm the stupid fuck," he muttered fondly, kissing the edge of my jaw. "Ladies and gentlemen, the pot calls the kettle black."

"Mmmm," I sighed, closing my eyes. "Never said I wasn't just as bad as you."

"Worse, even." He was quiet for a minute; then I felt the bed shift, heard him groan as he levered himself up a little to look around the room.

"I'm gonna go crazy in here," he said with finality. I snorted without bothering to open my eyes.

"No you're not," I told him. "There's a Wii in the entertainment set with one of those Netflix all-access DVDs in it, a router in the corner, a laptop under the bed and beef with broccoli and beer in the fridge. And, you know, as much sex as feel up for. I think you''ll make it for a few days."

He was quiet for a second, and I was actually almost asleep when I heard him cough. I cracked one eye open and peered up at him; his eyes were very, very bright.

"John," he said, "have I actually said that I love you yet?"

"No," I said, grinning a little. "I know you do, though."

"Do you?" he asked, sniffing and clearly trying to get hold of himself. "I don't know, man, if you're gonna be this cocky--"

"I think I forgot to mention the ounce of weed and the new bong in the nightstand drawer," I interrupted him, closing my eyes again. A second later I felt his head settle down on top of my chest.

"Yeah, okay," he said, something between a laugh and a sob caught on his tone. "You're right; I love you."

An Epilogue, of Sorts

We've been in hiding for three years.

It was suggested--by Holmes, no less--that I didn't have to go with him. It was suggested that I could go back to my life, shave my mustache, and probably not be recognizable; it was suggested that I could function as I once had, and try to forget about him.

It was then suggested--by me, of course--that if anyone suggested that again, they would get a punch in the face, and after that he never bothered taking that tack with me. A good thing too, since I would have really hated to punch him.

We've lived a lot of places over the last three years, Holmes and I. We never know when we're going, or where we're going, until Miles shows up, usually with a case of beer and a sheepish expression. The first time he did that was three days after we rescued Holmes, and he got us roaring drunk before he told us he wasn't sure how long he'd have to keep us moving, hidden away.

There's a picture of us from that night, toasting and laughing with identical black eyes, that I am never going to let Holmes take off the mantle.

It was weird at first. In the grand scheme of things, we hadn't been living together for that long--a few months, really, as strange as that seems. We spent a couple very awkward days in our first new location, fucking at night and staring at each other during the day, trying to process. And then, as is the way with all awkward realities, we got used to the surreal quality of our lives. In some ways, it's been nice. We've gotten to know each other in ways we wouldn't have otherwise. Do you know Holmes, when he's really really stir crazy, when he's taken apart every piece of furniture he can find, will start to paint? Beautiful paintings too, strange mixtures of a thousand styles.

Sometimes they're done in ketchup, of course, but what can you do? The man's genius is very real, but it's selective at best. He really shouldn't be left alone for too long.

He read the Holmes books the first year, during the terrible six weeks when Mihailov was in trial and we were riding the terror that he'd go free. That was agony, him realizing every weird goddamn connection. I'd already made my peace with it--I mean, really, even Lestrade--but he would wake me up in the middle of the night, wigging out.

"Watson," he'd say, "Irene is in these books," and I'd have to reach up and kiss him quiet, bring him to relaxation with the crickets keeping time outside.

The second year, he relearned to play the violin. We went through a number of violins, actually--he'd push his healing hand too hard and get frustrated and smash the things against the wall, looking horrified when he stepped away. Luckily, I'd seen that coming, bought the cheapest ones I could find. At the end of the year he managed to keep one for three whole months, and I emailed Miles to go ahead and buy the Stradivarius for his birthday. He makes the thing fucking sing, but I can tell he still worries sometimes that he's not as good as he once was. It pisses me off on his behalf every fucking time.

This last year he's mostly been busy with the business, and I've been busy with the end of my degree. Miles has been really great with a lot of things, but especially about that; everywhere we've gone there's somehow been a university, a professor on sabbatical, a hospital willing to take me on under a false name. I've gotten a very piecemeal medical education, but it's complete, and I've been a real doctor for an entire week now. Holmes got his PhD last year, and he's sold the technology he suffered so much to develop. We've got--well. We've got a lot more money then we ever imagined we might.

Now he runs a consulting business. He changed his name--he had to, Sherlock Holmes is ridiculously easy to track down--but his crazy fucking passion is the same. He attacks the weird chemical problems they give him with his typical aplomb, and then he solves them, and they sings his praises. He's worked under a number of monikers, but Miles says it's safe for us to start functioning normally now. We're still trying to figure out how to believe him.

And--look. Some nights he wakes up with screaming nightmares, and some nights I do. He's got a long, thin scar on his arm, a short thick one on his face. We check in with each other via text message nearly constantly when we're apart, and in the mornings, when he's strung out from not sleeping and I'm groggy, he'll grab my arm and just…look at me. Look at me, like he's never going to have the chance again. It's unnerving. It's a little bit terrible. In some ways we're not the same guys we were when we met. Then again--

Well, today I woke up at dawn to the sound of him taking apart our air conditioner. "Appleseed!" he said brightly when I wandered into the living room in my pajamas, "I didn't mean to wake you, but now that you're up, can you pack me a bowl? I wanted to do a wake and bake, but I didn't exactly sleep--"

"You're a fucking idiot," I told him, casting around for his lighter anyway. "I'm only encouraging this behavior because it might knock you out."

"It's Sunday!" he said, grinning up at me from the floor. That hair--that fucking hair--was all over the place. "You said we could do a zombie movie marathon."

"No," I groaned, handing him the packed bowl and sinking onto the floor next to him, "you said that. I said maybe we could try functioning like normal people, since Miles said we could like--go places and shit--"

"We're bad at that," Holmes decided. I raised an eyebrow at him, and he laughed. "No, hey, this isn't paranoia, I promise. I just--I don't know. I want a couple more days with just you, I guess. Is that so wrong?"

"You've got a lifetime with me," I reminded him, taking the bowl from him and hitting it just because. He grinned at me. "Or at least, you will, unless I kill you for driving me crazy because you haven't exercised your newfound right to actually interact with other people. And how does the zombie marathon relate to your lack of sleep?"

"I'll sleep while we watch them," he said, shrugging. "It's not like I haven't seen them all a million times."

"But that leaves me watching zombie movies, Holmes. I don't even really like zombie movies."

"Don't talk about them that way," he hissed, snatching the bowl back reproachfully. "You'll hurt their feelings. Their bloody, undead feelings. You wouldn't like them when they're angry, John."

"That's the Hulk," I advised him, but he just rolled his eyes at me.

And now, well, now I'm typing away on my laptop and he's conked out on my chest, and Dawn of the Dead is scrolling through the credits. At some point I'm going to have to wake him--if I let him sleep much longer he'll mix up day and night again, and that's always an ordeal. But I've got to admit, the sensation of having him next to me, his breathing warm and even, his nightmares at bay; it's nice. I don't really relish the idea of making it stop.

Oh, fine, call me a sap. I don't care--I'm in love with the craziest man in the world and he's in love with me, and that, as it turns out, is my story. I stand by what I said when I started--I only meant to get a drink, and this is entirely Miles' fault, and I should have known it was a bad idea.

But the thing is, I got so much more than a drink, and I send Miles a thank you card every year, and as it turns out it wasn't a bad idea at all--it was a good idea. It was a great idea. It was a brilliant fucking idea.

I'm going to miss the air conditioner, of course, but sometimes you've gotta make a sacrifice for the cause.

Signed,
Dr. John Watson, MD

Addendum
…well. John's going to kill me for adding to this, but he should have known better than to leave it on a computer under three dummy folders and an encrypted code. It was like child's play, hacking in here. He probably knew that when he saved it. He probably wanted me to find it. He probably thought it would do me good to see him describe me as crazy in writing like a million and five times, instead of the same number of times verbally over an extended period of time.

I mean, it's not that he's wrong, but damn, I'm starting to think he has Tourette's.

Anyway. He's done an excellent job, and I'm not just saying that because I don't want him to tear me to pieces when he finds this note. Not that he would--he's not like abusive or anything, jesus, quite the opposite. Just, you know--fuck, I'm not making sense again. My point is, he's great, this is almost entirely perfect, I'm mostly just here to clear up like…four things.

1) Pot is legal where we are. And everywhere we've been. And you'll notice that he's never actually mentioned either of us purchasing it explicitly so this cannot be considered a confession or incendiary evidence or some shit if anyone should somehow find it. Call me paranoid, but I cover my fucking bases.

2) My brother is waaaaaay more of an asshole than John thinks he is. I like the dude a lot, and he's been wicked helpful, and, I mean, I love him--he's my brother, of course I love him--but he likes John more than me and it totally shows. And he did break my arm when I was 13. That was a helpful clue and the truth. Suck it, Mycroft. You rock, but suck it.

3) I SO DID NOT WRITE APPLESEED ON HIS ARM IN SHARPIE THE NIGHT WE MET. THAT WAS A LITERARY EMBELLISHMENT AND, ALSO, A LIE. It was a dry-erase marker. Bastard.

4) Heh. You know, you'd only kind of know it from reading this, but John totally thinks he got the good end of the deal in this relationship. I mean, Jesus Christ, he wrote this whole epic love story down like a sappy girl, didn't he? But I love him for it. And actually I just love him--and I totally got the better end of the stick. I totally, totally did. I'm still waiting for him to realize that.

I think--yeah, that's pretty much it. God, he's gonna be piiiiissed when he finds this little addendum…I wonder if he'll tell me? Probably not, because that would mean admitting to rereading this like, I say again, a very lovable but completely sappy girl, and that'd dent his pride. He's big on his pride, Appleseed. Bigger than you'd think.

But I guess you knew that, right? Oh, who fucking knows, I need more beer if I'm going to attempt literary genius. I'm a science guy! I run on Gaga and chemistry, man. Gaga and chemistry and John Watson's dick.

Cheers,
Dr. Forrest Holmes, PhD