---
title: "Though We Went Our Separate Ways"
author: "Basser"
lang: en
id: "CRV-11"
series: "Can't Rewind Verse"
series_part: 11
fandom: "Sherlock (TV)"
rating: "Teen And Up Audiences"
warnings: ["No Archive Warnings Apply"]
words: 49856
chapters: 13
date: 2013-11-17
status: "complete"
written_by: human
summary: "Whoever this freckled bloke was he'd certainly cornered the market on eliciting uncharacteristic reactions from Sherlock Holmes. John Watson, meet Eric Crenshaw."
---

# Though We Went Our Separate Ways

## Chapter 1

**««**

It was the usual bedlam of a recent crime scene, the smouldering ruins of a block of flats in the background, officers milling about the premises, everything ensconced by ubiquitous yellow tape. John meandered along in the wake of Sherlock's billowing coat and tried not to let his eyes dwell too long on the ambulances parked helter-skelter amongst the debris. No fatalities, thank god, but the tenants of the unfortunate building all seemed to be in various states of treatment for injuries ranging from mild burns to smoke inhalation.

Sherlock, in his usual manner, completely ignored the chaos around him. He made a beeline for the figure of Lestrade standing near a cordoned-off patch of pavement. John was quite certain they weren't welcome here - Sherlock hadn't even been contacted about this case, after all; he'd just caught a mention of it on the news and decided for whatever inscrutable reason that the flat fire had to be connected to an ongoing investigation of his.

As John had expected, Lestrade wasted no time in making a half-hearted attempt to shoo the both of them off his crime scene.

"Sherlock, honestly, you can't just-" he started, exasperated, as Donovan glared from behind him. Sherlock promptly cut over the imminent lecture.

"Witnesses?"

Lestrade worked his jaw a tick, looking like he wanted to argue, then simply sighed and indicated a man sitting on the bonnet of a parked squadcar some metres off. "Just the one."

Sherlock didn't even wait to hear the witness' name, just sauntered boldly toward the car and the figure seated atop it. The bloke had his head down, rummaging through his trouser pockets for something, and thus didn't immediately notice when Sherlock started in with his usual condescending clip of an interrogation.

"You were a personal friend of the chief suspect, present in his flat from the time of four in the morning to seven in the evening, ample opportunity to observe his behaviour hours before the fire," Sherlock rattled off impatiently as they neared the witness. Finally the man looked up with a confused expression on a soot-streaked, freckled face. His gaze darted toward John first before flicking over to Sherlock... whereupon his round, amber-brown eyes seemed to widen in shock. He froze in place with his hand half out of his pocket.

Sherlock, of course, merely carried on speaking, his gaze having flitted off into the clouds of smoke some seconds ago as if actually paying attention to the person he was talking to were beneath him.

"What precisely did he say in reference... to..."

John shot a startled look sidelong as Sherlock abruptly trailed off mid-sentence. Beside him the detective had finally shifted his gaze away from the smoke and trained it on the witness' face. Their expressions now mirrored twin looks of abject shock as they stared each other down.

"What's wrong?" John flitted his eyes back and forth between the two men, instantly on the alert. What? Was there a hidden weapon? Did the bloke have a gun on him?

"... oh," Sherlock muttered after a rather long pause. He seemed to have frozen with his hands tucked neatly behind his back, posture a picture-perfect image of calm poise. The collected stance stood in ridiculous contrast to the look of stunned surprise on his face.

"Bloody..." The witness' voice faded out as he slowly moved his hands away from his pockets. Freckled cheeks bunched up a bit in a tiny, half-bewildered smile, one hand going to rub nervously at the back of his head as he tried again with a more appropriate reply. "Er... hi?"

Sherlock just kept staring. John, for his part, was beginning to feel very out of the loop. Lacking anything to say, however, he held his tongue and watched with interest as Sherlock's ramrod-straight posture seemed to melt into an awkward, fidgety quest for something to do with his hands.

"What are you doing at a flat in Islington?" the detective asked rather suddenly, sounding a tad bit scandalised. He'd finally shoved his fists into the front pockets of his greatcoat in an odd sort of defensive-looking posture and stood half-glaring at the man in front of them.

"I, er... my friend lives here?" The witness gave them a slightly confused shrug and another befuddled smile. His accent was difficult to place - estuary, mostly, but with buried hints of a cockney drawl and some vague northern influences. "Or, I mean... he did, anyway. It's a bit burnt now."

Sherlock frowned. "You've relocated to Lancaster. Bit of a trip just to visit a *friend.*"

"Well it was more for business, mostly. London's got a better import selection on woodwinds so I figured I'd..." The man's words cut off suddenly and he shot Sherlock a vaguely affronted look. His accent seemed to slip a few notches toward cockney in apparent annoyance. "Oi hang on - you been keepin' tabs on where I live?"

Sherlock's arms stiffened in his pockets as he hunched his shoulders slightly. "No."

The two of them stared each other down for a few seconds. Finally the witness snorted, and, laughing, allowed his expression to crack into a wide grin.

"You haven't changed a bit, have you?"

"Is that a bad thing?" Despite the bland monotone of Sherlock's voice his bearing remained rigid, defensive almost. John glanced between the two men again. Clearly they knew each other from somewhere. Former friends, maybe? But then Sherlock had always been quick to assert that he didn't *do* 'friends', so...

Rather than answer Sherlock's question the man merely shook his head, a smile still playing at his lips. He shoved a hand through short, soot-stained hair and glanced behind them at the tangle of police officers milling about the investigation scene.

"Bit of a career change, this, ain't it? Never expected you of all blokes to be a cop..."

"I'm not a *cop*. I'm a private detective." Sherlock's expression flitted towards an annoyed frown. "The Met recruits me for consultation whenever their stupidity gets the better of them. Which is *always*."

"I think in this case you more recruited yourself," John pointed out, feeling as if he should at least try and keep the facts straight. Sherlock shot him an irritated sidelong glance.

"Eric," he intoned blandly, still fixing John with an annoyed look. He turned his head back to the witness and gestured to his flatmate before continuing. "This is John Watson, my... assistant. John, Eric Crenshaw."

"Cheers," Crenshaw greeted and flashed a wide, cheerful smile as he accepted John's handshake. After a pause he glanced between the two of them, expression gone a bit odd but still firmly on the side of friendly. "Er... so you two are...?"

John fought the urge to sigh. Yep, and there they went again - because *clearly* he and Sherlock were shagging each other. John forced back an exasperated expression and opened his mouth to correct the ubiquitous mistake. Why did everyone always guess that? Did he and Sherlock really look *that* much like a gay couple?

Before John could say anything, though, and for the first time in living memory... he was beaten to the punch.

"Flatmates," Sherlock cut in quickly. Rather *too* quickly, all things considered. John startled, shot him a baffled look *(Sherlock giving a damn what people assumed about them? What parallel universe had they stumbled into?)* and Sherlock cleared his throat awkwardly before continuing in a less abrupt tone. "... *just* flatmates. John accompanies me on investigations because he's an adrenaline junkie."

"Oi," John objected, frowning. Neither of the other two seemed to be paying him much heed however.

"Oh! Well that's gre- I mean, erm..." Crenshaw coughed and looked elsewhere, a slight flush creeping up his freckled cheeks. "That is... thought he looked a bit old for you? Ah, no offence there, mate," he added toward John with a wince.

John shrugged. "None taken." He glanced back to Sherlock, who appeared to be having a great deal of trouble deciding what to say next, and furrowed his brows in bemusement. Well that was odd, wasn't it? Considering the great prat nearly always had a scathing reply at the ready... honestly if John didn't know better he'd classify this whole interaction as an awkward meeting between exes.

Turning back to Crenshaw *(who was also looking rather tongue-tied; good lord this was just going nowhere fast, wasn't it?)* John decided he'd best try to salvage a shred of professionalism. He dug his notepad from the inside pocket of his coat and flipped it open with a matter-of-fact clearing of his throat. Both other men seemed to startle a bit and shifted their attention towards him.

"About your friend, then?" he asked amicably. Crenshaw pressed the palms of his hands together in a strange gesture and nodded somewhat absently, glancing to the ruined building behind them.

"Mick, y'mean... right, er..." He cleared his throat, and with his next words the slur of cockney which had begun to creep into his speech over the last few minutes had morphed back into a more business-like Estuary clip. "Well he was acting a bit strangely most of the day, really. Pacing round muttering to himself. He's a pretty weird bloke normally though so I didn't think much of it. I left at ten or so this morning, was out meeting with suppliers until around four, then I came back to fetch some paperwork. When I walked in Mick was carrying this little red horse statue about - he usually kept it on the coffee table, you know, decorative thing - and he was shouting how he had to get rid of it right away or something terrible would happen. And then-"

"You heard alarms or cries from the other tenants indicating that the building was on fire and evacuated, obviously," Sherlock cut in. His mysterious fit of nerves earlier seemed to have subsided into something more approaching his usual aloof attitude. "Mick disappeared in the chaos and hasn't responded to any calls or texts. The police will have found the horse statue shattered on the pavement nearby, revealing it to have been concealing detailed notes concerning the arson in his handwriting, leading to his declaration as the primary suspect."

John waited for the inevitable baffled look, questions of *'how did you know that'* or some otherwise bewildered reaction from the witness. Jarringly, though, Crenshaw just carried on with the conversation unruffled, behaving as if Sherlock's interjection were perfectly normal.

"Yeah. Only it's weird 'cause Mick was about the last guy you'd expect to be an *arsonist*, of all things. Bloke's seriously phobic of fire. Won't even touch the stove, panics if he sees a box of matches. I can't imagine how he managed to set a whole *building* alight..."

"Clearly he was framed." Sherlock had pulled his mobile from his pocket and flicked a few keys to bring up a photo. He handed the device to Crenshaw. "Same horse figurine?"

"Yep." Crenshaw raised his eyebrows at the phone and turned it over to look at the back casing. "Is this the new Blackberry? What'd you pay for it?"

"Nothing. Mycroft foisted it on me." Sherlock rather uncharacteristically allowed his phone to remain in Crenshaw's possession as he turned to beckon Lestrade over. It took a few tries to get the DI's attention, but the man soon caught sight of Sherlock's impatient waving and raised his arms in a *'can't you see I'm busy?'* posture. Sherlock just beckoned him again, glaring, and with a put-upon roll of his eyes Lestrade left a few parting words with the officer he'd been speaking to and started toward them.

"Sherlock, I've got an investigation to run. If you've tied everything up in a neat little bow that's great but I still have to manage the-"

"The next target will be an odd-numbered home in Hackney's St. Elphin's Park development. Your arsonist will arrive near midnight tonight to lay incendiaries and will walk with a pronounced limp. Use the manufacturer's seal of the horse figurine to find others who purchased the same item within a two-week timeframe of the first incident."

"What first incident?" Lestrade's expression was set in its usual mix of confusion, grudging respect, and mild exasperation.

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "The hotel fire in Haringey, clearly."

"Clearly," Lestrade repeated in a flat voice. He shifted one hand to his hip while the other scrubbed tiredly through his hair. "Right, I have no idea what fire you're referring to... but well enough, we'll look into it. Hackney's next, you said?"

Sherlock nodded. Lestrade dropped the hand from his head and retrieved a notebook from his coat pocket to jot down the instructions. Once done he looked over Sherlock's shoulder to Crenshaw still sitting on the bonnet of the squad car behind them.

"Sorry if he's given you any trouble, sir. Consulting detective for the arson case... gets a bit abrasive, but he's the best we've got for this sort of investigation."

Crenshaw smiled and glanced toward Sherlock with something like fond pride. "I'm alright," he assured brightly. He'd been fiddling idly with Sherlock's phone for the last few minutes and, seeming to remember he was holding it, now handed it back. Sherlock accepted it without much thought and slipped it into his trouser pocket.

Lestrade watched the exchange with a slight lift of his browline and shot a questioning glance to John, who just shrugged. Old mates from somewhere, apparently, but beyond that John really had no clue what had prompted Sherlock's trust in the bloke.

"Am I free to go, then?" Crenshaw asked of Lestrade. Free of an object to fret with his hands shifted to lightly pressing his palms together instead. "It's getting a bit late and there's not too many hotels nearby, so..."

Lestrade tucked his notepad away in his coat pocket. "You spoke to someone about lost property?" Crenshaw nodded. "Long as we've got contact information you're welcome to leave, then. Be sure to check any messages. Sherlock, I'll be e-mailing you later and if you've put me in your spam filter again I swear to-"

"Go and oversee your minions, Lestrade. You'll find Donovan's police badge caught on a fence railing near the east entrance." Sherlock waved a dismissive hand in the direction of the milling officers and turned back towards Crenshaw. Lestrade paused a moment, likely meaning to ask after the badge comment, before a voice crackled through the handset on his belt.

*"DI Lestrade, sir, I think I've lost my-"*

Lestrade sighed irritably to himself and turned to walk off, barking a *'fence railing, east entrance'* into his radio as he went. John was left with Sherlock and Crenshaw once more.

"Well then, shall we-" John started, but Sherlock's attention was elsewhere.

"All the hotels within reasonable distance will have filled up with displaced residents by now," he said to Crenshaw, expression gone somewhere oddly stern mixed with what John could only describe as vague embarrassment. Honestly, his cheeks were even colouring a bit. Whoever this freckled bloke was he'd certainly cornered the market on eliciting uncharacteristic reactions from Sherlock Holmes.

Crenshaw grimaced and rubbed at the back of his neck. "God, yeah... I hadn't really budgeted for it but I s'pose I'll have to-"

"Our flat has a sofa."

John startled and looked over to Sherlock, who seemed every bit as taken off-guard by his own words as John was. His eyes widened in alarm but he'd fixed his gaze determinedly on Crenshaw's face, seemingly unwilling to acknowledge that his cheeks had flushed pink and his posture had gone taut again.

Crenshaw's hand froze at the back of his neck and he looked over to Sherlock. "Er..."

"It would be the more logical option considering you're planning to remain in the city for at least a week and don't have the finances for an extended hotel stay nor excessive cab fare," Sherlock rattled off quickly. Trying to save face, it seemed. He was still blushing, though, which rather ruined the attempt. "John and I live in Westminster by the Baker Street tube station."

"Christ, that'd... that'd actually be really convenient?" Crenshaw glanced at the pavement, biting his lip - and bloody hell, but now *he'd* gone red too? John tried to force the juvenile smirk off his face. Good lord if this was some sort of ex-boyfriend he was never going to let Sherlock hear the end of it.

"It's fine by me," he put in helpfully. "I'm scheduled clinic hours for the next few days anyway, flat'll be empty."

Crenshaw opened his mouth, but Sherlock seemed to have decided already. "Settled, then. I'll fetch a cab." And without waiting for a reply he marched resolutely off to hail a taxi.

John looked after him, then back to Crenshaw. The poor lad's cheeks had gone bright red, palms pressing together in what appeared to be a nervous habit. Despite all efforts not to John found himself smiling in amusement. He shifted his weight to the balls of his feet and casually allowed his hands to fall into an idle parade rest posture behind his back.

"You two knew each other quite well, then, I'm guessing?" he asked with perhaps a *tad* more of a teasing inflection to his voice than was strictly necessary... but *really* now, this was bloody hilarious. Sherlock was behaving like an awkward teenager over some freckled bloke from Lancaster with a working-class accent and sensible trousers. Whatever the history was here it *had* to involve something scandalous.

"Y-yeah. We were..." Crenshaw glanced up toward Sherlock, now hailing a cab by the kerb several metres off, then looked back to John with a sheepish smile and a shrug. "Erm... housemates? Just for a month or so, back when we were kids."

"Kids?"

"Nineteen, twenty-ish." The young man quirked a small smile to himself and pushed off the bonnet of the squadcar to finally stand on his own two feet, grabbing as he did so the grey coat he'd had lying beside him. "It was a pretty weird time in my life, to be honest. In both our lives."

John wanted to ask him to elaborate, but Sherlock shouted something indistinct, beckoning them impatiently by the roadside where a cab was now pulling up to the kerb. Crenshaw tugged his wool jacket on over his shirt and together they set off toward the taxi.

**««**

Sherlock was stuck somewhere between being very cross with himself and pleased giddiness. On the one hand what in *hell's* name had prompted him to offer their sofa to someone he hadn't spoken to in nearly a decade, and whom he'd originally known for less than a month!? ... On the other it was *Eric* and Eric was more or less technically speaking the only serious romantic relationship Sherlock had ever had in his *life* and for some asinine reason his brain refused to stop falling all to pieces over that fact. And so there he was, trapped vacillating randomly from one emotion to the other like a broken metronome.

Eric grinned as he and John came within speaking distance. "So do you have some kind of obsession with poncy coats, or what? That thing's got to be worth more than my house."

He'd learnt to mask the cockney quite well, hadn't he? Barely perceptible now. Presumably he'd done so for business reasons, make himself sound more trustworthy to clients and employees, facilitate better relationships with investors. A vast improvement over the nigh-incomprehensible jumble of speech Sherlock remembered. Which made this vague sense of disappointment over the lack of slurred nonsense coming out of the man's mouth rather frustratingly confusing. Why did Sherlock *care*, honestly? He'd hated that stupid accent.

The jab about coats, though... He raised a brow at Eric's attire - brown trousers with a grey woollen peacoat. That jacket had to be at least as expensive as Sherlock's greatcoat, well over the thousand pound range, so the man was hardly in a position to throw stones.

"No more than you, apparently," Sherlock retorted blandly as they climbed into the cab *(John on the end and Eric in the middle seat, somehow, and Sherlock wasn't entirely sure why that pleased him so much)* and let John give the driver directions. Sherlock glanced toward Eric, meaning to ask after his business in London, but was distracted by the man's sleeve. A tear there had been sewn shut at some point, and the material was slightly discoloured, frayed... oh *bloody hell*, that wasn't just an expensive coat, that was...

"That's- you *kept* it?"

Eric shot him an embarrassed sidelong look and shrugged. "S'a nice jacket."

"It's been *eight years*," Sherlock snapped, disgruntled. How in hell had he even managed to keep the thing in wearable condition after so long!? On the far side of the cab John raised his eyebrows but didn't bother asking what they were on about.

"So what do you do in Lancaster?" the doctor inquired instead, falling easily into his usual role of facilitating elements of social interaction which Sherlock had declared intolerably dull, like small talk. In this case, though, Sherlock found he was rather interested in the answer. Not that he hadn't picked up quite a few clues from Eric's speech and appearance already *(t-shirt from a Lancaster music programme under his half-buttoned overshirt, brief mention of 'woodwinds' and of meeting with suppliers)* but it would be good to know what he'd been up to. For curiosity's sake, obviously, nothing but a healthy interest in facts.

"I run a music school for kids, teach 'em how to play instruments and sing. It's done really well, actually." Eric smiled, all modest pride, and Sherlock found himself completely lost for what to say. That was... well, it was exactly what Eric would do, wasn't it? And damned to hell if it weren't distressingly endearing. He told himself the pleased flush through his chest was a response to the knowledge that his leftover trust fund money had been put to decent use. Certainly nothing so sentimental as happiness for Eric's success.

"You're a musician, then?" John continued. He'd either not noticed the odd expressions warring for control of Sherlock's face or chosen not to acknowledge them, something Sherlock was rather grateful for.

"Guitarist, yeah. I've picked up enough piano to get by, though, and most everything else in the school. You kinda have to know your way around the basics at the very least if you're looking to hire anyone competent enough to teach."

The conversation from there veered towards things Sherlock was relieved to find extremely dull. Seemed no amount of being disgustingly happy for Eric could make a discussion of financial structuring and client relations halfway interesting, so at least he knew his brain was still functioning normally on *some* level. By the time they arrived back at the flat he was even beginning to settle back into his usual anti-social mental patterns. Bored, annoyed, crowded. More than ready to be done with all this interacting-with-people nonsense and get back to his work.

Eric trailing after them into the stairwell, though, and John introducing him in passing to Mrs Hudson, somehow conspired to set Sherlock back into a state of awkward fidgeting once more. Concerned for what Eric would think of the flat, of the half-tidy disaster of a sitting room, of the haphazard pile of chemistry supplies on the table. Ugh and the couch was too small to expect someone to sleep on comfortably - why had he offered it in the first place? This was ridiculous, he shouldn't have-

"Hah! Is that a cow skull with headphones on?"

"It's a bison," Sherlock corrected vaguely, speech stuck on autopilot while his brain chased itself in circles. He hung up his coat beside John's and had a brief loss for what to do with his hands before shoving them roughly in his trouser pockets. "... the headphones were a gift from a client."

Eric laughed. "I gotta find one of those things for the school lobby, that's brilliant."

And Sherlock found himself smiling, because *hah* - someone else thought the bison was funny. John had been after him to take the headphones off at the very least *(some nonsense about professionalism when clients came round)*, Mycroft had deemed it unbearably childish while Lestrade seemed to regard it with the same bland exasperation he afforded any other strange whim of Sherlock's. Well sod the lot of them and their stupid opinions - it *was* brilliant.

Eric was now looking bemusedly to the spraypaint smiley-face on the wall, and Sherlock quickly took it upon himself to explain where *that* had come from. And the bullet holes. Eric snickered the whole way through.

"Well I mean what else are you gonna do with a can of paint but vandalise a wall?" Eric agreed, grinning. "Good aim on the eye holes though, blimey."

"John was upset about me discharging a weapon indoors."

Eric made a *pfft* noise and shrugged one shoulder. "Stuff 'im, didn't hurt nobody."

"That's what *I* said, and Mrs Hudson deducted damages from the rent the next month to cover the plaster repair on the other side so I still don't see what all the fuss was about."

Eric laughed again, and Sherlock smiled. And for just a moment he forgot about the arson case and the nicotine patch starting to wear off on his arm. For a moment he was twenty years old again, not a shred of responsibility to his name and nothing to concern himself with besides making sure he had enough cash to buy a half-gram and a pack of cigs.

And perhaps he could bring himself to admit that those times hadn't been entirely unpleasant. Oh, make no mistake, he'd never want to go back; *nothing* excused the hellish roller coaster of highs and crashes, constant danger of living amongst criminals, being led around like a dog on a chain on nothing but the promise of more drugs... never, ever again.

But there *had* been some bright points... one in particular, really. A single upside amidst the disaster of his life back in those days. Freckles and a silly accent, laughing over stupid things they both found funny even when everyone else called them childish. Dark alleys, nicked cigarettes, the smell of marijuana clinging to a mop of messy brown hair...

Sod it all, he'd actually missed this. He'd missed *Eric.*

**««**

John wasn't sure he'd ever be able to stop smiling to himself like an idiot. Off in the other room Sherlock was busy explaining where every single odd or out-of-place object in the sitting room had come from, sounding for all the world like an excited little boy, while Crenshaw chimed in with snickering and amused comments every other sentence in a tone every bit as enthused as Sherlock's. Against everything John had come to expect of his flatmate it seemed Sherlock Holmes was actually managing to get on *famously* with someone. It was both adorable and strangely unsettling all at once.

He wondered if he shouldn't just abandon the tea and disappear to his room, give the two some space to catch up. No sooner had he had the thought, though, than he found himself instead crowded into the kitchen by two exuberant twenty-eight year olds.

"She lets me take body parts from the morgue so long as I promise to bring them back. I've even gotten a severed head before."

"What'd you need a severed head for?"

"Nothing, I just wanted to see if she'd let me have it. Made up some excuse about testing saliva... Here, see, eyeballs!"

Sherlock had been rummaging around in the fridge as he spoke and now emerged with, as promised, a baggie full of eyeballs. Crenshaw laughed and reached out to take the bag.

"Ah gross, they squish!"

"Don't pop them," Sherlock admonished, then squeezed one of them himself and snickered along with Crenshaw when the pupil bulged out.

John leant against the countertop behind him with his arms crossed, watching the display bemusedly. Hadn't even been re-acquainted with the bloke for two hours and already Sherlock had progressed to the rare *'behaving like a schoolboy on a sugar rush'* level of friendly interaction. And Crenshaw had said they'd been *housemates*? No way. Something more than that, surely...

"John, what did you do with the tongue?" Sherlock was back in the fridge again. John grimaced slightly - that *bloody* fixation with body parts, good god.

"I gave it back to Molly after you left it in the crisper drawer again," John explained with an annoyed frown. "I told you I was going to."

"What!? No you didn't!" Sherlock stuck his head over the door and pouted at John. Beside him Crenshaw was smirking, expression almost fond.

"You know I did, and I made sure you were paying attention this time so if you've forgotten that's on you."

Sherlock huffed but didn't pursue the matter further. Instead he grabbed the bag of eyeballs back from Crenshaw, tossed them in the fridge *(on their proper shelf, John was relieved to see)* and turned to drag their guest off toward the rest of the flat.

"Never mind, there's a skeletonised rat in my room-"

Crenshaw's face went faintly pink, making John smirk to himself. Sherlock, of course, completely failed to pick up on the possible implications of leading someone by the hand to his *bedroom* and remained blithely unconcerned as they left the kitchen.

John lingered behind, shaking his head bemusedly. *Kids.*

**««**

## Chapter 2

**««**

Sherlock's bedroom was a fair bit tidier than one might have expected.

That was a boring, uneventful, entirely non-scandalous thought, and Eric was doing his best to keep it at the forefront of his mind where it would hopefully drown out other things. Things like finding himself quite unexpectedly hand-in-hand with a bloke he hadn't spoken to in a very, *very* long time, to whom he owed practically every current success of his life to, and whom he'd honestly expected to never set eyes on again. It was all getting a tad overwhelming.

It seemed like he was only just now beginning to register the reality of who exactly he'd bumped into at that squadcar. For a time there it hadn't been much more than a series of surface reactions - old acquaintance, fine, yes, slip back into friendly banter. *(And slip back into the old accent, irritatingly enough, hadn't done that in bloody years...)* Being shown around his flat hadn't set the whole thing in stone either; mostly because it was all new things and Sherlock's explanations of everything, while genuinely entertaining, still made it all-too-obvious that he'd moved on from Stockwell just as thoroughly as Eric had. It was reminiscent of meeting a man who only coincidentally looked and sounded like someone you'd once known - the same person, perhaps, but only by technicality.

But this... now suddenly they were holding hands. And personalities evolved, circumstances improved and new careers were built... but the way two peoples' fingers interlocked could never really change. And that, for Eric at the very least, served to snap the whole absurd situation into alarmingly sharp focus.

*Jesus fuckin' christ, it's really Sherlock*, his brain informed him *(and oh for god's sake, even his thoughts were reverting to cockney now?)* and with a sensation of having been thrust out of his own body to watch some surreal play take place he looked away from the framed chemical chart he'd been focussing on. His eyes found Sherlock's, and met what seemed to be an equally shocked expression mirrored in marbled grey-blue.

Wordlessly they both dropped their hands, taking a step apart.

"Er..." Eric started. He hadn't actually thought of anything he might say beyond that, though, and so the sound trailed off into awkward dead air.

Beside him Sherlock's look of vaguely alarmed discomfort seemed to morph all at once into one of studied disinterest. The man wrinkled his nose, glanced pointedly elsewhere, then slipped his hands into his pockets as if he'd meant to do so all along and leant back on his heels. His bearing dropped into a casual, indifferent posture.

"Payback for all the times you dragged me off by the arm," he droned sarcastically. There was a slight flush to his cheeks, belying his aloof routine, which made the charade all the more pointless. Eric furrowed his brows in a sudden burst of exasperation.

"Still doing the whole 'bleeding robot' thing, then," he retorted flatly. Not a question - didn't need to be, the facade was completely sodding obvious. Sherlock startled a tiny bit in response to his angry tone and turned back to blink at him.

"Doing the-?" He cut himself off as Eric just continued to scowl. Sherlock frowned and for a brief, searching second looked to the far wall, lips thinning as if he were mentally weighing some decision. Finally after a pause he set his face in some undefinable expression of sullied annoyance and let all the false poise melt out of his stance.

It was just a series of tiny movements, really - loosening of the shoulders and spine, slight tilt of his head, muscles repositioning - but somehow each shift came together to give the effect of him transforming from an imposing aristocrat to a sulking teenager with the flip of a lightswitch. Mystifying. And every bit as disturbing as Eric remembered. He huffed a quiet laugh.

"Creepy as hell."

"It's a useful tactic," Sherlock snapped defensively, seeming a little embarrassed but no less miffed at having been caught out. "Unless you expect me to somehow intimidate suspects whilst... fidgeting."

As if illustrating the very concept he did some odd thing with his hands and shifted his weight back and forth. Which, granted, did look a tad silly and definitely wasn't ideal for questioning murderers or whatever. Still, though. Eric half-rolled his eyes.

"That don't stop it bein' goddamn unsettlin' t'watch you switch like that. Lay off."

For some reason, instead of countering with an annoyed rebuttal, Sherlock just smirked. Eric blinked and responded with a slight glare.

"What?"

"Your accent's slipped," Sherlock pointed out, his tone just this side of teasing. Eric coloured a bit. For god's- of all the things to change the *bleeding* subject with it had to be- ugh. Flustered, he nonetheless managed to keep his expression serious, slipped his own hands into his trouser pockets and sized up their current predicament. They now stood rather awkwardly facing each other, stock-still in the middle of the floor beside Sherlock's bed. Things had evidently taken a bit of a turn somewhere.

When he glanced back up Sherlock was still smirking at him. Eric scoffed. "Never said I was trying to hide it."

"No," Sherlock agreed, then fixed him with a supremely smug look. "But of course you've just switched back to Estuary for no particular reason, haven't you? Which along with the way you've been shifting in and out of Cockney speaking patterns at random for the past few hours indicates rather strongly that you've become accustomed to-"

In a flash of annoyed pique Eric reached out and shoved the git's head lightly sideways, cutting off his condescending monologue before it could get properly started. Not hard enough to hurt, of course - just startle the guy, perhaps muss up his hair a bit so he'd look ridiculous. It was something he used to do back in Stockwell on those occasions when Sherlock's coke-fuelled rambling got to be too manic for anyone to follow. Quick jolt to the side of the head, shut the idiot up for long enough to reboot and derail himself from whatever train of thought he'd gotten stuck on. Pretty much always guaranteed to work.

Doing it now hadn't been a conscious action, really, more of a reflex. And the second he drew his hand back Eric found himself worrying if perhaps he'd just crossed a line. That, admittedly, had been *very* forward... not to mention easily construed as a threat. Subconsciously he braced himself to defend against any forthcoming blows, wary of Sherlock lashing out in anger. He'd never reacted negatively when they were kids, of course, but this was quite a bit different, wasn't it? They were bloody *adults* now. One didn't go round smacking other grown men upside the head instead of just politely telling them to be quiet, christ.

Far from being provoked, though, Sherlock just blinked, shot a rather petulant glare Eric's way and then brought a hand up to smooth his curls back into place.

"Uncalled for," he grumbled.

"Brought it on yourself," Eric countered with a shrug. A small, faintly relieved quirk of a smile made its way unbidden to his face, the brief jolt of tension melting out of his stance. Sherlock, of course, picked up on his waning discomfort with barely a glance. The man rolled his eyes as he patted down an errant ringlet.

"Oh relax, I'm not going to punch you for messing up my hair," he droned, unimpressed. Eric, unsure of what to say, just shrugged. Couldn't deny being concerned, really; it'd been a legitimate fear.

Hazy recollections of a night years ago swam to the forefront of his brain, making Eric frown to himself - a thug's knife to his throat, thrum of sheer terror in his chest, the boy he'd agreed to date mere hours before standing wraithlike in the street with blood down his face and the hollow gaze of a killer. Stuff of nightmares.

Up to that point Eric had been mostly confident in defining Sherlock as an awkward, fidgety mess. Clearly doing his best to hide behind an aristocrat act, often failing at it. Because at his core the guy was really nothing more than an overgrown child, wasn't he? A kid playing grown-up? He could never be anything *dangerous.*

But in those few minutes in the street, as he watched Sherlock's restless warmth be eclipsed by cold steel fury, cowered whilst the coke-addled toff proceeded to dispatch three armed thugs without the slightest pause for fear or mercy... suddenly Eric hadn't been so sure. Sherlock in that instant had been bloody *terrifying*. And Eric couldn't help but wonder... was that the man's true face? Which was the act, here: the childish prat or the soulless monster? How could one ever be sure they weren't being fooled by the mask of a psychopath?

For the next few days he'd fretted over the problem like a nervous tic. Eventually, though, he'd been able to convince himself to calm down. Sherlock's bouts of behaving like a robot were comfortingly predictable and quite plainly guileless. Mostly centred around avoiding social anxiety, it seemed, harmless enough to spark a sense of fond exasperation. Eric had soon found himself reassured enough to stop worrying about the threat of unexpected violence. His boyfriend wouldn't snap - the bloke was *quirky*, yes, but not insane. Everything was fine. For a while he'd even allowed himself to dream of a future together. Something like mutual happiness, he supposed, unsullied by the grim reality of lengthening criminal records and the looming threat of prison. It could happen.

Then, of course, Ben had been killed. And Sherlock had... christ.

With a small sigh Eric took a few steps backward and let himself drop to a seat on Sherlock's bed. The brief atmosphere of levity drained from the room like a punctured flask.

Sherlock shifted, expression going a bit nervous. "Really, I wouldn't."

"I know." Eric huffed and flipped a hand in vague explanation for some abstract idea he couldn't quite convey. All the excitement of the last few hours seemed to be catching up to him at once. He managed to dredge up a tired smile to show Sherlock nothing was seriously wrong, though it dropped after a short beat. "If it were anyone else, though..."

"Anyone else and I'd have dodged." Sherlock frowned with an air as if he thought that point should have been obvious. He rocked back on his heels in doubt for a second, then, seeming to decide something, strode over to his chest of drawers and began rummaging around.

"What're y'doin'?" Eric asked, watching as Sherlock dug around in what appeared to be an excessively well-organised sock drawer.

"Accent," Sherlock replied teasingly. Eric scowled, spent a brief moment resisting the impulse to chuck something at the git, then flung the nearest pillow.

"What. Are. You. Doin-*g*," he repeated in as clear a pronunciation as he could possibly force out his windpipe. Sherlock smirked and, presumably in retaliation for the pillow which had just hit him in the spine, turned to toss a bundle of clothes directly towards Eric's face.

"You stink of wood smoke and you're getting soot all over my duvet, go and have a bloody shower." His tone was clearly meant to be snippy but lost quite a bit on the delivery as he failed to suppress a snicker over the fact that the pyjama trousers he'd thrown had landed with one leg draped over Eric's head. After quickly composing himself he turned towards his window and gestured dismissively to the hall. "Down the hall to the right, shouldn't be difficult to find."

Eric gathered up the scattered clothes and rolled his eyes. "I'll pretend that's you bein' considerate."

Jabs aside, though, the thought of a shower did sound bloody heavenly. He dragged himself to a standing position and, stifling a yawn, made his way out the door.

**««**

Sherlock watched Eric's blurry reflection disappear into the hall, then turned to lean with his back against the glass. His hands had found their way back to his pockets somehow while his heel shifted to rest on the wall, toe of his shoe tapping against the hardwood a few times as he stared down at the floor pattern in thought.

"Erm."

There was a slight knock on the open panel of the door, someone clearing their throat. Sherlock lifted his gaze to find John standing just outside the room looking vaguely awkward.

"I was going to ring for a Chinese or something, there's not much in," the man offered in explanation for why he was hovering there. He glanced around the room, apparently searching for their guest, then looked back to Sherlock. "Everything alright?"

"Fine," Sherlock replied easily. He felt his own posture begin to shift into aloof poise; default behaviour when speaking to John. *Why*, though? He'd told Eric the tactic was for intimidating witnesses, not... ugh. Ridiculous. As if proving some internal point to himself he mentally switched the whole process off, felt his stance drop back into whatever graceless nonsense he'd been standing in before. There. Perfectly normal. Not using an act on his flatmate. As if he'd ever need to.

In the doorway John blinked.

"Right, then..." the doctor hummed, drawing out the 'R' - plainly he'd noticed Sherlock's odd shifts in bearing, deliberated on a reaction then chosen not to comment. Instead he glanced over his shoulder toward the hall. "Crenshaw's gone off somewhere?"

"I told him to have a shower, he smelt like a chimney sweep."

Hm, well. This was actually quite disconcerting, wasn't it? Speaking casually to John without doing the whole... what did Eric always insist on calling it? *Robot thing?* Moronic. Nevertheless Sherlock was finding himself having to actively avoid letting his mannerisms creep into a pre-built persona of any sort. Which was absurd as there was no plausible reason to need to keep up appearances for a man he *lived* with - not when he often wandered about the flat in his pyjamas whingeing about boredom, at any rate. John hadn't had reasonable cause to be intimidated by Sherlock in bloody ages.

But then again there *was* a rather stark difference between dashing around being royally ticked off at the world for not producing enough excitement and... whatever this was. Standing about by the window looking probably quite pathetic, tapping his foot with his hands in his pockets and staring at the floor. Definitely abnormal. John would think him lost or confused, preoccupied... emotionally compromised. Which was ridiculous, of course, as Sherlock didn't *do* emotions. He had complete control over his mental space, didn't he? Sociopath. Yes.

And *being* a sociopath meant that he could choose not to feel anything at all. He could *choose* not to be tempted to dwell on Eric's brief flash of fearful wariness and he could *choose* to forget their whole history together and he could *choose* to go back to being the impregnable fortress of disinterest John expected him to be. All it would take was a mental flip of a switch. One quick shift and he'd be back to his usual self, easy as anything.

Or... he could also choose to keep leaning on the window looking like a pillock. Which his brain had apparently somehow declared the better option, because despite all efforts to do otherwise his posture didn't shift out of a casual slouch and he kept on tapping his foot. Aggravating.

John, for his part, hadn't yet moved from the door frame. Sherlock was too busy being nebulously frustrated by the actions of his own physical shell to really pay the other man much heed.

Eventually, though, he heard John clear his throat.

"You two weren't just housemates."

Sherlock glanced up from where he'd been studying the hardwood again and furrowed his brows at John's odd expression. It was a look more appropriate to a sarcastically-teasing Lestrade than any of the doctor's usual moods.

"Sorry?" he asked, not immediately seeing the point of John's statement.

John shifted to lean on the door frame and crossed his arms, smirking. Which was a very strange expression to see on John's face; hopefully he'd stop in short order. Actually, no... scratch that, he should bloody well quit right now. Sherlock frowned in vague disgruntlement and spoke up before the other could answer.

"Stop making that face."

John's distressing smirk widened into a fuller, far less unsettling smile *(vastly more appropriate to his facial features)* and he shook his head with a small chuckle as he shifted his weight against the door.

"Housemates," he repeated, getting back to the topic he'd broached. "Crenshaw said you'd just lived together. But it was a bit more than that, wasn't it?"

Sherlock frowned. Eric had spoken to John alone? When? "I don't think it's really any of your business."

"Oh, no, course it isn't." John held up his hands and smiled, poorly stifling another chuckle. "Still, though... nice to see. Great Sherlock Holmes, reuniting with an ex. Same old silly drama as the rest of us."

"There hasn't been any *drama*. I just leant him some clothes and told him to have a shower. Aren't you the one always going on about being hospitable?"

"That'd be Mrs. Hudson, actually." John lifted his good shoulder in a bland shrug... then smirked again. Equally disturbing the second time round. Sherlock glared in response. "And no, clearly there's not been drama," John continued. "You're only standing about your bedroom looking like a lovelorn teenager. Nothing odd there."

"Shut up."

John just snorted mirthfully to himself and turned to amble off toward the sitting room. After a scant few steps though he paused mid-stride and turned back round.

"Oh, I really was going to ring for a Chinese. Is the regular alright, or...?"

"It's fine. Eric's fond of pork fried rice so add it as a side dish or something."

Abruptly John was grinning again. "See, the fact that you *know* that..."

"I'm an observational genius, why wouldn't I remember someone's culinary preferences?" Sherlock finally got round to pushing himself off the window to stand upright, training a look of general annoyance on the world at large. He scrubbed a hand through his hair and tried not to acknowledge the undertone of defensiveness in his posture or voice.

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe because you deleted the entire *solar system* and constantly mix up what year it is?" John, mercifully, had resumed his travel to the sitting room, which meant Sherlock could now indulge in his juvenile temptation to silently flip the man off without being spotted. "What was it you said about memory, though?" John added over his shoulder. "Only keep the things that matter?"

Sherlock scowled but chose not to dignify that with a response. Glaring at the chuckling, retreating form of his flatmate he took a few long strides forward, grabbed the edge of his bedroom door and smartly snapped it shut. A split-second later, however, he reopened it a crack.

"Let me know when the food arrives."

"Expect you'll deduce that when the doorbell rings."

With an irritated huff Sherlock snapped the door shut again. After a few beats glaring petulantly at the panelling he took a few steps to the side, let himself flop backwards onto his bed, and glowered instead at the ceiling. His hands came up to rest fingertip-to-fingertip under his chin in a habitual posture.

*Drama*... there hadn't been any bloody drama. Stupid.

**««**

## Chapter 3

**««**

John looked up from the phone in his hand just in time to catch the tall form of what he could only assume to be Crenshaw shuffle blearily into the sitting room.

Making a definite identification was a bit difficult, as the lad had one of Sherlock's dark blue towels over his head and was busily scrubbing it through his hair. Dotted constellations of freckles up both his arms were clearly visible in his new short-sleeved attire, however, which consisted of a faded old t-shirt and a pair of Sherlock's pyjama trousers, so he was fairly certain in his assumption of who it was.

As he set the phone down John had a bit of a double-take at the choice of shirt - it bore the logo of some vaguely punk-looking music group, stark green and black against a brown backdrop. Was that a spare Crenshaw'd had with him, or...?

"Tch... he bleedin' knows I hate these sods and he goes and digs one'a their shirts out anyhow," Crenshaw muttered grumpily to himself as he tugged the towel off his head. His hair now stuck up in all directions round his skull, a halo of damp brown tufts.

"I... didn't realise Sherlock listened to anything composed after the 18th century," John replied with a blink. "That's really his shirt?"

Crenshaw scoffed slightly and rolled his eyes. "Course it's his. That or he's taken to nicking clothes off folks with the same awful taste in music as he has."

John quirked a bewildered smile. Secret life of Sherlock Holmes, he supposed... clandestinely listening to strange rock groups, apparently with enough enthusiasm to hunt down band logo shirts which he then never deigned to wear in public. Good *lord*, John had learnt more distressingly human facts about his flatmate in the last few hours than he'd managed to pick up over the course of an entire bloody year co-habitating with the man.

While John's mind was occupied being helplessly amused by the thought of Sherlock having musical interests beyond the scope of romance-era classical composers, Crenshaw had fallen to awkwardly glancing around the sitting room.

"Er... I don't suppose you'd have any spare blankets, then?" the man asked after a pause. John jumped a bit, realising that was *probably* something he should have thought to fetch earlier, and hurriedly set down the phone to make his way to the linen cupboard in the hall.

"Right, yes! Sorry. Just in here," he tossed over his shoulder in passing. Crenshaw turned to amble after him, the lad's hands fidgeting idly with the towel still gripped between them.

"Don't bother," a deep voice cut in. John and Crenshaw both looked up to see Sherlock emerge from his bedroom. He stopped a few steps out of the doorframe and gestured back the way he'd come with his shoulder. "I've got a case on anyway. Less bother to use a bed already made than faff about with the spare linens."

John raised his eyebrows, unable to keep the amusement off his face - inviting a bloke to sleep in your *bed*, Sherlock? Housemates indeed. Beside him he caught Crenshaw's cheeks colouring in a vaguely indignant look.

"I ain't sleepin' in your *bed*, christ." The boy's accent had slipped quite a few notches into cockney in flustered annoyance - a fact Sherlock seemed to find highly amusing judging by his expression.

"We shared a room for several weeks without incident, I don't see how this is any different."

"We, that was-" Crenshaw sputtered, face going a deep beet red, but quickly seemed to collect himself with an exasperated glare. "We haven't spoken in *eight years*, you twat, that's a *bit* of a bloody gap to just ignore. Especially when we only dated a month!"

Hah! *Dated!* They *were* ex-boyfriends! John did his best to smother the childish grin but of course Sherlock spotted it. The man fixed him with an annoyed glare.

"John, if you don't stop making that face I'm going to spike your morning tea with capsaicin."

Crenshaw seemed to startle a bit and shot a look towards John, whereupon the lad's indignant expression morphed into something much more anxious.

"Ah... sorry," he muttered, darting a glance to Sherlock. "I wasn't sure if y'were-"

Sherlock cut him off with a dismissive flip of his hand. "I'm not, or wasn't, but that's irrelevant as John would have pieced things together in short order regardless. He's evidently got the whole picture now and is behaving like a juvenile moron because he finds the idea of my having been romantically involved with someone hilarious."

"That's not true," John objected, though it very much was. "I'm just pleased to know you've been, er... active, so to speak. Mycroft did sort of imply you were a-"

"*Mycroft*," Sherlock snapped, cutting John off. "... does not have the faintest idea of what I did during my early twenties. And I'd appreciate his remaining ignorant on the matter."

"You just don't want to have to tell your brother you dated a cockney bloke with freckles," John countered with what definitely wasn't a snort of mirth. Beside him Crenshaw's expression quickly drifted towards the affronted end of the spectrum.

"I'm standing right here, you know," the boy pointed out.

"Sorry," John offered in a tone anything but.

Sherlock huffed a put-upon sigh and turned back to his ex. "Do you want my bed or not?"

"Not with you in it." Crenshaw's answer was decidedly stern but his cheeks had flushed crimson, making John wonder how firm his stance on that really was. Sherlock rolled his eyes.

"Obviously not. I said earlier - I've got a case on."

"He doesn't sleep when he's working," John offered helpfully. "Nor eat," he added with a disapproving frown towards Sherlock, who met him with a flat look.

"Puerile infant or clucking mother hen, John. Kindly choose one or the other."

"Bleedin' christ," Crenshaw breathed in a tired huff, one hand going to shove through his still-damp hair. He quickly lowered the limb to rub at his eyes instead. "I... s'pose I'll take the bed, if no one's usin' it. You stay the *hell* out, though." He punctuated the order by jabbing a finger in Sherlock's direction. "This ain't turnin' into a repeat of... everything."

"God forbid," Sherlock drawled. "John, the door."

John blinked. "The-?" He was cut off by the buzzer ringing loudly from the other room. "... door. Right, I've got it."

As he descended the stairs he glanced back over his shoulder - Sherlock and Crenshaw were staring each other down with an intensity that bordered on the obscene. John snickered to himself. Oh, this was *definitely* going in his blog.

**««**

Sherlock frowned and flicked a glance sidelong towards the distinct sound of John sniggering from the stairwell. Eric, he noted through some odd peripheral sense, mirrored his actions almost exactly. They both looked back to each other in near-tandem.

"Your flatmate's kind've..." Eric started, then trailed off with an unsure half-grimace. Sherlock rolled his eyes and pushed gently past the other man to head into the sitting room.

"Just ignore him," he grumbled over his shoulder. Eric would follow him, obviously, so he carried on speaking without bothering to turn around to check if he still had an audience. "John's an incorrigible gossip, especially when it comes to anything I happen to be involved with. You should see his bloody *blog*, for god's sake - the whole thing's nothing but write-ups of my cases."

Behind him Sherlock heard Eric snort in bland amusement. "So pretty much exactly your type, then?"

"What?" Sherlock finally reached the music stand he'd been headed for and shot a quizzical look at Eric. "The man's over a decade my senior, I'd hardly call tha-"

"No, no! Not like that," Eric clarified, making a disgusted face. "I meant he's obsessed with you and willing to have his ear talked off. Which you damn well *love* cause you're a bleedin' narcissist."

"Oh... well, yes, in that sense I suppose he fills a certain role." Sherlock paused in the midst of picking up his violin to raise a brow at his guest. "Since when do you use words like 'narcissist'?"

Eric looked vaguely offended. "I do *read*, you arse."

"Didn't used to." Plucking at a string to check the pitch, Sherlock parroted a ridiculous sing-song version of cockney. *"Oh, no, I never bovvered with Shakespeare, all them bleedin' words!"*

"That doesn't count, I was stoned to hell when I said that. And your cockney's utter crap."

"Better than your RP."

"Like I'd ever wanna sound like a poncy-"

"Here we are, then!" John interrupted, appearing at the doorway with his head down as he rummaged through the takeaway bag in his hands. "Er... this one's yours, I think."

Eric blinked and accepted the styrofoam container being thrust in his direction. Sherlock waved his off. Not eating, obviously. He had a, er... case on. Yes.

Well... didn't *really*, of course. Not technically speaking, anyway. Arson was solved, more or less, just waiting on an arrest now. But who cared, that was irrelevant - surely he could find something else to occupy himself overnight. Give Eric a chance to get a proper rest in a *bed* instead of the stupid sofa, thing was far too small for a grown adult to find comfortable. Why he'd ever offered it in the first place he had no idea.

Realising he'd picked up his violin for no real reason Sherlock glanced down to his hands, frowned, then set the instrument back in its case. Wandered over to his laptop instead. He'd perhaps had a vague idea he might play a concerto, but with the room occupied by... well. No, checking his email would be a far more productive use of his time.

"Aw, I thought you were gonna play something," Eric piped up from the spot he'd taken on the sofa.

"I prefer not to serenade a crowded room," Sherlock explained vaguely as he flipped the lid of his laptop up. John snorted from his armchair.

"Bollocks you don't, you love an audience." After a short beat the doctor grinned to himself, then leant forward in his chair to point his fork in Sherlock's direction. "No, *you* just don't want to accidentally start playing something sappy in front of-"

"How's the *girlfriend*, John?" Sherlock broke in, tilting his head quizzically towards the man. "Broken up with you yet? Oh, no, you've still not found another one since Big-Nose. Sarah's still available, you know. Pining over you." John's expression was darkening into an angry glower, which was exactly the reaction Sherlock had been going for, so he quirked a deliberately infuriating smirk and turned his head fully to face his flatmate. Hah, found *just* the right sore spot to jab, as usual - served John right for being such a bloody juvenile over the last few hours. A distinct hint of smugness crept into his voice as Sherlock continued on. "Can't imagine *why*, of course, you were clearly a poor match. But then she always did show an alarming tendency towards- hey!"

"Can I use this? Thanks." Eric had risen from his seat whilst Sherlock was busy speaking and, leaning right over Sherlock's shoulder, plucked the laptop out from under his hands. The freckled man set it down on the opposite side of the table and took a seat in the chair there, casually eating from the styrofoam takeaway box while he used his unoccupied hand to operate the machine.

Sherlock fixed his guest with an affronted glare, but Eric just smiled politely at him over the screen before going back to whatever he was doing.

"Carry on, mate, just checkin' my email," he said, waving a hand in preoccupied dismissal.

"Use your phone!" Sherlock snapped. John, on the other side of the room, had swiftly gotten over Sherlock's attempt to offend him and was now grinning to himself as he ate his meal.

"Nah, laptop's easier." Eric glanced across the table again, then used his fork to gesture vaguely towards John as he quirked an amused smile. "Carry on, then."

Sherlock scowled. Eric knew full-well he'd already lost his train of thought, the meddling arse.

"If you wanted me to shut up you could have just said so."

Eric took another bite of rice. "No, I really did need to check my email."

Sherlock huffed a short, grumbling sigh, then with a petulant glower he leant forward to pluck Eric's meal container and fork out of his hands in retaliation. Eric frowned up at him as Sherlock flopped back in his chair and took a bite of the other man's fried rice, expression making it clear this was payback.

From John's end of the room came the distinct *beep* of a cameraphone, and Sherlock whipped his head up just in time to see his flatmate lowering his mobile to chuckle at the photo display.

"Is this that blog you were talking about?" Eric piped up before Sherlock could lob any scathing remarks John's way. Sherlock looked back around, brows furrowed - how...? Oh, wait, right. He'd had John's blog open in another tab. Eric must have switched windows and seen it. "*'A Study in Pink'*...?" Eric went on bemusedly.

"That was-" John started, but Sherlock cut him off.

"Oh let me tell the story, John, you always muck up the details." He leant forward to set Eric's food back on the table, then steepled his fingers. He flashed a rather egotistical little smirk over at Eric when the man glanced up at him.

"It began," Sherlock intoned grandly, "with a series of suicides..."

**««**

Sherlock's bed smelt like him.

Eric frowned into the pillow, then huffed a tired sigh and rolled over onto his back instead. He let one of his arms flop over the side of the mattress while the other rested loosely over his chest. Above him the ceiling loomed dark and indistinct, shifting wisps of ambient light making the walls look like a vast expanse of living shadow.

Dr Watson, as Sherlock's flatmate was apparently called, had extricated himself from the animated conversation they'd all three fallen into after Sherlock started telling stories about his detective cases nearly four hours ago. It'd taken about forty-five minutes for Eric to even notice the man had gone. And then another half hour after *that* he'd finally clued in to the fact that it was going on midnight and he still had business meetings scheduled for the next day.

Losing track of the time wasn't something Eric did often - even back when he'd spent the majority of his days stoned out of his skull he'd still somehow always managed to keep a consistent internal clock. Because knowing how long he'd been doing things, the when and where and why of the world, had always seemed to give him that tiny sense of stability he otherwise found lacking so often in his life. It was his safety net; a tether to sanity.

Over the decades only a very small number of things had ever taken that all-important awareness of time away from him. One was the medication he'd been forced into taking after Mum finally snapped, which was why he'd so quickly abandoned the stuff in favour of weed. The other was... well…

The other was being smitten. Really, properly, head-over-heels, *falling* for someone. In love. Like a giddy schoolgirl.

He scowled viciously to himself and brought his hands up to cover his face, sighing in exasperation. Alright, mate, *no*. Get it together. Starting to sound like one of those bloody teen gossip rags Missy was always reading. He was not about to *fall in love* with a bloke he'd dated for all of a month, had met while *stoned*, even, and whom he'd only been reunited with for a few hours *eight sodding years* later. That was absurd.

No, Sherlock was just distracting him from keeping proper track of the time because the guy was a complete nutter, not because Eric still felt anything for him. Plus there'd also been the fire, hadn't there, and Mick disappearing so really it was no *wonder* Eric's head was falling a bit to pieces right now. Nothing whatsoever to do with the giant prat in the other room. Just normal everyday nerves, that was all.

With a glower for his own scattered thoughts Eric rolled over to his side and flopped his head down on the *(Sherlock's, shut up, damn it all the fabric smells like his bloody hair)* pillow. He glared into the darkness of the room for a moment - then gasped as a sudden spike of terrified panic shot through his chest. The shadows were staring back at him.

"*Je*-sus fucking *christ!*" he yelped, scrambling up into a sitting position and scuttling backwards to the other side of the mattress. The eyes in the shadows blinked.

"Sorry," a deep voice said. Sherlock's willowy form seemed to coalesce out of the aether as he stepped forward into a pool of weak light from the streetlamp outside the window. He looked vaguely irked by Eric's shouting. And, despite his apology, not the least bit contrite. "Forgot I'd left a file in here."

"So instead'a knocking on th'door you fuckin' *snuck in* while I slept!?" Eric barked, scandalised.

Sherlock shrugged. "Didn't seem worth waking you." He strode over to a table on the far end of the room and began shuffling through a pile of papers and folders there. "Though I suppose that concern was rather unwarranted, seeing as how you appear to be suffering from a bout of insomnia. Anxiety?"

"*No*," Eric snapped. He leant one elbow on his half-bent knee, pinched the bridge of his nose in tired vexation. "No. I'm on meds for that now, thanks. Not that it's any of your business."

"What, then?" Sherlock picked up a sheaf of looseleaf print and idly flipped through it.

"*Nothin'*, god. I was thinking about..." A pregnant pause as Eric forced himself not to say the trite, and very embarrassing, *'you'* which would have ended that sentence. He cleared his throat instead, dropped his hand from his face to scowl awkwardly toward the window. "Er... finances."

Sherlock turned and raised a brow at him, clearly unconvinced. Eric met his gaze with a glare, cheeks flushing, and wordlessly dared the git to challenge his lie.

After a second Sherlock seemed to catch on to some hidden detail; his mouth opened in a small *oh* of realisation as a slightly surprised look crept over his features. Eric's glare immediately shifted into flat exasperation - oh for christ's *sake*. He'd forgotten Sherlock could damn near read peoples' thoughts in their body language. Not remotely fair.

"Is it even worth telling you not to do that?" he grumbled, lowering his face to rest the side of his forehead heavily in the palm of one hand.

"Really can't help it when you're broadcasting like a neon sign," Sherlock replied with a half-shrug of his shoulder which had probably been intended as flippant, but which came off more like an awkward fidget than anything. He cleared his throat and fiddled with the packet of paper he was holding as his eyes flicked back to Eric's tired gaze.

Eric sighed again, rubbing at his eyelids in exhaustion. *Sherlock*, god. What an arse.

"... the sodding bed smells like you," he finally admitted in a flat mumble.

"It's my bed," Sherlock pointed out. Eric opened his eyes again to shoot the man an unimpressed stare, which was met with nothing but a look of blank confusion. "... I really don't know what else you were expecting."

"I wasn't- *god.*" Eric threw his arms up, letting himself flop backwards onto the mattress. He sighed angrily at the ceiling. "I weren't expectin' anything *different*, I dunno. It's just... bloody distracting, is all. Can't sleep."

"You could move to the sofa," Sherlock offered.

"Yeah, because bein' *in the same room as you* is definitely gonna help."

"Would it?" Sherlock asked, sounding a bit bewildered. "I thought you were-"

"Sarcasm."

"Oh."

An awkward silence stretched between them for several seconds. Finally Eric lifted his head, catching sight of Sherlock staring at him with a look like he thought Eric might spontaneously combust if he said anything untoward. They held each other's gaze for a few quiet beats before Eric finally dragged himself back upright. He leant his forearms heavily on his knees and eyed his long-ex boyfriend with a calculating frown.

God, this whole ridiculous situation... what was a bloke even supposed to *do*?

Though of course, the frank truth of the matter was that Eric knew exactly what to do - or knew what he *wanted* to do, anyway. Pretty much what he'd wanted all bloody night long. But he couldn't be sure if he'd be making an enormous mistake by going with that immediate gut impulse. This wasn't some drug-addled uni dropout anymore, after all, but a respected detective. Not a man to be trifled with. And, yet, he was also... he was also *Sherlock*, so... ugh. Damn it, why did this all have to be so difficult!?

As Eric's internal debate with himself waged on the silence around them continued unabated, creeping out to fill all the spaces of the room like an overstretched balloon. Sherlock, doubtless made antsy by the stillness, fidgeted with his papers.

"... I won't punch you," he finally muttered in a quiet voice. Eric blinked and, glancing up, huffed a small laugh. Sherlock answered with a smile. His expression still looked a bit confused and uncertain, perhaps even wary, but his hands were no longer compulsively fiddling with the printouts in his hands - probably a good sign, that. Meant he wasn't really on-edge or nervous anymore, just alert. Trying to figure out what was going on.

And, well... sod it, then, Eric decided with a shake of his head. Might as well take this opportunity while he still had it. He'd be furious with himself for *ages* if he didn't. With a determined set to his jaw he leant forward to grab Sherlock firmly by the hand, threw his weight backwards and physically *dragged* the idiot down on top of him.

"Oof!" Sherlock exclaimed as his papers went flying. He landed hard on the mattress in a jumble of limbs, huffing a surprised expletive, plainly unenthusiastic about his new predicament. Eric ignored his flailing attempt to get back upright and instead grabbed the git round the midsection in a tight, almost desperate hug.

"I missed you, you goddamned prat," he mumbled into Sherlock's shirt.

Sherlock coughed, apparently a bit winded by the fall *(or the hug, which admittedly may have been cutting off his air supply)*, and snaked an arm round to awkwardly pat Eric on the back.

"I, er... missed you too," he replied in bewilderment. "Is there a reason you felt a need to-?"

"Shut up, we're hugging," Eric grumbled.

"... Alright."

**««**

## Chapter 4

**««**

"This is going to wrinkle my suit coat," Sherlock pointed out after a good minute or so of letting Eric hug him. Not exactly the most appropriate thing to say given the context, but he'd found the subsequent stretch of silence between them too confusing not to break.

Sherlock honestly had no idea what had prompted this whole business, the chain of consequences leading up to it... and that was nothing short of disconcerting. What had been the order of events, here? Accidentally scare the living daylights out of the man, apologise for doing so, proceed to have a vaguely awkward conversation, and then... hugs? No, that didn't seem like a logical progression of action at all. Something had to have gone terribly wrong. Perhaps Eric had suffered a small brain aneurysm? Temporary insanity?

Still, though, whatever the reasoning, their current predicament wasn't exactly... unpleasant. Far from it, actually. Sherlock was surprised to find himself rather pleased by the situation. But then that was ridiculous, wasn't it? He was Sherlock Holmes, high-functioning sociopath. He didn't *do* affection. Hugging, hand-holding, human contact... all pointless rubbish. Should put a stop to this right now, had no need of such nonsense.

On the other hand, however, perhaps *Eric* needed it. He'd initiated this after all. What, then, a comforting gesture of some sort? Seeking solace after all the stress of the arson and being questioned by police? Seemed likely. In that case... well, it would probably be more altruistic to let him carry on.

And if that particular brand of altruism happened to carry with it a not-insignificant desire on Sherlock's part to continue being pressed up against the warmth of one of the very few human beings in the world he'd ever deemed worthy of trust... well, it didn't have to mean anything. Just a basic biochemical response to human contact, wasn't it? Serotonin, dopamine... nothing but neurochemicals. He was fine.

His *suit coat*, though, really. Rather not have to iron it in the morning.

"Take it off, then," Eric replied, face still buried against Sherlock's chest. Sherlock huffed.

"Difficult proposition when you're busy clinging to me like a koala."

Eric finally loosened his grip and leant back to blink at Sherlock bemusedly. "... a *koala*?"

"Like those... the things on the pencils, you know," Sherlock explained, not entirely sure what he was even on about. Quickly he shuffled out of his jacket, tossed it in the approximate direction of his closet, and toed his shoes off at the same time. Sod it, might as well lie down properly.

"Pencils?" Eric repeated, his tone suggesting serious contemplation of the theory that hugging Sherlock may have perhaps driven the man mad. "Wait, hang on... I just thought it were weird you'd reference a koala. Now I ain't got no bleedin' clue what you even think the things are."

Sherlock scowled. "I know what koalas are."

Eric looked dubious, but before he could reply Sherlock let himself fall sideways over the other man's legs to land with a soft *fwump* on his pillow. After a pause to consider the propriety of his next actions *(and then to immediately decide he didn't care)* he grabbed Eric's arm and dragged the freckled moron down beside him. Eric made a disgruntled noise as he was forced to quickly disentangle his legs from under Sherlock's, lest he end up with a joint or two out of place, but within seconds they'd managed to get comfortably situated in a far less haphazard position than they'd been in previously.

"This really isn't a proper solution to the whole *bed smells like you* issue," Eric mumbled in half-hearted objection to their new arrangement. He'd ended up with his head on Sherlock's chest again, the top of his skull just under the curve of Sherlock's jaw. Sherlock rested his chin on the other's hair and frowned to himself. Hang on a moment, now wait... how'd he ended up in bed with Eric? Had he really just chosen to escalate the situation? *Why*? Wasn't the least bit dignified, this - limbs tangled up like a pair of teenagers, spread out across a bed that'd never had occasion to house more than one occupant, rumpling both their clothes and the sheets in equal measure. Such complete loss of decorum should be bothering him *far* more than it currently was.

Over the course of his life Sherlock had grown accustomed to always keeping up appearances. Accepted without thought the bevy of small, inconsequential lies he maintained for the benefit of those he interacted with. He knew how most people perceived him, could usually deduce what they wanted to hear, determine which words or behavioural patterns would be most advantageous for his reputation... predict what he'd be mocked for. Prior experiences had given him a fairly solid idea of which aspects of himself needed to be hidden for the purposes of sanity, what gave him the best chances of survival in a social climate. A clear framework for the personality he could safely present to outsiders.

Being frequently bewildered by his own actions was one of those unfortunate facets of his existence which he'd learnt early on to conceal at all costs. Who would ever respect a man who kept finding himself having to use context clues to piece together why in blazes he'd got up and walked into another room, after all? Or who couldn't seem to maintain a consistent sense of the passage of time no matter how often he checked his watch? Absent-minded, scatterbrained... no, *god*, unacceptable. Best to just hide it. Let them all think him in control, even when he felt like a blind rat stumbling through fog. No one's business but his own.

Hardly needed to be giving out any more ammunition against himself, anyway, what with the constant derision of *freak* and *psycho* still being flung in his face on a regular basis*.* Those insults he had ample practise with - barely even acknowledged them anymore, lifelong repetition having long ago stripped the words of all meaning. But others... if someone were to catch on to the ruse, realise he'd never been quite as self-assured as he made out to be, found an invective to encompass that personal failing... he didn't even want to try predicting his reaction to such a scenario. Likely sheer panic. Not an appealing mental image. Keep the secret under careful guard, then, never let it slip.

Thinking of all this, and without really knowing what he'd meant to say, Sherlock found himself opening his mouth.

"I have no idea how this happened," he admitted. Then scrunched up his face in utter confusion, because why in *hell's name* had he let Eric know that? Hadn't he just...? Oh for god's sake, why was he still talking? "... I'm fairly sure I just came in here to fetch the case file with the eye-maggots. Now suddenly I'm in bed with you. This doesn't make any sense."

"Life's a bleedin' mystery," Eric countered blandly.

No attempt whatsoever to twist the admission into mockery. Nor even to question why Sherlock, by all rights a bloody supergenius, would have trouble following a chain of events which had occurred less than five minutes ago. Just... casual acceptance. Unconsciously Sherlock's arms tightened around the other man's shoulders in a hug he hadn't meant to give.

After another silent moment between them Sherlock frowned. Eric's breathing was growing suspiciously regular, settling into a steady pattern of slumber. He drew back to try to get a look at the man's face but couldn't quite manage the proper angle.

"Are you falling asleep?" he asked instead.

"Dunno," Eric mumbled. "Maybe...?"

Words slurred a bit, poor enunciation - definitely slipping into unconsciousness. Well that wasn't bloody fair at all, Sherlock was still pinned to the mattress. How the hell was he meant to get up without waking Eric later?

"Let me up," Sherlock demanded, trying to shove his companion off. In response freckled arms tightened more firmly around his torso to trap him decisively in place.

"No."

Another half-hearted shove, then he simply huffed a frustrated sigh to himself and let his body go limp. Eric snuggled into his chest like a child with a teddy bear. Sherlock grumbled something indistinct about *clingy juvenile morons*, but try as he might there was no real venom to the words. He just couldn't seem to bring himself to be all that upset by any of this. Perhaps because this was the longest bout of sustained contact with another human being Sherlock could recall having had in several years, which was causing the ancient social primate portions of his brain to release a flood of dopamine. Or... perhaps because Eric was really quite warm, and there'd been a bit of a draft out in the sitting room? Or maybe because it would be too much bother to move. One of those, anyway.

He'd explain it all to himself later on, he knew. Always did. Stripped his more distressingly human actions of all sentiment to make it easier to slot into a mental paradigm. Fit the careful persona he'd built.

For now, though... well, sod it, he'd not actually been planning to stay up all night anyway. A quick kip would accomplish the same task whether he took it on the sofa or his bed. And in an hour or so Eric would have sunk deep enough in slumber to make it possible to slip out the room without waking him. So Sherlock would simply take a brief rest now, no longer than absolutely necessary, then wake up a short time later to extricate himself before morning. Easy.

With a soft huff of a sigh he let his eyes slip closed.

An hour's nap, that was all. Then he'd leave.

**««**

"Sherlock, put a pot of tea on would you?"

John grumbled his words blearily into the silence of early dawn as he shuffled into the sitting room the next morning. He cracked a wide yawn, stretched his back and rubbed at his eyes. Needed a cuppa. Caffeine, spot of breakfast, get himself going for the day.

With a frown John realised his flatmate hadn't yet responded to him. He opened both eyes and blinked several times to clear his vision of the haziness of sleep. Before him the sitting room stood jarringly empty, the remains of Sherlock's work strewn across various tables like a maelstrom of paper. The detective himself was nowhere to be found.

Expression flatly confused, John turned and glanced toward the kitchen. No one there. Bathroom was open, as well, so the man wasn't in the loo. Oh, but... his bedroom door was ajar? Was Crenshaw awake, then? Had the two of them gone off somewhere? Perhaps a visit with Mrs Hudson...

As he formulated these theories John had been moving towards the bedroom, meaning to have a peek through the open door - just to be sure the flat was empty, mind, and that no one needed anything resembling medical assistance. A quick glance showed him the jumbled outline of a figure asleep on the bed and he drew back. Oh, Crenshaw hadn't gotten up yet. What was his door doing open, then? Thought for sure he'd heard it close last night... John frowned and reached out to gently shut the door for the sake of the lad's privacy.

Quite suddenly his sleep-addled brain seemed to catch up with processing the signals from his eyes, however, and John froze with his hand on the knob.

A shock of dark curls splayed out on the pillow. Freckled arm draped over a thin chest clad in a sleep-rumpled buttonup. *Sherlock's shoes* discarded at the side of the bed.

A sharp bark of laughter nearly burst out from his throat but John clapped a hand over his mouth to stifle it. Quietly as possible he crept away from the door and snatched up his phone from the table where he'd left it last night.

*Don't wake up, don't wake up...* he pleaded silently as he padded back to the door. Oh thank hell, they were still out. Grinning like a loon he snapped a photo of the scene.

The sound of his mobile's automatic camera-shutter noise seemed to startle Crenshaw quite badly. Out of nowhere the boy sucked in a panicked breath, eyes flying wide open, and flailed around comically before managing to shove himself up on one elbow.

"Wha'ver 'appened it weren' me swear t'christ," he slurred in a hasty jumble of cockney. John winced apologetically. Oops, bollocks, he'd forgotten about the shutter noise.

"Sorry, didn't mean to wake you," he offered, lowering his phone. Crenshaw blinked owlishly at him. After a second or so the boy seemed to recall where he was and fixed John with a faintly confused look.

"Oh, er... mornin', Dr Watson. What're you doin' in...?" His words trailed off as he appeared to realise that John was in fact stood in the half-open door, not in the room itself, and that the childish smile on the doctor's face was being directed equally towards him and someone else. With a blink Crenshaw glanced down to the warm lump of unconscious detective curled up next to him. Instantly his freckled cheeks went bright pink.

"Slept well, then?" John asked brightly, unable to smother his delighted expression in response to Crenshaw's obvious embarrassment. Not remotely fair to keep teasing the poor boy like this, he knew - but *really* now, how could one help it? He and Sherlock were like a couple of goofy kids together, all fidgety gestures and awkward blushing... hilarious and strangely adorable all at once.

Below Crenshaw's chest Sherlock, in his usual habit of refusing to be roused from slumber by anything less than a magnitude ten earthquake, frowned and mumbled an indistinct complaint for all the noise. He shifted to wrap his upper body partially around his bed-mate's torso like a prodded cat and buried his head under a pillow.

"W-we didn't, I... really, I *swear* this ain't what it looks like," Crenshaw stammered. With a self-conscious clearing of his throat he attempted to move away from Sherlock, only to find himself pinned firmly in place by the other man's grip round his midsection.

John just grinned.

"Fry-up alright for breakfast?" he asked after a brief pause to commit the scene to memory. Turning away from the door he set himself to the business of gathering ingredients from the fridge, hoping the change of subject would make it clear he had no problem with the situation. John had brought girlfriends round the flat before, after all, and Sherlock had always been decent enough to (more or less) put up with them. Wouldn't dream of complaining in the opposite scenario. Best mates, right? Certain codes of conduct to adhere to, both of them obligated to be civil to romantic partners.

Behind him he heard Crenshaw mutter an embarrassed affirmative. By the sounds of things the boy was attempting to extricate himself from Sherlock's grip without waking him. Needn't have bothered being so careful about it - if Sherlock hadn't stirred by now between all the talking and movement then it most likely meant the man was in the midst of one of his haven't-slept-in-days, dead-to-the-world comas. No amount of effort would rouse him from that.

John had gotten the pan nearly all the way heated up when Crenshaw finally stepped sheepishly into the kitchen and closed the bedroom door behind him.

"Er... Sherlock says he's not hungry," he informed John in a flustered mumble. John turned and regarded him with a half-amused, half-impressed sort of look.

"You managed to get him awake long enough to answer a question?" Facing back toward the stove John chuckled to himself, struck with a sudden thought: *Eric Crenshaw, Detective Whisperer.* Friend to all consulting lunatics.

"Y-yeah...?" Crenshaw was carefully taking a seat at the table, looking helplessly anxious. His hands had strayed towards each other to press palm-to-palm in that strange habit of his. John quirked an exasperated smile in the lad's direction as he turned to grab the carton of eggs.

"No need to be nervous," he said in what he hoped was a reassuring tone.

Crenshaw startled and seemed to realise what his hands were doing. He whipped them away from each other to tuck them under his thighs instead. "Oh, er... sorry," he muttered, biting his lip. "I'm just, uh... not sure if I, well... I mean I don't want to make things awkward or noth- *anything,* erm. Or anything."

Having trouble keeping his accent straight, apparently. John smiled to himself and cracked an egg into the pan on the stove. Supposed it must be true, then - opposites attract. Because he couldn't very well think up a more polar opposite to the cavalier insanity of Sherlock Holmes than a meek, kind-hearted worrier. Why the boy was acting like one wrong move would be the death of him, though, he had no idea.

"No chance of that. Really, I'm just pleased to see him getting on with someone for a change," John explained as he moved on to the sausages. "And the whole exes bit... kind of a relief, to be honest. We'd all thought perhaps he'd taken a vow of celibacy."

Crenshaw snorted in disbelief. "Celibacy? *Him*?"

"I take it we were wrong?" John smiled to himself, flipping a few links in the pan. Oh yes, this conversation was progressing in all the right directions. Absolutely brilliant.

*Bad job you couldn't be bothered to wake up, Sherlock...* he thought impishly. Perfect opportunity to gather some choice material for teasing the man.

"Yeah, well, I'm pretty sure he was a bit of a- erm..." Crenshaw trailed off, going faintly pink again. "That is, from what I'd gathered, he'd *got around* quite a lot during uni. If you, er, know what I... mean." He coughed awkwardly and rubbed at the back of his neck. "... certainly wasn't inexperienced, anyway."

John made a strange, sputtering *pfft* noise in an attempt to stifle an inappropriate burst of cackling laughter. *Not inexperienced...?* Oh lord, but the million implications of that simple statement. Sherlock using his absurd deductive powers to go sharking about some late-night uni club - he could just picture it. And he didn't even *want* to imagine the man's idea of pillow talk. Did he even do the whole quintessential romance bit? Or had he been one of those clingy, overprotective types?

Though, perhaps the most important question... "Was he a good boyfriend?"

Crenshaw looked to have been taken completely off-guard by that. He fixed John with a befuddled stare as the older man set a plate laden with eggs and sausage down in front of him.

"A good...? Er..." The lad's brows furrowed in thought. He glanced back over his shoulder to the bedroom, seeming to deliberate for several long seconds. John took a seat on the opposite side of the table and studied him with interest. Rather complicated history there, it seemed. Fascinating. Though not the least bit unexpected, of course, considering the man involved...

In a spark of clear cognisance John suddenly found himself struck by just how little he actually knew about his flatmate. Who *was* Sherlock, really? And what precisely did Crenshaw see in him? There had to be something there besides all the snark and vain posturing, after all. Something more... human. John had seen glimpses of that hidden empathy from time to time, obviously, but now he couldn't help wondering at the depth of the man Crenshaw knew. Sherlock almost seemed to be a completely different person around him - all soft edges and enthusiasm.

Finally Crenshaw turned back round again. A small smile flitted across his face.

"Yeah," he decided. "Yeah... I guess he was."

**««**

## Chapter 5

**««**

Eric ate his breakfast slowly, trying and failing to avoid jumping like a skittish hare over every slight movement in the room. Wasn't very mature behaviour, this. Quite probably making Dr Watson think him some sort of lunatic... but then Eric couldn't exactly help it. Meeting new people invariably put him on edge, as did staying as a guest in others' homes, and to make matters worse he'd lost his bottle of anxiety medication in the fire. Combined with Watson's apparent, vaguely bewildering glee over everything Eric and Sherlock did together this was all turning into a rather perfect storm of nervous static buzzing through his skull.

Of course he supposed he really couldn't fault the doctor for reacting like a kid at Christmas over all this nonsense - one could only imagine how Sherlock normally behaved around the man, after all. What few blog posts Eric had managed to read (before Sherlock had nicked his laptop back and taken over the storytelling) had painted a bit of an inconsistent picture. Generally one of fascination and mystery, building Sherlock up like some sort of amazing creature to be studied, but also doing things like calling him 'spectacularly ignorant' in the same breath. It was confusing.

And that 'ignorant' line in particular... that had bothered Eric a bit. Not because he *disagreed* - he was after all fairly certain, after their conversation last night, that Sherlock genuinely had no idea what a koala was - but because it just seemed a tad mean-spirited to write something like that in public where everyone could read it. Sherlock, the bloke Eric remembered, the one he'd been getting reacquainted with over the last several hours, would be downright mortified by such things being made widely known. The fact that he wasn't perfect, that he forgot silly things like how the solar system worked, that he sometimes felt more comfortable behaving like a child than an adult... back in Stockwell he'd always done his best to hide that stuff.

And that didn't seem to have changed. In fact he appeared to have fallen into the habit of keeping such things firmly under wraps at all cost, no matter who he was with. Watching the two flatmates interact over the last half-day or so, Eric had noticed quite a lot of obvious showmanship on Sherlock's part. Playing himself up to fit into what seemed like a fairly well-established act. Trying to make sure he didn't end up being called 'ignorant' or the like in a blog post again, if Eric had to hazard a guess. That had to be a stressful way of life, didn't it? Never quite comfortable being yourself, knowing any weird thing you did might end up published on the internet for a load of strangers to laugh over...

Dr Watson really did seem like a nice enough bloke, though. Perhaps he just didn't realise the effect his actions might have on Sherlock's behaviour? It wasn't as if Sherlock was likely to have said anything, after all. Idiot *never* spoke up about being made uncomfortable, stoic to the bitter end. It wouldn't be the least bit odd if he'd simply never objected.

Eric paused with his fork halfway to his mouth to eye the man across from him critically for a moment. Dr Watson glanced up with a smile, a bit of a questioning tilt to his brow, a genuinely friendly expression on his face. No, Eric decided, there clearly wasn't any malice there. This wasn't a *bad* bloke, just a... well, a *spectacularly ignorant* one.

"Something wrong?" Watson asked, and Eric winced a bit in deliberation of what he should say. He really wasn't sure how to go about broaching this topic without it being massively awkward.

"Oh, er... no," he muttered. Then cleared his throat, frowned at himself, and set his fork down determinedly. Sod it, Eric, can't be a bloody doormat *all* the time. "Is there a reason y'keep laughing at everything Sherlock and I do?"

There, brilliant. Sort of... not at all what he'd meant to say, but... yes. Brilliant. Somehow a question instead of the statement he'd been aiming for, a lot less self-confident than he'd hoped. But then *god's sake* this really wasn't a conversation he'd even wanted to have in the first place. Best take baby steps.

Watson seemed a bit surprised, but smiled. "Oh! That, sorry. Not very professional, I know." He chuckled a bit in a self-depreciating way. "It's just... Sherlock usually puffs himself up as being better than all the rest of us, like some sort of machine. And now here after all that talk on the uselessness of sentiment and romance it turns out he dated someone like- er... well."

Watson cut off with a slightly embarrassed cough, turning to the business of cutting his eggs.

Eric frowned. "Someone like... what? Like *me?*"

"Well... yes." Watson seemed aware he was heading into potentially-offensive territory, but soldiered on regardless. "I mean you've got to admit it's a little unexpected. What with him being all... you know."

"What...? Posh? Smart?" Eric felt his expression going flat, unamused. His accent had doubtless slipped several notches in annoyance. But in a sudden flash of something like deranged cultural pride, he decided he didn't care. Why should he have to pretend to speak with a 'proper' accent, anyway? Cockney should be good enough for anyone. It'd always been good enough for Sherlock, hadn't it? Once they got over the requisite good-natured mutual teasing, anyway.

"No, no of course not!" Watson backtracked, his smile a bit forced. "Well, that is, yes... I mean *he* is, but that's not to say you're not also... that. Those things."

"I ain't nowhere near as clever, nor as well-mannered," Eric objected flatly. His accent had by now lost all pretence of being anything but the low-class drawl of an inner-city lad off the council estates. "But I don't need t'be, do I? I just get along with folks. I find out what makes 'em uncomfortable an' then I *don't do that.* An' your flatmate's been really uncomfortable with you giggling like a kid over everythin' we do so if y'could try t'keep a bit of a lid on that I'd appreciate it."

Watson blinked, his eyebrows shooting up. "He told you he was uncomfortable?"

"*No.* Course he bloody didn't," Eric countered in a vaguely exasperated tone. Honestly, how long had this bloke lived with Sherlock? A year? And he didn't yet realise you had to read between the sodding lines? "You've gotta watch how he acts if y'wanna know what he's thinkin', he won't just bleedin' *tell* you."

"Well in that case how can you be sure you're right?" Watson replied. He didn't seem angry at all, just intrigued. And perhaps a little amused - though, to his credit, he looked to be making an effort not to let that show. "I've asked him about it, by the way, and he said he didn't mind."

Eric just scowled. "He won't *tell* you he minds, christ, he'll just-" He cut himself off and huffed. There wasn't really a good way to explain any of this. Not without giving away far more about Sherlock's childhood than was appropriate, anyway. Fairly sure the man wouldn't appreciate having the darker elements of his past laid bare without consent. "Look, I know I'm right, yeah? I've... I mean we were really goddamn close, way back when. An' I know it's weird t'say we still *are*, cause it's been such a long time, but..."

"No, I get it," Watson broke in. He was still smiling, though not in merriment - more like an odd sort of patronising fondness. One of those kind looks older folks give to confused or troubled teenagers. Eric furrowed his brows and tried not to seem affronted; he really bloody hated those looks. "You're good for him," Watson continued. "We've all spent ages trying to get the daft idiot to act like a human being and here you've gone and done it in a few hours! Nice to see, honestly."

Eric opened his mouth, meaning to retort with something like *he acts the way he does because you're making him*, but thought better of it. No, god... didn't need to get in an argument on his first morning here. Not over something like this. He was damned lucky Watson hadn't blown up at him already, anyway. Best just back out while he was still ahead.

Reluctantly he forced a smile. "Erm... yeah. Thanks."

Watson gave him a slightly odd look, like he could see the hesitation there, but declined to comment. Instead he finished the last few bites of his breakfast and stood up to take the plate over to the sink.

"I do locum work at a nearby clinic, scheduled the morning shift today... should be back around noon-ish. Make yourself at home."

"W-will do, thanks," Eric muttered in response. He poked at his sausage and smiled as Dr Watson waved on his way out of the kitchen. Sounds of the man slipping on his shoes, grabbing his coat, shutting the door... the flat fell silent.

Eric huffed to himself. Well *that* had been complete rubbish. He frowned down at his mostly-finished breakfast, then glanced up round the kitchen. Had no idea where the bin was, nor who usually handled the washing-up... oh sod it. He'd just deal with it later.

It would've probably been a better choice to have a quick shower, or look into finding clothes he could wear to the meeting he had to attend in a few hours, but Eric found himself flopping back into bed instead. Sherlock, still asleep, grumbled over being disturbed.

"I think I might've offended your flatmate," Eric admitted into the stillness of the bedroom. He was lying on his back now, staring at the ceiling, and on a whim reached out to ruffle Sherlock's hair. The lazy swat at his hand in response made him smile.

"You didn't, John's impossible to offend," Sherlock mumbled back. "I should know I've been trying for a bloody year."

Eric plucked at a particularly bouncy black ringlet, making Sherlock growl in annoyance and shove his head under a pillow again.

"He thinks y'don't mind him writing stuff on his blog about all the weird shit you do," Eric divulged after a short pause. Bloody hell, what was he even hoping to accomplish here? Some sort of absurd communications therapy? Playing matchmaker for two grown-arse men?

"I don't." Sherlock's voice was muffled by the pillow, but still clearly audible in the otherwise silent room. Eric rolled his eyes at the undercurrent of defensiveness. Liar.

"Yeah you do," he responded blandly. "You're just not sayin' anything cause that would mean you've got proper feelings t'be hurt and we can't have *that* now can we."

Sherlock finally poked his head out from under the pillow, propped himself up on his elbows, and glared blearily at Eric.

"What are you, then, some sort of bloody couples counsellor?" he sniped. Apparently going for an angry tone, but the sleepiness still layered under his voice made it come out more of a tired monotone and he seemed to give up. With a huff he let himself collapse again. "Ugh. It's not worth bothering over. Just let him do what he likes."

Eric shrugged. "Hey, I don't really care. S'your business. I just think if someone's being an arse to you maybe you should say sommat."

"I *have*," Sherlock snapped back, a bit of a whinge to his words. "I got all miffed about the first one but he wouldn't shut up about the bloody *solar system* for some asinine reason so I tried explaining why I'd forgotten but apparently it's *primary school stuff* and, ugh... sod it. Who cares, anyway. It's not important."

"Did you even go to primary school?" Eric asked, aware that had nothing whatsoever to do with the topic at hand but finding himself too curious not to change the subject. He vaguely remembered something about *tutors* and not having met other children until secondary but couldn't for the life of him recall what conversation it might have come up in. They'd probably both been stoned, come to think of it.

"No," Sherlock mumbled into the pillow below his face.

Eric huffed a small laugh. A sidelong glance showed Sherlock's back twitch slightly in a small bemused snort. Finally, with a yawn, the man shoved himself into a sitting position and scrubbed a hand through his hair.

"Planets are utterly boring," he announced to no one in particular.

"I dunno. This one seems alright," Eric countered with a shrug. "Y'know... most days."

"No, boring, the lot of them." Sherlock stood up directly on the mattress, stepped carefully over Eric's torso, and hopped down to the floor on the other side of his bed. "Have a look through my closet for trousers and a shirt, then. We've a few stops to make before your meeting."

"*We?*" Eric repeated, blinking. "Hang on-"

Sherlock was already out the door and headed for the shower.

**««**

"Ugh, what's *he* doing here?" Philip moaned to Sally as they walked into the lobby of their workplace holding twin cups of too-hot coffee. Sally looked up from the phone in her hand to find the Freak standing by a potted plant over by the lifts, clearly waiting around for Lestrade to show up. God, *one day* without that lunatic in her hair, was that so much to ask?

"It's Lestrade's day off, Freak," she pointed out with a frustrated glare. Holmes blinked and glanced over at her, but before he could speak an unfamiliar bloke appeared from the nearby hallway where the loos were and strode up to them.

"This *bleedin'* shirt, mate. Why d'you even own a buttonup in royal purple?"

Ignoring Sally, Holmes turned his attention to the new arrival. "You're the one who chose to wear it."

"Cause none of th'rest were clean!" The man rolled his eyes and shuffled on a grey wool peacoat he'd had slung over his arm. "At least it goes well with the grey, s'pose."

"Everything goes well with grey, that's the entire point of a neutral colour."

The other bloke snickered as he did up the buttons on his coat. "Be gayer, Shers."

Holmes frowned in a vaguely exasperated manner but apparently chose not to respond to that. He turned towards Sally and Anderson instead, who were both in varying states of reaction to the casual use of a pet-name for their mutual least-favourite psychopath. *Shers*, really? Sally tried not to snort in bewildered amusement. Holmes gave the two of them a flat look before carrying on speaking as if nothing at all strange had happened.

"I need access to long-term evidence storage," he announced without preamble. "Lestrade won't answer my texts, so one of you will have to assist me instead."

Sally was too busy eyeing the man standing next to Holmes to really pay the detective much mind. Freckles and a more-or-less cockney accent... she could've sworn she'd seen that combination in conjunction with Holmes before. Some old case file or something, perhaps? She furrowed her brows as she stared at the bloke, feeling as if she were teetering right on the verge of some momentous realisation. Who *was* this guy...?

"Erm... hullo," the man spoke up awkwardly in response to Sally's fixed gaze on him.

"Finally replaced Watson, have we?" Philip sneered from beside Sally, indicating the newcomer with a tilt of his coffee cup in that direction. "Nice to see the good doctor's come to his senses and left you."

Holmes half-rolled his eyes as the unnamed man next to him frowned.

"John's at the clinic for the morning. I'll tell him you said hello," Holmes said blandly, then turned to Sally. "The evidence, please, Sally. I'd ask Anderson but he's left his keys and ID badge on the bookshelf by your hearth."

"I have not- oh..." Philip patted down his pockets, suddenly alarmed. "Damn it!"

Sally heaved a resigned sigh and dug her keys out of her pocket. She unclipped her house key from the ring to hand it over to Philip, who took it and hastily bustled off toward the entrance muttering obscenities to himself.

"Interesting..." Holmes started in with a smirk, plainly about to rattle off a million little facts he'd just pieced together via god-knew-what stupid innocuous detail. Sally quickly cut him off, scowling. No, *far* too early in the morning for that nonsense.

"Save it, Freak," she snapped. Beside Holmes the freckled bloke startled a bit from where he'd been bemusedly watching Anderson's retreat and shot her a dark look. Sally ignored it and headed for the side hallway that led to their secured evidence area.

"They've just entered into another 'on' portion of their on-again, off-again adulterous affair," Holmes muttered behind her, just loudly enough to be overheard. She grit her teeth and resolved not to respond.

"How charming," the cockney bloke replied in an unimpressed drawl. Sally risked a glance back over her shoulder and found Holmes and the other man walking comfortably side-by-side, watching her like some sort of terribly fascinating zoological specimen. She flicked her head back round haughtily - what business was it of *theirs*, honestly- and flung the door at the end of the hall open. Whatever, god. Just had to let Holmes in to fawn over whatever blood-spattered nonsense he felt the need to see, then she could kick his arse out the building and get back to her actual job.

"Go on, then," she ordered Holmes with a less-than-enthusiastic wave of her arm after unlocking the specific room he'd indicated needing access to. The freckled bloke tried to walk inside as well, but Sally stopped him with an outstretched arm in front of his chest. "*One* unauthorised civilian snooping round at a time, thanks," she explained in a flat grumble.

"Oh, er... right. Sorry." The bloke smiled, took a step back and tucked his hands in his trouser pockets to wait. Sally remained in the doorframe, arms crossed, and glanced in to make sure Holmes wasn't doing something absurd like trying to disassemble a sodding handgun. Luckily he seemed to be in a fairly tame mood today and was merely picking through bagged samples of bloodied fabric, studying each one intently for microscopic signs of whatever-the-hell.

"So you're the new pet, I take it?" Sally asked of Holmes' companion, turning back round to face him.

"Excuse me?" The man's eyebrows furrowed in an insulted look. Sally just rolled her eyes. Brainwashed, plainly - damned Holmes and his bloody mind games.

"He's a psychopath, you know," she warned in a stern tone of voice. Watson was a lost cause, but maybe she could still get through to this one. "Whatever he told you to get you to follow him? It's a lie. You're probably just a replacement for Watson."

Out of nowhere the freckled bloke actually *glared* at her, which wasn't an entirely unexpected response to her words but still managed to look unsettling on his otherwise open, friendly face. Sally held her ground regardless. Damned if she was letting Holmes corrupt another innocent soul.

"I'd really appreciate it if you'd stop talkin' now," the man remarked flatly. Then, apparently resolving to ignore her, he turned his attention to the rows of shelves they could see through the open door of the evidence vault.

Sally wasn't about to be dissuaded so easily. This could very well be a matter of life and death, after all - who knew what Holmes would do to this poor bloke? Hell, who knew what he'd done to *Watson?*

"I'm serious, he's dangerous," she insisted, matching the dark scowl now trained sidelong on her. "He investigates all these gory homicide cases because he *gets off* on it - we don't even pay him! One day it'll be you or Dr Watson dead and bloodied on the floor with that lunatic standing over your corpse and-"

"Lady," her conversation partner broke in, his hateful expression having practically transformed his face into a furious mask. "I will punch you in the *fucking gob* if you don't shut up about my boyfriend."

Sally baulked, thoughts skittering to a sudden confused stop. "Your...?"

Before she could say anything further Holmes appeared at the storage room entrance, grinning like the complete nutter he was. He held a bagged clothing sample in one hand and waved it in the freckled bloke's face.

"Eric, look! Maggot remains! I was right, the victim's clothing was swapped for an artificially-aged shroud post-burial."

Eric, as he was apparently called, glanced over with a bright smile. "Is that what you were doin' with the eye-maggots business last night?"

"Yes, until you distracted me," Holmes confirmed. He took one last careful look at the plastic-encased fabric, then dismissively handed it over to a startled Sally. "You can return this to its proper place, thank you. I'll be e-mailing Lestrade later today with the correct solution to yet another bungled case of yours."

Sally opened and shut her mouth a few times, but didn't get a chance to retort to the snide insult. Holmes had already started off down the hall, followed closely by his... his *boyfriend*, really!? God, no. That was *horrifying*. Had to have been a lie.

But then why in hell's name would anyone lie about dating *Holmes*? And their conversation... *'yes, until you distracted me'*? Eugh. No, no no.

Grimacing in disgust at the unwelcome mental imagery flitting through her head, Sally ducked into the storage room to return Holmes' fabric sample to the correct filing box. Once done she locked the door behind her, took an enormous swig of her hereto-abandoned coffee and hurried for the lifts.

Forget it - forget *all* of it. She had work to do.

**««**

## Chapter 6

**««**

"I think I accidentally told that policewoman we were dating."

Sherlock blinked, glancing sidelong. He opened his mouth to respond but Eric was already speaking again.

"Not on *purpose*, I mean, it just... she was being a massive bitch and I told her I'd punch her in the gob if she didn't shut up, and I think I called you my boyfriend for some dumbarse reason?" The man winced and rubbed at the back of his neck. "Christ... sorry. I dunno why I'd-"

"You told Sally you'd punch her in the face?" Sherlock cut in, finding himself terribly amused by that mental image.

"Well, yeah. She called you a psychopath and then she started goin' on about how you'd murdered Watson or something."

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Oh, *that* again. She tried the same routine on John when he first started following me about, it's nothing to be concerned over."

"I wasn't *concerned*. It were just sodding rude, that's all," Eric countered with a deep frown. "... so did you miss the bit where I'd called you my boyfriend or do you not care?" he continued after a pause - not in a tone of irritation, however, but of genuine inquiry. Apparently he still fully expected Sherlock to filter out parts of his speech without meaning to and for some deranged reason didn't find it annoying or inconsiderate. Sherlock smiled slightly, then in a fit of illogical embarrassment masked the expression by glancing down at his phone.

"If she brings it up in future I'll convince her she has a faulty memory," he replied with a shrug. Making a show of ostensibly checking the time he slipped his phone back into his pocket. "The wonderful thing about Sally is that she's tremendously susceptible to psychological manipulation."

"Is that why she thinks you're a psycho?" Eric asked blandly.

"Er... probably, come to think of it." Sherlock tilted his head in thought, trying to recall what he'd done to pit Donovan so militantly against him. Details escaped him. Most likely a case back in the beginning of his time with the Met - perhaps he'd charmed her into letting him in to see a crime scene or something? "Can't remember what exactly I did," he admitted. "Doubtless something to do with chatting her up for the use of her access badge."

"Ladies' man," Eric chided with a small snicker for Sherlock's faintly disgusted look.

"What time was your sales meeting?" Sherlock asked, pointedly changing the subject. Eric shrugged.

"Ten-ish, still a few hours yet. Wanna do sommat?"

"I have no idea what we could do," Sherlock replied. As they walked aimlessly down the street from the police station he'd taken to idly tapping every fence railing they passed by, which was odd but amusing.

"It's London, not like there's a shortage of coffee shops or... I dunno, restaurants? Do you still not eat breakfast?"

Sherlock wrinkled his nose in distaste. "Not unless John forces me to."

"Right," Eric ceded, smiling. "Well then I s'pose that's coffee, then? Or tea, whatever."

"Going to a café? Isn't that what people do on *dates?*" Sherlock's tone was blandly sarcastic, but he'd adjusted his path to turn down a side-street and beckoned Eric to follow, apparently having already decided on a shop and the quickest route to get there.

"It's what people do when it's eight in the morning and they want a cup of coffee."

Sherlock smirked but didn't respond. Instead they wandered down a few more streets in companionable silence until they'd reached a cozy-looking little café tucked up between some shops. Evidently a place Sherlock knew well, as the man working the counter looked up and grinned enthusiastically when they entered.

"Ah, Mr Holmes!" he exclaimed happily. Sherlock nodded in polite greeting as the man immediately busied himself preparing a drink.

"Cleared up his insurance fraud charges," Sherlock explained disinterestedly in response to Eric's questioning look. Eric snorted in amusement - of course the idiot went round meddling in all the local businesses' legal problems.

"Why'd you do that, then? Bored?"

"No, I was hoping he'd give me free coffee if I helped him out."

As if on cue the little balding man showed up with a large paper cup and with a wide smile handed it over to Sherlock. "And for you, sir?" he asked, looking to Eric.

"Ah, just... y'know, whatever's easiest?" Eric replied with a slightly worried smile. Didn't want to put the poor guy out any expensive ingredients just because he'd happened to walk in with Mr-Free-Drinks over there. Sherlock, of course, had already wandered over to one of the windows and stood staring out over the sparse pedestrian traffic, sipping his coffee.

Eric accepted a (much larger than he'd have liked) cup of black coffee and turned to find Sherlock actually watching something outside with an alarming intensity. He raised a brow and strode over to him, trying to follow his line of sight, but it was just a couple blokes standing on the corner and a woman strolling by with a pram. He turned his gaze to Sherlock instead - looked a bit like a pointer dog just caught sight of a bird. Eric huffed a small breath of bemusement and blew on his drink to cool it.

"What're you lookin' at?" he finally asked.

"Those men are planning something." Sherlock nodded his head to the blokes on the corner, who seemed to simply be having a conversation. Eric took an experimental sip of his coffee and found it still way too hot to drink.

"Loads of people plan things," he pointed out, wincing a bit for his mildly burnt tongue. Doubtless Sherlock meant some nefarious scheme or whatever, but it was more fun to bother him by pretending to have no idea what he was on about. Sure enough Sherlock rolled his eyes.

"I mean they're planning something *illegal*, obviously." Without warning he thrust his coffee cup in Eric's direction, who took hold of it with a startled noise, and marched off toward the shop door. "Stay here, I'll see if I can find a closer vantage point. Won't be a minute."

"Wh- oi, that's not very date-like behaviour, mate!" Eric yelled after him, but Sherlock just shot an unimpressed look over his shoulder for the admittedly silly joke and pushed his way out into the street. Eric scoffed a bit in exasperation and wandered over to take a seat at one of the tables by the windows. Might as well watch what Sherlock did, he figured; though that turned out to be nothing more interesting than loitering near the corner where the soon-to-be criminals were huddled together and pretending to light a cigarette.

When his targets moved up along a side street Sherlock followed, disappearing around a corner. Welp, so much for that, then. Eric leant back in his chair, sipped his coffee (or Sherlock's, maybe - he'd gotten them a bit mixed up in transit to the table) and idly checked his watch. Give the prat fifteen minutes to remember he'd been doing something besides stalk people, then if he'd not returned Eric would just flag down a cab for himself and head for his meeting. Not like Sherlock wouldn't figure out where he'd gone.

As he glanced back up to the street he found his view blocked by a shiny black towncar pulling up to the shop's kerb. He tilted his head, bemused - odd thing to see round here, wasn't it? Maybe some rich bloke had a specific liking for this café.

A woman in a smart pencil skirt emerged from the car, however, and strode purposefully into the shop. She made her way directly to Eric's table and loomed over him with a Blackberry in hand.

"Come with me," she said simply. Eric furrowed his brows.

"Um... if I say no is something very bad going to happen?"

"Yes, probably," the woman replied disinterestedly. She'd turned her attention to tapping out some message on her phone, all but ignoring Eric, who was beginning to feel a sharp coil of panic creep through his chest. He glanced outside to the ominous black car, then over to the woman, and reluctantly got up from his seat.

"Can... can I bring my coffee?" he asked in a somewhat lame attempt to stall. Instead of replying the woman just reached out, took not-quite-gentle hold of his arm and led him out of the shop.

**««**

Mycroft shifted his weight from one foot to the other, then leant on his umbrella and checked the time on his pocketwatch. If all had gone according to plan, which of course it had, because everything he did went according to plan, then Anthea should be arriving with his guest just about... now.

He glanced up and, sure enough, a car had pulled into the deliberately-gloomy warehouse.

Not particularly inventive to use the same location to interrogate every potential threat to his brother, but then again it was awfully convenient this way. Didn't even have to give the driver new directions. He slipped his watch back into his pocket and straightened up to stand with his umbrella resting in front of him, a picture of calm, elegant, dangerous poise.

Unlike the last time he'd done this, the target of Mycroft's inspection didn't immediately stride toward him. Instead the young man appeared to have frozen in petrified fright next to the open door of the towncar. Mycroft furrowed his brows in confusion - what, should he... beckon him? Weren't Sherlock's associates generally a bit more forward? John had practically gone for a blow at this point. But luckily within a second or so the freckled man stumbled forward, apparently shoved by Anthea, and approached with the reluctant air of a convict being sent to the gallows.

Mycroft tilted his head slightly, studying the boy, and soon determined that he was rather profoundly uninteresting. Aside, of course, from the fact that he was wearing one of Sherlock's shirts. And a pair of his trousers. And... oh. Was that…? No, it couldn't possibly be the same coat. Sherlock hadn't worn it in *years*, didn't even own the thing anymore as far as Mycroft knew. Perhaps he just happened to own a similar one.

Dismissing his thoughts, Mycroft calmly gestured to the lone chair in front of him. "Please, have a seat."

To his vague surprise Crenshaw immediately did so. The man glanced around the darkened warehouse like a cornered rabbit and pressed his palms together a few times before looking up toward Mycroft nervously. Mycroft waited a moment for the boy to speak - perhaps ask why he'd been abducted, or glare maybe, just show a bit of a spine about the whole business - but all that ensued was a markedly silent staring match between them. Crenshaw seemed to be drawing closer to hyperventilating with every passing second.

Finally Mycroft cleared his throat. "Do you know why I've brought you here?"

Perhaps going for the cold, imposing tone of voice hadn't been the best of ideas. Crenshaw's shoulders curled up like a hedgehog and his eyes went wide as saucers, head jerking side to side in a terrified but silent *'no'.* Mycroft furrowed his brows slightly. Alright, he'd honestly just meant to *question* the man, not give him a heart attack. Best tone down the melodrama a bit. He made a concerted effort to soften his voice with is next question.

"How do you know Sherlock Holmes?"

There, not a particularly threatening inquiry, easy enough to answer, should be a simple... Crenshaw went chalk-white and seemed to be on the verge of being sick all over the concrete. Mycroft leant back on his heels, vaguely concerned. Was the boy going to *faint* on him? He'd not thought to have an ambulance on standby.

"I'm, er... w-we... I m-met him... a... a while ago...?" Crenshaw stammered. Good god but he really was absolutely terrified, wasn't he? Mycroft took as non-threatening a step back as he could manage and tried to let the majority of the intimidating aura dissipate from his stance.

"If you could make an effort to calm down, I think we'd both have a far easier time of things," he pointed out. Apparently that had been the wrong thing to say, because Crenshaw just squeaked something that might have been meant to be an apology, but which came out more like the sort of noise a mouse might make, and went more pallid than ever.

Mycroft considered just calling the whole business off right then, allow the poor overwrought man to settle down a bit, but quickly dismissed the notion. No, he'd come this far without having a stroke, it would be fine. And they only had a few more questions left anyway.

"Do you plan to continue your association with Sherlock Holmes?" That had come out a bit more authoritative than he'd intended, mostly because Mycroft had momentarily forgotten he was attempting to not thoroughly terrify his victim. Habits, terribly difficult to break. Crenshaw made another odd mouse-like noise and seemed to be trying to subconsciously shove himself straight through the wood of the chair back.

"I, er... I d-dunno? M-maybe?" he stuttered, pressing his palms together again. "Sh-should I not...?"

"He does tend to attract a significant amount of danger to his person," Mycroft answered, tone a perhaps not-quite-subtle note of flat exasperation. Right, then - casual, remember, scale back the theatrics. This was an absurdly frightened young civilian, not a terror suspect. Nor an ex-army medic. Which, come to think of it, would have been quite welcome to have on-hand at this point, because he was fairly sure Crenshaw really *was* going to faint within the next few minutes.

Before Mycroft could continue with his interrogation, hoping fervently that he'd not have to conclude the session by instructing his driver to speed for the nearest A&E, a loud bang on the far side of the warehouse made the both of them jump.

Well - *jump* was a bit of an over-dramatic term for what Mycroft did, which was to lift his eyebrows slightly and turn his head towards the noise. It was however an entirely accurate description of Crenshaw's movement, which consisted of launching himself from his seat with such haste that the chair toppled over with a clatter.

Mycroft glanced back to him and frowned. Oh, honestly. No need to dent the furniture.

"*Mycroft!*" a deep voice snarled, echoing off the distant walls. A moment later the distinctive silhouette of Sherlock condensed in the shadows outside the carefully-constructed circle of half-light. Mycroft spared the barest of glances for his furious little brother, a slight, bland smile on his face, then looked back to his erstwhile captive.

Crenshaw still had the air of a terrified rabbit, but upon looking over to spot Sherlock approaching them the boy's shoulders had loosened, body uncurling from its instinctive hedgehog cringe in obvious relief. And well, but wasn't *that* interesting. Relief was not a common human response to the sight of Sherlock Holmes.

"Yes, hello," Mycroft greeted in a polite quip. Turning his attention away from Crenshaw and back to his brother he furrowed his brows quizzically. That had been an awfully quick pursuit, especially factoring in the time it would have taken him to realise his companion had gone missing. Had to have used GPS. "Which signal did you track?"

Sherlock made a noise that was very reminiscent of a petulant housecat and half-rolled his eyes. "Yours."

Mycroft stared for a microsecond, watching for signs of a forthcoming elaboration, but there were none. Sherlock wasn't going to explain how he'd gotten around the signal triangulation block. Which meant, of course, that he hadn't done anything particularly clever; plainly reluctant to reveal the simplicity of his methods for fear of looking like a dullard. And the absolute *least* clever way to access the means to track Mycroft Holmes' mobile signal was...

"You are aware impersonation of a government official is a serious crime," he remarked blandly. Sherlock scoffed and flicked a bit of white plastic at him, which was of course Mycroft's security badge. Mycroft watched it land at his feet with an unimpressed frown and resolved for perhaps the millionth time in his life to double-check his pockets after every passing interaction with his brother.

"What a coincidence, so is kidnapping," Sherlock sniped back with acid sarcasm.

"Erm," a meek voice spoke up, and both Mycroft and Sherlock looked over to a wide-eyed, still alarmingly pale, Crenshaw. Instead of going on to verbally comment on whatever he'd been meaning to the young man turned a rather desperate questioning look towards Sherlock, who huffed an aggrieved sigh.

"Calm down, it's just my brother," he said, voice somewhat uncharacteristically lacking any obvious undertones of scorn or judgement. Mycroft blinked. Was... that his brother's version of being *comforting?* Crenshaw looked dubious, but nevertheless his posture relaxed another notch. Mycroft raised a brow at the interplay. Interesting... very interesting.

"Oh stop," Sherlock snapped upon glancing Mycroft's way, presumably catching the calculating expression. Mycroft arranged his features into an innocent mask and leant back on his heels.

"I've not done anything," he remarked, adding a casual shrug for emphasis. Sherlock fixed him with an unimpressed glower, then turned back to Crenshaw, took a step forward and seemingly without thought grabbed the man by the arm to drag him off the way he'd come. Mycroft watched them go bemusedly. Oh, well that was a bit cute. They were very nearly hand-in-hand.

"Shall I tell Mummy to plan for another guest this Christmas?" he couldn't quite help calling after them in a teasing voice.

Sherlock didn't even bother to turn round. "Get back to running the bloody world, Mycroft."

Mycroft smiled to himself. Twirling his umbrella, he turned and set a leisurely pace back to his waiting car.

"Surveillance level on Eric Crenshaw, sir?" his assistant asked the moment he came within earshot. He hummed lightly, amused by the situation in general, and glanced back the way his brother had gone.

"Maximum."

**««**

## Chapter 7

**««**

"What th' *fuck* was all that!?"

Sherlock couldn't quite suppress a flinch at Eric's shrill tone, mostly because the sound was almost directly in his ear at the moment - Eric had gotten spooked by the slamming of the warehouse door behind them, and for whatever deranged reason had reacted by latching onto Sherlock's shoulders like a clingy child. This made walking vaguely difficult, but going to the bother of dislodging the cumbersome weight would likely just upset the man further. And that, Sherlock swiftly determined, would almost certainly lead to more shouting. Which he was not at all in the mood for. As a compromise he not-quite-subtly shifted his head away from the source of all the noise, hoping Eric would get the hint.

He didn't, of course. Glancing back over his shoulder the freckle-faced moron instead tightened his grip around Sherlock's shoulders and made a strange squeaking sort of noise in response to the distant roar of a car engine. Sherlock sighed, wondering vaguely if it were possible for someone to literally die of fright. Eric seemed to be doing his damnedest to find out.

"Who the 'ell was he, an' th'lady with th'phone, they didn't even- who the *hell!?*"

Sherlock rolled his eyes at the meaningless jumble of nonsense masquerading as English. God's sake, this couldn't possibly be such a difficult concept to grasp. Was Eric's intelligence regressing along with his accent? Or had Mycroft truly frightened him straight out of his wits? What a ridiculous overreaction in either case.

Still, best answer anyway. If only to get the annoying panic-rambling to stop.

"I told you already, that was my brother. The woman with the phone is his PA," he explained in what perhaps may have counted as a patient voice were it not laced with a distinct undercurrent of condescension.

"They bleedin' kidnapped me!" Eric yelped, not put off in the slightest by Sherlock's patronising tone. His accent had now slipped so far back into cockney as to be almost incomprehensible. Sherlock huffed a rather put-upon sigh and, deciding this whole walking business really was *not* going to work with a six foot limpet attached, finally made an attempt to extricate himself from Eric's grip. It was about half-successful - Eric ended up clinging to an upper arm instead of clamped round his shoulders. Sherlock frowned but reluctantly capitulated to the new arrangement. That would have to do, he supposed. At least they'd be less likely to end up face-first on the concrete this way.

"Mycroft abducts and questions anyone who he thinks might pose a potential security threat," he explained yet again as they continued walking. "He did exactly the same thing to John when we first met, it's not a big deal."

"Wh- *not a big deal!?*" Eric barked, scandalised. He drew slightly away from his death grip on Sherlock's arm to glare disbelievingly. "How the *'ell* is abductin' blokes inta thin air like laws don't mean nothin' *not a big deal!?* He coulda offed me wivvout anyone so much as noticin' I'd gone!"

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Nobody's going to off you. Don't be dramatic."

"It ain't bein' *dramatic* when you've just got interrogated by a bleedin' shadowy evil government agent what plucked you up off th'street in broad daylight! And then a goddamn *abandoned warehouse* for chrissakes! Gah!"

Eric punctuated this statement by frantically shoving his face against Sherlock's shoulder, apparently an attempt to hide from whatever danger he still perceived himself to be in. Sherlock rather exasperatedly reached up and patted the man on the head. The condescending gesture was coupled with an accompanying shift of his trapped right arm, hopefully conveying something along the lines of, '*There, look, I've pretend to care that you're upset. Now kindly get the hell off.'* Eric, predictably, did no such thing. Instead he pressed himself even further into Sherlock's personal space, so much so that the both of them were forced to come to a halt in the middle of the road lest they trip over each other's legs.

"Well you hardly need to worry about it happening again, do you?" Sherlock snapped with a futile, half-hearted attempt to reclaim some of his breathing space. "He's doubtless put you under full military surveillance by now, same as John and I. If you start to look like a threat they'll just neutralise you without bothering to ask questions. No more interrogations."

He wasn't sure if he'd meant that to be comforting or not. Whatever the motivation it certainly produced an interesting reaction in Eric, whose body completely froze except for his head, which he raised just enough to stare at Sherlock in mute horror. Sherlock responded with a bland, unconcerned look. They both held position for a beat before Eric's gaze flitted elsewhere, staring into the middle distance. He seemed to drop briefly into some sort of odd, stress-induced fugue state. Gone all hollow-eyed and lost.

"I'm gonna be walkin' down th'street one day an' just get shot in th'bleedin' head wivvout ever seein' it coming," he muttered to no one in particular. Sherlock made an exasperated face and tried once more to tug his arm loose - it was beginning to go numb.

"Don't be ridiculous. You won't be shot," he replied more tetchily than was perhaps necessary. Eric blinked back over to him and loosened his hold the tiniest fraction. Only to snap it right back to viselike as Sherlock unintentionally elaborated. "Obviously poison's the better option. Much easier to pass off as suicide. And no one does the 'mysterious accident' nonsense these days, what with modern prevalence of social media. Too risky. Staged domestic homicides are the secondary standard now. Usually blunt force head trauma or strangulation, depending on gender."

*"Jesus fucking christ,"* Eric moaned fearfully as he buried his face once more against Sherlock's coat. Sherlock grimaced as the belated realisation of what he'd just said registered in his brain. Ah, damn... he'd meant to keep those last few bits of information to himself. Mouth had kept going without his permission. Now they'd be stuck standing here *forever*.

Not enthusiastic about the prospect of loitering in the middle of a freight road until Eric either passed out or they were run down by a lorry, Sherlock decided to try a different tactic. Appeal to authority, maybe? Nearly always worked on John. Try issuing orders, see if that had any effect.

"Stop panicking," he commanded sternly.

Eric, irritatingly enough, did nothing of the sort.

In fact his response was quite nearly the exact opposite, which was to make a strange keening noise and hunch his shoulders protectively round his ears. Sherlock sighed. So much for that plan, then. In hindsight he really should have known it was only a valid strategy towards John, military background and all. Predisposed to follow orders. Eric wouldn't last half a second in the Army.

Speaking of, the man was actually *shaking* now. Lacking any better idea Sherlock reluctantly raised his free hand to pat him on the back. This turned their strange arrangement into much more of a hug than he'd have liked, especially whilst standing right in the middle of a road, but sod it. Not like there was much else he could do until the idiot calmed down. Oddly enough the contact seemed to be helping that effort quite a lot. Sherlock had no idea why it should do so - he was just *patting* him, god's sake. Like a bloody dog. Why would that be comforting? But he kept it up anyway.

Despite having calmed somewhat, and thankfully no longer trembling, Eric continued to refuse to act anything like his normal self for the next minute or so. Sherlock was beginning to feel acutely uncomfortable by proxy. Bloody hell, was anxiety somehow contagious? Ugh. No, this was ridiculous. Had to be some simple solution to the problem. What was he missing?

Unfortunate that John wasn't around to consult with on the matter. *He* was the one with all the relevant experience in this area of social interaction, after all. As a doctor he'd even had proper, official *training* regarding the matter. Crisis counselling and controlling the effects of shock, that sort of thing. Sherlock, meanwhile, had been actively avoiding the scenario all his life. He was *not* a comforting individual. In fact if anyone besides Eric were to have latched themselves childishly to his arm like this he'd have knocked them out cold by now. Not a situation he'd ever permit under ordinary circumstances.

In the current circumstances, though... well, he couldn't quite reach his phone to text John. And waiting for a reply could take ages anyway. Best just treat it like a puzzle, then. That generally served him well enough. Try different solutions until one stuck. So what methods had he already tested? Physical contact had been mildly effective, reassurance seemed neutral at best, authoritativeness actively detrimental. That left... er... damn. He no idea what options that left.

Perhaps simply explaining things? The rationale behind Mycroft's overdramatic little stunt? Would that help? Having more information was generally conducive to a greater sense of security, at least in Sherlock's experience. Had a better chance of controlling things if you knew what was going on. Might as well try.

With this plan in mind he took a short breath, then began to speak.

"Mycroft Holmes holds a position of frankly *absurd* power within the global political sphere. In effect he controls the intelligence agencies of every major western power. MI6, CIA, DCRI, that sort of thing. He's entirely capable, if he ever wanted to, of initiating a third world war in the space of a week. As you might imagine this makes it a highly enticing prospect to coerce him into working for your side. But no one's clever enough to manipulate him outright, of course, which just leaves blackmail."

"Th' hell are you on about?" Eric mumbled into Sherlock's coat. Sherlock perked up a bit and glanced down at him, not even registering the slight, silly smile on his own face. Hah! Look at that, he'd found the right tactic after all. No puzzle was outside his ability to solve, it seemed - not even people-based ones. Brilliant. Bolstered by his success he gamely continued on.

"Ordinarily a man of such power simply wouldn't be susceptible to crass extortion. The shadow puppeteers and grand manipulators of the world rarely attain their rank without systematically removing all personal ties, after all. But Mycroft..." Sherlock trailed off, frowning to himself. Not entirely sure he wanted to give voice to the next bit. But, then... well, he was already this far along. And the explanation wouldn't make any sense without revealing the crux of the problem.

Sherlock shifted his weight uncomfortably, breathing a short sigh through his nose. God, this was all so stupid.

"Mycroft... has me," he continued reluctantly. "For whatever reason, he... doesn't want me hurt." He wrinkled his nose slightly in distaste. Ugh, that had been alarmingly close to sentimental. Quickly he shifted on into the next portion, cover up the moment of infirmity with scathing sarcasm. "Touching as that fraternal concern no doubt is, it effectively renders my personal safety an incredibly useful bargaining chip. If I'm captured or threatened, Mycroft will find himself in the position of having to either follow orders or allow me to be injured. He... has yet to choose the second option."

Eric had actually deigned to lift his head now, which seemed like a good sign. Sherlock took a final huff of a breath and finished his idiotic little explanation.

"So you can see his insistence on vetting anyone I come in contact with is really no more than a preventative measure. He's just trying to avoid the inconvenience of having to negotiate with terrorists again. It's got nothing whatsoever to do with you personally."

Despite the discomfort of having to explicitly discuss such matters, Sherlock was still rather proud of himself. The explanation seemed to have almost entirely distracted Eric from the issue of panicking. Worth the bother, then. At long last the man released Sherlock's arm *(causing the blood to flow back into it well before the nerves were ready, gah, pins and needles)* and shoved a hand through his hair as he took a very small step back. Still standing much closer to each other than casual acquaintances should really be, of course, but no longer stuck together like a pair of magnets. Good start.

"He couldn't've just checked my records or something?" Eric asked in a weary grumble. Still rather frustrated, even perhaps verging towards pissed off, but no longer fearful. And his accent had gone back to something approaching comprehensible. Sherlock forcefully smothered a strange, unbidden jab of disappointment which shot thorough him over the switch. No, god, shut up. He did *not* have any absurd sentimental attachments to a stupid cockney slur. Vaguely northern-ish estuary was a much better alternative. Easier to decipher.

But back to the topic at hand. With a casual shift of his shoulders to resettle his coat Sherlock turned and resumed walking down the road, Eric following behind at a distinctly slower pace.

"He might've done, yes," Sherlock conceded, shrugging. "But last night I used his security credentials to hack in to the government's primary database, scrambled any attempted background checks on you. He wouldn't have had access to any reliable data."

Abruptly Eric stopped walking. Sherlock glanced back over his shoulder and found the man glaring at him in disbelief.

"So it's *your* fault he decided to pluck me off the bleedin' street?"

Sherlock's self-congratulatory mood faded quickly and he paused mid-stride, spun fully around to face Eric. "What? No, of course not." A pause to reconsider. Ah, that might have been a... bit of a lie. Reluctantly he amended his statement. "Er... maybe. I don't really know, to be honest. I've no idea what he was planning to do if I hadn't interfered."

And there he was, yet again, casually admitting his lack of functional omniscience without even a pause for thought. He made an exasperated face for his own foolishness and moved to elaborate before Eric could break in with some sort of angry reprimand.

"But hacking those files wasn't just for *amusement's* sake, obviously. Though, granted, it's very funny to mess around with Mycroft's-" He cut off as Eric's glare turned flatly unimpressed, a clear warning. Sherlock cleared his throat. "Anyway. I gave you the remaining balance of my trust fund, remember? The last time we met. Or... well, I suppose we didn't really meet. The last time I left you an envelope full of money in a mysterious bag which was actually *very* difficult to get delivered with any degree of-"

"Sherlock," Eric interrupted, plainly not in the mood for rambling nonsense. Sherlock snapped his mouth shut and shifted awkwardly.

"Right. Well... the point is Mycroft never found out what I did with that money. And your financial history happens to reveal a surprisingly accurate estimate of how much I had left prior to leaving the country. Using that value he'd be able to deduce roughly how much I spent. Which he would then further be able to break down into a list of probable purchases."

Eric was beginning to look confused. And, for some reason, vaguely alarmed. "And...?"

"And, I'd rather he not know exactly how many fake identities I acquired."

"Your brother can figure that out just from how much I deposited in a bank account eight years ago?"

Sherlock flashed a quick, humourless smile. "One doesn't gain control of a nation without a few singular skills."

With a quiet, disbelieving exhale of breath Eric took a few steps backwards to lean against the wall of one of the warehouses surrounding them. He shook his head somewhat dazedly and shoved a hand through his hair. Oddly enough Sherlock hadn't seen the man's palms come together in his nervous habit even once since leaving the warehouse. Perhaps he'd just chosen to latch onto Sherlock instead, traded one neurotic behaviour for another. Interesting that the tic could apparently be swapped out like that. Also... interesting that Sherlock was apparently a valid thing to swap it with. Hm.

"Christ... I forgot how bloody insane your life was," Eric mumbled, interrupting Sherlock's thoughts before they could turn deeply confusing. The man's tone wasn't too encouraging, however... too unsettlingly reminiscent of the last days in Stockwell. Those silent hours directly after Ben's murder, when Eric's patience with Sherlock's incessant peculiarities had begun to wear thin. The man had revealed a distinct upper limit for the amount of ridiculous nonsense he could tolerate. Evidently that hadn't changed.

For a long moment Sherlock could think of no appropriate response. His indecision led to a rather awkward silence between them.

Finally his brain conjured up the proper course of action. He glanced away before speaking.

"He might drop the surveillance if you leave."

Eric looked up, questioning, and Sherlock met his gaze for a second before shifting his line of sight towards a faded patch of concrete off to his right.

"The only reason he's monitoring you is because he thinks we're... friends." He shrugged, didn't know whether that was true or not. Probably didn't matter. Moving on. "Prove that assumption wrong and he'll likely decide not to waste the resources. Just... go home. Back to Lancaster."

Sherlock wasn't even quite sure why he was endorsing such a plan. Cowardly, wasn't it? He'd never so much as consider telling John to bugger off just to escape the stupid cameras. But then John hadn't ever cared about them. The danger amused him, even. Eric, on the other hand... he definitely cared. Knowing he was being watched at all times couldn't possibly be tolerable long-term, not for a man for whom 'paranoia' was a lifestyle. He'd crack within days.

And while John - brave, sturdy, thrill-seeking John - actually *revelled* in the parade of life-or-death situations Sherlock continually found himself in... Eric was entirely a different story. Lacking a shred of anything one might charitably define as bravery, prone to bolting from danger without thought, patently unequipped to deal with any sort of acute stress... in short, unfit to function in Sherlock's world. It would be in his best interests to cut ties while he still had the chance.

That thought was unexpectedly rather disappointing. Though *why*, Sherlock had no idea. What on earth else had he been hoping for? Literally the most that could ever have come of this brief reunion would be a long-distance acquaintance. Pen-pals or something useless like that. He'd not expected anything more.

Still, though. Giving voice to the obvious benefit of Eric removing himself wasn't particularly uplifting.

Eric seemed to be having roughly similar thoughts; or at least his face seemed to be running through an identical gamut. Contemplating the clear sensible option, finding it entirely unpalatable, going on to being confused as to why that should be. Finally he glanced up to Sherlock with an uncertain, dissatisfied expression.

"D'you... want me to leave?" he asked slowly. Oh, lovely. Pawning the decision off on someone else. Arsehole.

Sherlock stared at him. Should lie. Say *yes, of course, you idiot. You're the most annoying man I've ever met. Go away.* Would be the best course of action to shield Eric from any further insanities of Sherlock's existence. So childishly easy, too. Just say the words. Flip the switch in his brain and become the callous sociopath everyone knew him to be.

He took a breath, determined to take the reasonable path.

When he opened his mouth to speak, however, all that came out was, "No."

They stared each other down for a brief moment, rooted to the spot both by the inadvertent confession and their own better judgements. Certainly it was absolutely stupid to risk anyone's safety, privacy, or peace of mind for the sake of what most likely would turn out to be a passing re-acquaintance. Because of course it wouldn't go further. They both had their own lives to return to. Sherlock had John, by all rights the perfect counterpart to accompany his deductive process, the work. Eric had a music school to run. No eight-years-dead brief flame of a relationship justified abandoning two entire careers.

But it seemed neither of them could really find it in themselves to admit that. Sherlock couldn't suppress a bland, humourless smirk over the ensuing stalemate. Predictable, wasn't it. Just like old times.

They'd met as a couple of idiotic young criminals. Utterly destitute, reduced by their own stupid decisions to working for a drug lord. Neither had put any stock in the concepts of responsibility or good sense. There was no planning ahead, no considering the repercussions of their actions, no concept of a future. Why should they have cared? They'd not expected to live long enough for any of it to matter. Drug-addled miscreants were meant to die on the streets, shot or stabbed or overdosed, their short lives a perfect illustration of meaningless hardship. They'd made peace with that hollow end early on, because it had seemed the only path left to follow.

Sherlock knew well enough to keep these thoughts to himself. Wouldn't do any good to voice such inane musings. And yet, for whatever reason, he took a quiet breath and turned his gaze towards a cloud-mottled sky. Words formed of their own volition as he watched the heavens shift.

"We were never supposed to grow up," he muttered, idly tracking the flight of a passing bird. Eric glanced up as well and the animal darted swiftly out of sight. Brown eyes met grey as they both looked back down. Sherlock didn't even bother to mask the look of quiet melancholy he knew must be on his face. Who *cared*, honestly. "Everyone knew I'd die of overdose sooner or later. You were going to smoke until your lungs gave out. We wouldn't live to see twenty-one."

Eric huffed a quiet, sad laugh. "Yeah..." He trailed off. Breathed a sigh. "Never gonna have to be an adult... guess that worked out about as well as anything, didn't it? We're both sodding adults now."

Sherlock lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "I've never felt like one."

"Me either," Eric replied, a wistful smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Is that a bad sign, y'think?"

"I have no idea."

Another long silence passed. Not uncomfortable, this time, however. Just... contemplative. Considering actions, weighing priorities. There were still too many choices to be made. Responsibilities to care for. Adult problems to face. Eric was right - what few plans they made hadn't ever really worked out. From the mundane task of getting home safely to the grim resolve to die before reality had a chance to set in. Despite all efforts to do otherwise they'd still moved on with their lives. So much for promises.

Finally Eric shoved himself off the wall he'd been leaning against. He checked his phone, then quirked a bland smile.

"I've missed my meeting," he remarked in a wry tone. Sherlock didn't react beyond a slight lift of his shoulders.

"Reschedule it," he replied, even though he really couldn't care less. Seemed like the proper thing to do; suggest a solution to the problem. Eric just made a vague noise of what might have been agreement, or perhaps just dull acknowledgement, before slipping his mobile back in his pocket. He looked up to the sky, just as Sherlock had done earlier, and after a brief moment lowered his gaze with an odd, melancholy smile.

"Wanna do something fucking stupid?" he asked suddenly. Sherlock gave him a faintly quizzical look, not sure what the man could possibly mean by that. What, was he suggesting they go get shitfaced? That wasn't likely to end well.

"Like what?"

"Like..." Eric took a few steps forward to stand next to Sherlock once more, dusting off his trousers as he walked. He looked back up, then away, seeming preoccupied with some internal deliberation. Finally he huffed a breath through his nose and shook his head. His glance back towards Sherlock seemed oddly hesitant. Wary, even.

"What?" Sherlock grumbled. Hell, what was the problem *now?* He wasn't doing anything even remotely threatening. Just standing there. In a flash of annoyance he glared. *Eric*, christ. Afraid of literally nothing. Before the other could reply he snapped at him. "God's sake, stop being such a bloody coward."

For some reason Eric laughed. He glanced away, smiling to himself. "Yeah... s'pose I should."

Sherlock was about to reply, a sharp query along the lines of *will you explain what you meant by 'something stupid' already? I'd like to get out of this bloody warehouse district by nightfall.* But Eric had chosen that moment to shift his eyes back to Sherlock's. The man leant towards him, grip tight on his arm once more, and in the next second Sherlock found the words he'd been about to utter quite effectively smothered.

Because it was, after all, rather difficult to speak through a kiss.

**««**

## Chapter 8: Epilogue

**««**

***I'm not going to hire you to investigate some made up case you nutter***

*It would be a more plausible justification for travel. - SH*

***How is visiting a friend not a plausible justification***

*I generally claim to have no need of friends. Going out of my way to visit one would run counter to the established paradigm and confuse people. - SH*

***Did you really just use the word paradigm in a text message***

*Yes. - SH*

***OK well god forbid you mess up that whole business then, very important things those paradigms***

*Are you being sarcastic? - SH*

***Yes***

*Stop omitting full stops. - SH*

***Stop signing your texts***

*I can't, it's an automatic message setting. - SH*

***Oh hey neat look my phone does it too--EC***

*Really. - SH*

***Really what--EC***

*Stop. - SH*

***Stop what--EC***

*Fine, you win, I turned it off. Can we please get back on track?*

***We were on a track?***

*Yes, we were discussing meeting up in Lancaster. And plans thereof. You're the one who brought up the topic in the first place.*

***Oh, it wasn't really meant to be a topic mate I sort of figured you could work a train schedule by yourself***

*Okay then, I'll just show up completely unannounced in the middle of some random weekday like a door-to-door salesman.*

***Sounds good***

*Seriously?*

***Yeah of course why would I care***

*People generally like to plan for these things.*

***Does pretending to be a responsible adult make you feel smart or something***

*Sort of.*

***Well stop you're smart enough already***

*One can never be too intelligent.*

***Yes they can you're living proof***

*Rude.*

***No really you could probably stand to lose about 10 thousand brain cells***

*Was that your motivation for getting me drunk every chance you got, then? Culling excess neurons?*

***Nah you're just hilarious when you're pissed, the brain damage was a side benefit***

*Glad to be of some entertainment then.*

***You've never been boring, shers***

*Nor have you, Eric.*

## Chapter 9: Missing Chapter Posted Many Years Later

**««**

John returned to the flat around half past noon, having had a rather uneventful morning at the clinic and looking forward to a nice cuppa and the remainder of the newspaper he hadn't finished reading. His plans were somewhat vexed, however, when he got to the landing just before the entrance to the sitting room. Sherlock and Crenshaw were in there.

Ordinarily of course he'd just walk in - wasn't exactly worried about interrupting a conversation in his own home. But this... well, this could be a rare opportunity to see how the two of them interacted in private. And he had to admit he was curious. What was their dynamic like, really? When they thought themselves alone?

He had the perfect chance now to find out. Because by some stroke of luck (or perhaps just down to his being distracted) Sherlock hadn't yet noticed his presence. John was still hidden just out of sight around the doorframe. Quickly and quietly as possible he shifted to press his back against the wall, craned his neck to peer through the gap between the jamb and the door.

Both men were standing near the window in the sitting room a few feet apart from one another, appearing for the moment to be lost in their own thoughts. With confusion that morphed quickly into shocked glee John noted that Sherlock's hair was clumped up in that way it did when partially wet, and that Crenshaw had a towel draped over one shoulder as if he'd paused in the midst of drying his currently-shirtless torso. Oh lord... they'd both just showered. John failed to fight down a juvenile grin over the implications. Sherlock and his bloody holier-than-thou attitude regarding anything to do with sex, hah! He'd just been bluffing the whole time.

“Realistically, though...” Sherlock started, glancing up from where he'd been staring at the fireplace. Crenshaw sighed and rubbed at his neck, other hand going to his hip as if exasperated.

“Realistically, yeah. That's what I bleedin' meant by  *fucking stupid.* But then you had to go an' reciprocate, you arse.”

“Oh  *I'm* the arse, am I?” Sherlock retorted, rolling his eyes. “Remind me again, which of us was the one who decided to snog the other without warning in the midst of a bloody conversation?”

Crenshaw scoffed. “*Remind me again*, how exactly did our first kiss go? Back in Stockwell? Cause I'm pretty sure it involved a certain someone being high as a damned kite and pinning me against the table outta nowhere. Turnabout's fair play, mate.”

“I didn't pin you,” Sherlock grumbled. “Not for long, anyway.”

John had to exercise quite a lot of self-control to avoid snorting in a mixture of amusement, disbelief, and a sort of vague wonder. The thought of Sherlock doing something so bawdy as pinning a bloke down and kissing him… unreal. Hilarious, surely, but incredibly difficult to imagine.

Crenshaw huffed another short sigh. “Look, it don't matter now, do it? Th'point is we really shouldn't've let it go that far, cause I've still got to leave, and you're… well, I mean…”

“Not willing to relocate. And neither are you, understandably. I do believe we've gone over this.”

“Yeah, we did, right before deciding not to shag. And then doing exactly the opposite.”

Crenshaw sounded extremely irritated about this. John exercised all his self-control to avoid snorting in mirth - mixed, again, with something like… well not quite disgust. He didn't actually mind in the slightest. But the inadvertent imagery now running through his brain was definitely something he could have done without.

Rather than react to the word 'shag' in any way John might have expected him to, Sherlock instead just gave a casual shrug.

“Can't resist my charm." A distinct smirk was audible in his tone. Crenshaw snorted.

"Yeah alright, Casanova. Whatever you wanna believe there."

Shaking his head, he turned to look out the window. Sherlock followed his line of sight and shifted uncomfortably, seeming to hesitate over his next words.

"We… I mean there is the whole, I don't know… visiting, whatever people do. Keep in touch."

"Well obviously there's that, yeah, but I'd rather-" Crenshaw cut himself off, making a frustrated noise, then abruptly turned to Sherlock and grabbed the front of his shirt. The subsequent kiss was as casual as it was abrupt, leaving John in a bit of a state of shock. Even more so when Sherlock didn't react beyond shifting his head a bit so their noses wouldn't bump into each other.

"I ain't actually… dated anyone, you know. Since then," Crenshaw muttered as he drew away, glancing toward the window once more. "Well I mean not long-term. None of 'em were… er…"

"If you end that sentence with '*you*' I'm going to officially declare you the most disgustingly sentimental moron in the universe."

"Shut up," Crenshaw snapped, smacking Sherlock lightly on the chest as he turned back to him. "What's your excuse then, huh? Gonna fall back on the whole  *being of pure logic*  bullshit, no point findin' someone cause it's all just a massive waste of time?”

"Uh... yeah, that was more or less my reasoning." Sherlock shrugged, unconcerned as his ex's expression turned flatly annoyed. "Look, I don't see why you're so worked up about this. We've already agreed on the sensible decision."

Crenshaw huffed another frustrated sigh. "It were a sensible decision until we decided not t'be sensible in th'least and made it all bleedin' complicated and confusing instead."

"It's been that way the entire time," Sherlock pointed out. "No more so now than yesterday."

"No,  *a lot* more so now. Yesterday it were still just some old acquaintances thing. Now it's... I don't know, rekindled flame or whatever." He frowned to himself and added, quietly, "... Now I don't want to leave."

"Well, you're in the city another week. So there's no need to think about it for the moment," Sherlock pointed out with a shrug. "Just carry on as normal."

Crenshaw let out a frustrated growl and, in a gesture which John wouldn't have thought anyone could get away with, grabbed both Sherlock's upper arms and gave the man a little shake. "Oh my  *god*  , you thick ponce, that's the  *problem*  - what the hell is normal? Are we dating? Friends with benefits? A casual fling?"

"I don't know, why does it need a label?" Sherlock countered with a bit of a whinge to his tone. He'd made no effort to extricate his shoulders from Crenshaw's grip, hadn't even seemed especially annoyed with the shaking. How bizarre John found this small detail served to create a jarring disconnect between what John had thought was simply Sherlock's inherent aversion to physical contact (with exception, of course, for Mrs Hudson, whose affectionate gestures he'd just seemed willing to tolerate for her sake), and this new reality where the man evidently didn't mind being touched at all so long as the person doing the touching occupied some hereto-unknown special category. A category which thusfar appeared to contain just this one single unassuming bloke from Lancaster.

Said bloke now paused, glanced away for a moment in thought, then seemed to realise he had no answer to Sherlock's question. With a defeated sigh he dropped his grip on Sherlock's arms and allowed himself to list forward. Sherlock caught him round the middle in a casual embrace and gave the man a slightly exasperated pat on the back. This was perhaps much more strange than his consenting to be shaken, though John didn't get a chance to dwell on it as a beat later Sherlock looked up and appeared to catch some detail.

"John, how long have you been standing out there?"

John cringed to himself and considered the merits of bluffing. Likely no point trying. Reluctantly he squared his shoulders and pushed the door open.

"Sorry, sounded like a serious conversation. Didn't want to interrupt."

Sherlock looked highly dubious of that excuse. Crenshaw drew back from him somewhat hastily and turned to smile at John with a faint blush on his cheeks.

"Oh, er... hullo, Dr Watson," he muttered, sounding a tad embarrassed. "Ah, you'd said you'd be back around now, hadn't you? Completely forgot, sorry."

"That's alright, I'm sure it's been quite the morning." John tried to keep the amusement out of his voice so as not to betray how much he'd actually overheard, but didn't quite manage. In an effort to push past the awkward moment he set himself to his own banal activities - stowing his bag, putting the kettle on. Tried to make it clear he'd no intent to be an arse about things.

He hadn't forgot Crenshaw's little lecture from earlier. And, while he had to admit he was still a bit sceptical over the idea of Sherlock not speaking up about being made uncomfortable (the man complained loudly and continuously about everything else, after all, surely he'd have no problem putting his foot down over a silly blog) one did have to admit that the conversation he'd just eavesdropped on made it hard to deny Crenshaw must have  *some*  degree of special insight into Sherlock's inner workings. How he'd come to occupy that privileged position, of course, remained a mystery.

Oh, speaking of, though… John had actually remembered something very important during clinic hours. He turned towards the other two with a small smile of victory, empty tea mug in hand.

Sherlock and Crenshaw were still stood in the middle of the sitting room, watching him. Sherlock's bearing had gone taut with a sort of frigid poise, not an uncommon sight when he was expecting to be teased about something. John had no intent of doing so (mostly, one had to admit, because he didn't want to piss off Crenshaw - he'd probably not have been able to resist a bit of ribbing otherwise) but he still paused to collect his thoughts before speaking, just to be sure not to word anything poorly.

It had only been at the very end of his shift that John's brain finally shook loose an errant scrap of memory - a simple case they'd wrapped up ages ago, his recollection of which had been near-fully eclipsed by the excitement of a string of high-stakes cases they'd picked up directly after.

Bog-standard homicide, photographer victim, old photos of Sherlock as a shiftless young delinquent. John had managed to pry out a reluctantly-told story from Sherlock about getting hooked on cocaine in uni and dropping out, but the retelling had cut off rather unsatisfyingly right as it got to what seemed the most interesting bit - Sherlock had explained how his father collected him from rehab instead of Mycroft, he'd been disowned and left to his own devices in London where he promptly relapsed. But then he'd gone quiet and John had stupidly cut in with some banal comment about being surprised by how easy it was to just buy hard drugs on a moments' notice, asked if you could really just suss out a dealer and pick up a bag of cocaine like visiting the corner shop. John had thought it an innocuous enough question, mostly meant it as a way to show he wasn't especially bothered by the drugs stuff, but it seemed to have sparked some sort of memory Sherlock didn't want to venture anywhere near and he'd abruptly dropped the story. They'd had a new case so soon afterwards John hadn't had a chance to ask for the rest before it escaped his mind.

Prior to his and Crenshaw's chat this morning John wouldn't have guessed him connected to any of that - the man seemed far too kind-hearted and nervous to be hiding some past life of crime. But at some point he'd got annoyed and let his accent drop, and the abrupt switch to rough cockney helped to recontextualise him a bit. Speaking that way didn't automatically mean he must have been a criminal, obviously, but it did make it much easier to picture him having had a rough childhood on some council estate, skulking about the backstreets of London, that sort of thing. From there John had slowly worked through the scant details of personal history he knew about Sherlock, finally recalled the case with the photos, and realised he'd known from the very start about Sherlock having once dated some freckled boy. His recollection had just been partially impaired by Sherlock (doubtless intentionally) dragging them out on a load of dangerous business straight after.

In the brief gap while he'd been thinking, John saw Crenshaw glance over to Sherlock's rigid stance, frown in a way that seemed oddly annoyed, and lightly elbow him in the side. Sherlock shifted in surprise, flicked his gaze over to meet Crenshaw's, quirked an annoyed frown of his own, then noticeably relaxed. Fascinating. Best not comment, though.

"So I had a small revelation at work," John said brightly instead. He gestured towards Crenshaw with the empty mug he'd been holding. "I've seen you before. That case with the photographer, Sherlock, remember? And you having been in some pub band?"

Sherlock did not seem to remember. He made a very perplexed face and offered nothing but a confused, "what?" in response.

John blinked - hang on, had Sherlock really deleted all memory of the case? Over a few old photos? Why?

Crenshaw, for his part, suddenly looked almost wary. His palms came together in that nervous tic again.

"... pub band?" he hedged.  *Definitely*  wary. Definitely recognised the context. Meant John could at least be reasonably certain it had indeed been Crenshaw in those photos. Even if he wasn't quite sure what was so terrible about them to trigger Sherlock to delete the whole thing and Crenshaw to sound so suspicious.

Crenshaw's question seemed to unlock some sort of mind-cold-storage for Sherlock, or whatever he called it when he'd 'deleted' things only to later recover them without much apparent difficulty, and before John could reply the detective groaned with recognition. Finally leaving his spot stood in the middle of the sitting room he made his way over to the table where his laptop was, and without bothering to sit down opened it and began clicking around as he spoke. John noted with vague bemusement that Crenshaw trailed after him in an oddly automatic way, as if his body had developed some set function to keep Sherlock within a certain proximity.

"An utterly dull case involving a photographer having snapped a few candid photos of a man with his mistress and being murdered over it," Sherlock was grumbling. "Only remotely interesting detail of the entire thing was that the victim turned out to have been Mandy living under an alias."

Crenshaw made a strange sort of face, halfway between grimacing and unsurprised.

"Ech… well, awful I s'pose, but to be honest that's kind of exactly how I expected she'd go out."

Sherlock huffed a small amused breath through his nose, then appeared to become distracted by whatever he was doing on his laptop. John gamely picked up with his usual role of facilitating conversation.

"We'd found old photographs of you and Sherlock on the victim's computer," he explained. "Sherlock deleted the lot of them before anyone had a chance to look through them properly. I'd not remembered until now."

Crenshaw frowned and fiddled with the towel still draped over his shoulder.

"Well… probably for the best," he muttered. "Embarrassing as anything." His voice sounded torn between disappointment and relief.

John found himself very interested by the conflicting emotions - Sherlock had abandoned his tale before getting anywhere near the point where those photos would have been taken, but it seemed Crenshaw might have been involved for roughly the span of the missing time frame. Perhaps an opportunity to get the rest of the story? He'd have to be careful asking, though, since he had a feeling Crenshaw wouldn't be keen on sharing sordid histories. Not with him, at any rate.

"They're not that bad," Sherlock cut in. He drew back from his laptop and gestured towards it, indicating Crenshaw should look. The man did so and instantly his expression became a very complicated mixture of surprised, embarrassed, dismayed, nostalgic, and about a hundred other things besides. "You look like an unkempt tramp in most of them, of course, but I always assumed that was the aesthetic you were going for."

John wasn't entirely sure if he was being invited to view the screen as well, being on the wrong side of it, and although disappointing he figured it would probably be best to get on with making tea and not come off over-eager to have a look. Luckily for him, though, Crenshaw drifted to a seat at the table and slid the laptop round to face him, which meant it was now angled to where John could see it over his shoulder.

Pulled up on some gallery program was a photo reel, with the file in current focus being a shot of an unimaginably young Sherlock and Crenshaw seated on a low brick wall sharing a bottle of vodka. John vaguely remembered seeing that one at the crime scene, though he'd not caught more than a glance then.

"You kept a copy?" John asked Sherlock in surprise. All that trouble to erase the files from existence, yet he'd kept an entire set on his laptop? Lord knew the implications of  *that.*

Sherlock huffed to himself and glanced away at the far wall with a put-upon scowl.

"Might have needed them for evidence, never know when old cases turn out to be relevant."

A comically transparent lie, but there would be no point calling it out. Besides which John was much more interested in the photos Crenshaw was now scrolling through.

John hadn't seen most of these, and they looked to be in a different order than when Donovan had first discovered them. Past the photo of Sherlock and Crenshaw on the garden wall there were several assorted shots of Sherlock, Crenshaw, or the two of them together, most set amidst the backdrop of a dingy cellar pub, a few out in the streets of what looked like a rough area of London. He caught glimpses of Sherlock sat on a short set of stairs playing guitar, a close-up shot of a very young Crenshaw grinning into the camera with a lit joint in his mouth, a candid photo of the both of them sitting on some sort of large speaker at the side of a stage sharing a bag of sweets.

Crenshaw paused on a photo of a dingy room done up in the same burgundy as the rest of the pub shots, where his younger self sat on an oddly out-of-place Victorian sofa with his feet resting on a battered guitar case. A skeletal wraith of a boy who'd presumably once been Sherlock was curled up against his right side, fast asleep, young Crenshaw's arm draped loosely round his shoulders. A few feet away from them a thin black man was seated on the floor with a tray and seemed to be in the midst of rolling joints, smiling as if in response to something just said.

Current Crenshaw's face shifted to a look of fond sadness as he stared at the unknown man. Beside him Sherlock's bearing had gone tense again. He shifted as if meaning to step away, but before he could move Crenshaw halted him by gently grabbing hold of his wrist, the movement so casual as to seem unconscious. Hadn't even looked up from the laptop. Instead of pulling his arm free or otherwise objecting Sherlock appeared to simply accept his fate and remained standing in place.

Apparently trusting Sherlock wouldn't try to wander off again Crenshaw dropped his hold on the man's wrist, then leant forward with his forearms resting on the tabletop. With a short huffed sigh he clicked the key to advance again, though now with a growing air of guarded, almost wary reluctance.

Next up was a shot of himself and Sherlock snogging at a bar. John snorted in amusement. What an impossibly surreal image - Sherlock allowing some bloke to grab his face and kiss him in a move so uncoordinated they'd both nearly toppled off their seats. The disconnect was such that it was becoming necessary to forcefully remind himself that the dark-haired boy in these photos had actually been Sherlock and not some coincidentally identical teenager.

Opening his mouth to make some silly teasing comment about decorum, John thankfully realised before speaking that Crenshaw was staring at this photo with a look just as dour as he'd had for the last. John swallowed the juvenile comment and tried to collect himself a bit.

"Cute couple," he offered instead. Admittedly a weak attempt at lifting the mood, but better than the jab would've been. Crenshaw quirked a faint smile in response. A beat later his face darkened again.

"Those kids are a few hours off from being jumped in the street and almost dying," he muttered quietly. John baulked and glanced up to Sherlock, who for some reason just rolled his eyes.

"We did not  *almost die*. I had it handled."

"Only reason we weren't cut clean open is cause you were so far off your bleedin' face you turned into some kinda coke-fuelled angel of  *death*," Crenshaw snapped back, countenance growing ever more stormy. "And even then you've still got that scar on your arm to show for it, haven't you? How close was that to being a knife through the ribs?"

Sherlock glanced down towards his left bicep, clearly visible in the t-shirt he was currently wearing, and frowned at what John had long ago guessed to be the remains of a fairly deep slashing knife wound. Hadn't ever asked after it to confirm, of course, as he was far too sick of people calling attention to his own battle scars to consider doing the same to anyone else.

"... coke-fuelled angel of death?" John found himself repeating quizzically instead of anything perhaps more relevant, finding that phrase too bizarre not to highlight.

Crenshaw brought one hand up to rub his forehead as if warding off a headache.

"Ah, nothing, sorry. He just turned out to be better in a fight than I'd expected, is all."

Sherlock rolled his eyes again. "John knows I was a junkie, it's not some dark secret."

"Alright. Still weren't my place to bring it up, though."

Sherlock looked like he didn't know quite how to respond to that. Crenshaw breathed a short frustrated sigh and again hesitated about advancing the photo reel, but finally did so with a quick, almost aggressive jab at the keyboard.

Next was another candid shot, this time whilst the pub was much more lively, background populated by groups of young people drinking and laughing. A bit off from the centre of the frame were a young Crenshaw and Sherlock, the latter of whom was leaning against the edge of a tall pub table peering dubiously into a half-full glass he was holding. Young Crenshaw was stood pressed directly up next to him, right arm raised as if reaching up to touch his companion's hand, left at his side hanging at an odd angle due to the above-elbow fibreglass cast John had noticed in a few other photos as well - recent unstable wrist or forearm fracture, most likely. The freckled boy's attention was trained to his right and slightly behind, towards a much older man with a face disconcertingly reminiscent of a weasel, who by his posture looked to be in the midst of casually claiming a spot at the far side of the table. The darkly lecherous smirk the man had fixed on the two boys was the focal point of the shot.

Crenshaw stared at this photo for a long, silent moment, face unreadable.

Finally he snapped the laptop shut and crossed his arms.

"It's past now, that's all that matters," he said flatly.

John glanced up to see what Sherlock made of this, only to find his flatmate had fallen unnaturally still, gaze distant and unfocused.

Zoned out, John realised. Hadn't seen him do that in a bit. Didn't think much of it, though - Sherlock fell into these odd little trances often enough. Usually in response to some random detail he'd spotted, or a snippet of noise, or sometimes for no discernible reason at all. Compared to the rest of the man's quirks the occasional suspension of conscious awareness hadn't seemed much out of place, so John never felt a need to pry. Instead he'd learnt to just give it a bit of patience. Allow whatever genius intellectual process to work its way through, he'd come round again soon enough.

Crenshaw didn't seem inclined to be so blasé about the matter, however. As soon as he'd glanced up and noticed Sherlock's stillness his expression morphed into one of deep concern. He grabbed the man's wrist again with a firm grip.

"Sherlock," he said in an even, deliberate voice. "Look at me."

John was struck with the odd sense of performing a ritual; some key invocation delivered in just the right tone and cadence to dispel a formless evil.

Sure enough, Sherlock's eyes snapped back into focus as if released from a spell. He blinked down at Crenshaw.

John expected the detective to become angry or defensive, as was typical whenever Sherlock felt he'd been caught in a vulnerable moment. He didn't. Instead he seemed to take a beat to realise what had happened, grimaced, then lightly shook his head as if to clear a lingering fog.

"Sorry," he muttered. For what, John had no idea. Crenshaw seemed to be operating with a more complete picture and replied with an exasperated look.

"You don't gotta bleedin' apologise for havin' a-" He cut himself off, glanced at John. A brief silence filled the room.

Abruptly Crenshaw stood up and flung an arm round Sherlock's shoulders.

"Right," he quipped, voice gone suddenly bright and chipper. Sherlock made an annoyed noise but didn't otherwise object to finding a shirtless man draped over him. "This idiot's not eaten a bloody thing all day and I for one am famished, so perhaps we'd best see about lunch, hm?" Sherlock opened his mouth to protest but Crenshaw cut him off. "And you're not about to whinge about not being hungry, because you know I don't care."

Sherlock shut his mouth with a small, childish huff. Despite lingering confusion over what exactly he'd just witnessed John couldn't quite smother a silly grin over their dynamic. Luckily Crenshaw had already turned to steer his partner-of-indefinite-label off towards Sherlock's bedroom (presumably to get the both of them properly dressed) and didn't catch the juvenile expression.

Sherlock didn't seem to have noticed either, despite usually having some odd sixth sense for John being an immature git. No, he'd still seemed preoccupied by whatever had just happened. Just one of his staring spells, hadn't it been? John hadn't spotted anything noticeably different to any of the other ones - was it just because it had been brought on by that photo?

Struck by this thought, and with the other two men now out of the room, John curiously flipped up the laptop screen once more. Sherlock hadn't set it to lock when the lid closed, so the photo jumped back to life. Couldn't see much of note, aside from the weasel-faced man looking perhaps a bit sinister. Idly he hit the key to advance the reel.

The next photo depicted the same scene but an instant later. Weasel-Face now had his mouth open, speaking through a predatory grin. Young Crenshaw's expression had gone uncharacteristically furious. Beside him the boy who'd been Sherlock (looking far too young and fragile for John to fully reconcile as the same person) was still staring down at his drink, but his expression had changed. Instead of the bored, unimpressed stare John could easily map to his concept of adult Sherlock, the boy was now wide-eyed and ashen-faced, posture pulled taut as a bowstring.

John stared at the terrified expression on the too-young face, and slowly felt the pieces click together.

**««**

"You alright?" Eric asked gently as he shut the bedroom door behind them. Sherlock wasn't honestly sure - he'd always had flashbacks of one sort or another, of course, but over the course of his life their disruptiveness had slowly diminished until they'd become little more than a minor nuisance. Typically just brief snippets of unpleasant childhood experiences, occasionally a fragment of one of the many life-or-death situations he'd faced as an adult. Over in a flash, easy enough to cover up as having paused to think or reboot or whatever the hell he'd told John he was doing.

Hadn't found himself trapped in a memory so vivid as that last one in  *years*, and certainly not of  *that*  incident - of the lowest point of addiction he'd ever hit, the moment he'd conclusively made cocaine the most important aspect of his existence. In fact he'd spent the majority of his adult life successfully suppressing all conscious recollection of that experience.

"Yes," he answered automatically. Then, because he remembered Eric would be able to spot the lie and moreover was likely to get very annoyed by it he amended with, "... no? I don't know."

Eric sighed and patted him on the shoulder. As he moved away into the room his expression darkened considerably.

"Christ, I hadn't realised Mandy were around when he pulled that sick little stunt," he said in a low growl, quiet enough to sound as though he were mainly talking to himself. "Did she seriously just fuckin' watch 'im say that shit to us, snap a bloody  *photo*  and then leave without a word? What the fuck?"

"She'd just done a bump of K with Amélie," Sherlock explained vaguely. Not having to clarify what that meant nor how it related to her behaviour was oddly refreshing.

His tone must have come out more preoccupied than he'd realised, because Eric shot him a worried frown.

"You'd not looked through all the photos yet, I take it?"

"Of course I looked through them, it was fine before." Sherlock tried to say this snappishly, but it transformed into more of a distracted mumble. Was trying not to remember the moments preceding the scene they'd just seen depicted on-screen, but of course the images kept seeping up unbidden through tiny cracks in their containment cells.

*Mandy and Ami passing by their table whilst Eric had stepped away, Ami stopping to say something nonsensical to him in a jumble of French and English which he'd briefly tried to parse before realising she was shitfaced, Mandy dragging her off by the arm, feeling relieved they'd left so quickly. Turning back to the table, noticing his glass had been moved, thankfully still sober enough to think to check for tampering, not really registering when Eric pressed up beside him. Racer's gravelly voice slicing through awareness like a knife. Implying via lewd innuendo he'd tried to slip Sherlock a sedative, might be lying, impossible to tell whilst brain shorting out, Eric shouting at the bastard to piss off, wanting to tell him to stop, not worth risking a fight, his muscles weren't listening and how was he supposed to defend them like this…*

Sherlock grit his teeth against a phantom stab of sick dread and shook his head violently, then scrubbed his hands through his hair as if attacking his own skull might make it stop throwing unwanted memories at him.

"God's  *sake*, it's just a stupid bloody photograph!" he snarled. "Why am I reacting like this!?"

Eric paused from where he'd been hunting for a shirt and shot him a bemused, faintly concerned look.

"Sherlock… you do know I know what he did to you, right?"

Sherlock shot him a venomous scowl from under his fringe. "Hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means we're both aware you just had a dissociative flashback triggered by a photo of a man who raped you."

"It wasn't  *rape*," Sherlock spat, bristling. "I agreed to it."

Eric just huffed a tired sigh and shook his head. "Yeah, alright, if that helps."

Turning away, he seemed to deliberate for a moment. Torn between their mutual instinct to drop traumatic topics as quickly as possible and his apparent desire to discuss something he'd doubtless been mulling over for the past eight years. The second option must have won out, because he continued in a melancholy voice. "Look… I couldn't ever work up the nerve to say it back then, but I always wanted to tell you that shit weren't your fault, yeah? He knew what he was doing, waited 'til kids were too strung out to fight back. Did it by force if they said no. You didn't miss some better option."

"How would  *you*  know?" Sherlock was aware his tone had crept well into the realm of excessively defensive, but a touch of raised hackles didn't seem unreasonable given the subject matter. The lack of coat pockets to shove his fists into was unfortunate.

Eric gave him a look that said he really should have been able to deduce the answer himself, but then elaborated anyway.

"Benny worked for him."

Oh. Right. Sherlock had been aware of that fact but never thought through the implications. A dark scowl must have crept onto his face as he did so now, because Eric made an annoyed noise whilst tugging one of Sherlock's t-shirts over his head.

"Obviously he weren't involved in all that, christ." Having got a shirt on he turned to the business of gathering up and sorting what laundry he hadn't already put in the wash with the sheets earlier, presumably just to have something to do with his hands while he spoke. "Look, after we'd got in with Corey's crew Racer took a liking to me, right? Fucker always went for us gay kids. Kept tryna get me alone, wouldn't back off. Eventually we figured out he weren't into black guys so it were safe for Benny to take up with him and play nice, get in good graces enough to keep the sick bastard off me. And you, later. As much as he could."

Sherlock was a bit taken aback. In truth he'd never paid much attention to Ben, aside from vaguely trying to be civil because he was Eric's friend. They'd not had much chance to interact, anyway, as the man had been out of the house more often than not.

"Remember how Benny ran off that night, before we got jumped?" Eric continued, voice gone thoughtful and a bit melancholy. "He only did that cause if he hadn't filled in he were worried he'd not be in good enough standing to protect the both of us. Felt awful bout what happened."

"I didn't think Ben even liked me," Sherlock objected, frowning. Eric chuckled.

"Ah, nah, he thought you were an arsehole. But you made me happy so he looked out for you anyways."

Sherlock found himself at a loss for what to say. Mind still too frazzled to pick through the layers of emotion in that statement, to come up with a suitable deflecting quip. Eric, somehow still able to pick up on his discomfort at a glance despite the years, took pity and broke the tension by tossing a bundle of clothes at his face.

"Get dressed and take me out for lunch, you bleedin' prat."

**««**

## Chapter 10: Continuation of the Missing Chapter

**««**

John was not, in fact, a complete idiot. Regardless of Sherlock's frequent assertions to the contrary. Obviously he'd nothing on the superhuman genius of the Holmes brothers, but he'd made it through medical school, and he could deduce basic facts as well as the next bloke. Particularly when it came to things he'd firsthand experience with. And, unfortunately, having been an army doctor stationed in Afghanistan meant he'd amassed a rather horrific amount of experience interpreting the body language of traumatised young men.

Would've been vastly less strain on his psyche to dismiss the scene before him as nothing more than an awkward moment. Just close the program and forget about it. Impossible, sadly, because he knew that hunted stare and rigid posture. Seen it far too many times during civilian outreach clinics - youths brought in by older men who insisted they'd no idea how such specific injuries could've been inflicted. Men whose smiles echoed the predatory leer of the weasel-faced man.

Simple enough to piece together what had happened, then. Much more difficult to get his brain to accept that the boy making that too-familiar expression was  *Sherlock* . Try as he might, all he could see was some nameless teenager. He continued to stare at the photo for the next several minutes regardless, turning every detail over in his head, trying to find a way to make it fit.

The sound of Sherlock's bedroom door opening startled John quite badly, and he hastily closed the gallery program, then a split second later remembered Crenshaw had actually just shut the lid. He had barely enough time to snap the laptop shut again, turn back towards the counter and set about fussing with his tea before Sherlock appeared. All a bit pointless, really, given the near-certainty of the Great Detective spotting some preposterous clue betraying he'd been snooping. One had to at least try, though.

Sherlock didn't even glance towards the table as he entered the kitchen. He'd instead spun round to walk backwards whilst speaking to Crenshaw, his bearing a bit silly and overdramatic to match the inflection of his words.

"Buy some clothes of your own, then. No one's forcing you to wear mine."

Crenshaw emerged into view, trailing after Sherlock. Both of them were dressed properly now, Sherlock in one of his usual outfits and Crenshaw with the trousers he'd already had on along with what appeared to be the same loose t-shirt Sherlock had been wearing a moment ago. While the two of them were roughly the same height, Crenshaw was a bit wider in the chest and shoulders, making the shirt look much less like a pyjama top on his frame.

Crenshaw shrugged. "Nah, some coke-addled toff once told me being able to share a wardrobe is  *'too efficient not to take advantage of'.* Can't say I disagree."

Sherlock gave him a flat look, which quickly shifted to acceptance.

"Yeah, alright. Fair," he admitted with a shrug of his own. "It  *was*  efficient, though."

"Efficient way to get acid burns on all my shirts, sure," Crenshaw countered blandly.

John couldn't help a small chuckle for the mental image - that impossibly young version of Sherlock from the photos continuously nicking his boyfriend's clothes, blithely unconcerned with the basic courtesy of not spilling chemicals on them. No trouble slotting  *that*  into his mental model.

Speaking of mental models - he eyed Sherlock with interest as the man jumped with almost comical surprise and whipped around to look at John, as if he'd not noticed he was there. Failing to notice an entire person stood by the kettle was of course nothing too out of the ordinary for Sherlock, but the relaxed, animated way he was moving certainly was. Usually after a forced display of vulnerability like that he'd spend at least the next few hours moody and withdrawn. Seeing him bounce back so quickly was a bit bewildering.

"We're out for lunch, John. You're welcome to join if you'd like," Sherlock said offhandedly after a brief pause to process that John did in fact still exist. A flash of irritation seemed to cross Crenshaw's face behind him, but the man said nothing.

John shook his head. "Nah, thanks." Didn't want to intrude, especially given Crenshaw's apparent desire that he not, and besides which he very much wanted to have a look through the rest of the photos. Reached for an easy lie instead. "Busy morning at the clinic, bit knackered."

Sherlock, of course, instantly spotted some telltale clue betraying the truth - that it had been an incredibly dull morning at the clinic, hence why he'd spent some portion of it mulling over Sherlock's past deeply enough to recall the photos. John took a placid sip of his tea and settled in for the inevitable barrage of deduction. Alright, fine, get on with it. Walked right into that one.

Just as Sherlock opened his mouth, though, Crenshaw cut him off with a flat "don't."

Sherlock snapped his mouth shut and turned a disgruntled frown over his shoulder. "What?"

"Just take him at his bleedin' word and quit messin' about, christ."

"I'm not messing about," Sherlock objected petulantly.

"Right, 'course not. Cause showin' off for folks who already know how clever you are ain't a silly waste of time at all," Crenshaw replied with a sarcastic eye roll as he turned towards the door. "Catch up when you're finished, then."

Sherlock stared after him, visibly wrong-footed. John pressed his lips into the side of his tea mug and did his level best not to burst into laughter.

This became much easier as Sherlock's indignant stare after Crenshaw dropped to a pensive, strangely forlorn look. The sort of face a man might make in response to a sudden realisation that he still loved an ex, if John had to guess. Odd interaction to spark such an epiphany, perhaps. But then the idea of Sherlock only recognising the depth of his feelings for a bloke after being flatly dismissed by said bloke did seem rather on-brand.

Despite a renewed temptation to start laughing over this John swallowed his mirth down to a gentle smile.

"Take him someplace nice," he suggested. "That little bistro, maybe."

A flash of wariness crossed Sherlock's face as he glanced over to John, but it faded quickly.

"No need to spare the ridicule, John. I know I've been acting a fool," he muttered, sounding a bit tired and lost.

John shrugged. "'Course you have. Love makes fools of all of us, right?"

Sherlock turned a disapproving frown on the word 'love', opening his mouth as if to object, then seemed to lose steam and breathed a small sigh instead. A beat later he shook his head and strode off towards the door. John leant to the side to watch after him, smiled as he saw Crenshaw pop out from around the corner and hand Sherlock's coat to him with a quick kiss. Evidently he'd not actually expected to have to wait for Sherlock to finish deducing.  *Detective whisperer,* John thought to himself with a smirk.

As they made their way to the stairs together, Crenshaw spoke up with a flippant, "So I've decided if your brother nabs me again I'm just gonna start describing th' whole rest of the morning in, like, excruciating detail."

Sherlock made an odd noise somewhere between a sputter and a laugh. John ducked his head to try to stifle his making about the same noise himself - both for the impossible task of trying to imagine Mycroft's reaction to such a thing, and for the new knowledge that Sherlock's brother had wasted no time whatsoever putting Crenshaw through the whole kidnap-and-interrogate rigmarole. What an absolute lunatic.

"He'd literally die of discomfort," Sherlock replied. "You'd be tried as an assassin."

Crenshaw laughed and said something in reply, but was sadly now too far away to make out the words. The sound of the front door closing announced their departure.

Shaking his head in wonder, John's attention was caught once more by the laptop. Sherlock hadn't spared it a single thought. Left the photos unguarded, waiting.

Snooping around in someone else's computer was terribly rude, obviously. Sherlock's habitual disregard for John's privacy did, however, make the intrusion feel somewhat less egregious - the man had gone digging through John's laptop multiple times already under various excuses ranging from  *'checking for tracking software'*  to  *'mine's too far away '*  *,* after all. Given that, it didn't seem unreasonable to take this opportunity to just have a quick look through the rest of the album. Hadn't even any plans to go rooting around through anything else, which put him a step above Sherlock in terms of basic common courtesy, so by any reasonable moral framework it was fine.

Having sufficiently convinced himself, John moved to sit in the chair Crenshaw had recently occupied. Opened the lid and then grimaced as he remembered he'd closed out the gallery viewer. Bollocks. Well, the folder full of files was still open. Perhaps if he double-clicked on something in there it would launch the viewer program automatically? Worth a try.

He clicked a random file, and was mildly annoyed to see the program it pulled up wasn't the gallery. A beat later he realised that was because this wasn't a still photo but a video file instead, which turned the mild disappointment into a flash of juvenile glee. Hadn't even considered the possibility of videos - the pub band again, maybe? He quickly hunted about for the volume controls, and managed to get the audio loud enough to catch the tail end of a woman speaking through the tinny laptop speakers.

"- anyone touch it, yeah? Won't be a minute!"

On-screen was the view from a camera which seemed to have been strategically placed and left to surreptitiously record. The shot seemed to be angled down from a higher surface towards a short set of steps, which John recognised to be the stairs off the side of the cellar pub's stage. Two lanky teenage boys were sat on the steps, roughly centred in the frame, their faces turned away as they both tracked something moving out of frame.

The distant sound of a door opening and shutting again signalled someone had left the room, presumably the woman who'd just been speaking. The two boys were silent for a moment. Then the dark-haired one nearest the lens spoke up in a voice so familiar as to be disorientating.

"Why does she always respond like she's heard something completely different to what was actually said?" he asked blankly. His cadence was identical to Sherlock's, tone nearly the same save for perhaps being a few steps higher in pitch. He turned forwards again, which put his features roughly in profile, of course revealing the same surreal de-aged copy of Sherlock's face from the photos. A lit cigarette dangled from his lips, as it had in so many other shots, and he glanced down to an open packet of crisps held absently in one hand with a frown as if he'd no idea how they'd got there.

John studied the screen with rapt fascination. The doppelganger's movements, while subtly off in a way John couldn't quite put his finger on, were still very recognisably those of his friend. And, of course, the face - thinner, younger, scruffier, but indisputably Sherlock's. It all came together to the impression not of a simple copy of the man's face, but of the essence of the Great Detective having been somehow superimposed over the awkward frame of an adolescent. Absolutely eerie in a way the photos hadn't been.

And then, as suddenly if a switch had been flipped, the portion of John's brain which had stubbornly refused to accept evidence finally gave up. All at once he found himself able to fully reconcile that this was, indeed, Sherlock. A snapshot in time he'd actually lived through, not some impossible copy of his likeness. The realisation felt daunting, somehow.

As John was busy mulling over this train of thought, the other boy in the video shifted into better view. He briefly turned towards the camera to casually pluck the cigarette from Sherlock's lips, revealing a constellation of freckles and warm brown eyes.

"Dunno, Sherly," the teenaged version of Crenshaw muttered dully, taking a drag off the cig. He let himself flop backwards and watched as the smoke he blew out drifted upwards, then shut his eyes as if to fall asleep right there on the stairs. "Reckon she's just a bit of a cunt."

Recognisably the same voice, though with an accent much thicker than John had yet heard. The white fibreglass cast on the boy's arm and not-quite-adult body proportions were all familiar enough from the photos; nowhere near as eerie to see in motion, as John didn't know the man well enough to have formed any preconceptions, so focussing on him rather than Sherlock was a welcome break from the uncanniness. Doing so made it easier to notice how the two boys were sat directly beside each other despite having enough space to spread out, same as in the garden wall photo. John recalled the way Crenshaw had seemed to unconsciously keep himself within arms' reach of Sherlock earlier and smiled bemusedly to himself. Bloke was a bit clingy, apparently.

On-screen the young version of Sherlock offered no reaction to the theft of his cigarette. Instead he'd turned to idly shuffling through the bag in his hands as if hunting for the ideal crisp.

"You don't have to keep telling her off like that, you know," he said after a long silence. "I don't care anymore."

Crenshaw made a frustrated noise. "Quit fuckin' doin' that."

Sherlock looked over with a quizzical tilt of his head and held up the crisp packet, as if asking if that was what he was meant to stop doing. Crenshaw opened his eyes to see the movement, then irritably closed them again.

"Not th' crisps," he grumbled. "Though, yeah, quit doin' that too and actually eat 'em."

Sherlock huffed like a petulant child, picked exactly one crisp out of the bag and ate it sullenly. Crenshaw opened his eyes again a few seconds later with an exasperated glare, presumably as he heard no other eating happening.

"Fuck's sake, Shers."

"I'm not hungry!" Sherlock whinged.

"Next time you pass out I'm leavin' you on the goddamn floor."

"I didn't pass out."

"You fell flat on your stupid face."

"I tripped," Sherlock objected. Crenshaw glared up at him.

"Fine," he snapped. "You  *tripped*  after not eating a fuckin' thing all day. Scared me half to death anyhow, so maybe try'n keep from doing it again, yeah?"

Sherlock turned to regard him silently a moment, expression unreadable as he was facing away from the camera. As he looked forwards again he sullenly ate another crisp.

A few moments of companionable silence passed, during which Crenshaw decided to heft himself back upright and shifted his legs to a less sprawled-out position, Sherlock's cig now dangling from his mouth. Sherlock managed to eat several more crisps, though looked pointedly unhappy about each one.

"What else was I supposed to quit doing?" Sherlock suddenly asked out of nowhere.

John snorted to himself - well, that certainly hadn't changed. Sherlock's habit of picking up a conversation thread he'd dropped minutes back and expecting everyone to just miraculously know what he was on about.

Crenshaw responded without missing a beat, evidently having no difficulty following this erratic communication style.

"Sayin' you're fine with shit when you ain't."

"I  *am*  fine with it," Sherlock insisted.

"No," Crenshaw said flatly, glaring out into whatever space lay beyond the camera frame. "You're just gonna pretend t'be til you can't no more, then you're gonna panic or go all dead-eyed and suddenly shit'll be  *my*  problem to sort out. Same as every other fuckin' time."

"Well if I'm such a  *burden*  to you-" Sherlock's snippy rebuttal cut off as he was jolted sideways by a light shove to the shoulder.

"Shut  *up,* christ," Crenshaw groused. "Y'know that ain't what I meant."

Sherlock did shut up, but also shoved him back. In the usual manner of adolescent boys this devolved into a short, silly scuffle, culminating in Sherlock twisting under Crenshaw's arm to duck an attempted headlock, then letting his upper body flop down over the man's lap with a finality as if he'd won. He fixed a childish pout up at his boyfriend with arms crossed over his thin chest, crisps now abandoned on the step below.

Crenshaw shifted to support the sudden weight of a nearly-grown man across his legs with the casual acceptance of someone very used to randomly finding their partner draped over them. Still so impossibly strange to imagine Sherlock initiating physical contact with anyone, let alone tolerating anything more than the bare minimum. And yet the boy he'd once been seemed to have no complaint with Crenshaw's hand shifting to idly bounce one of the short curls sticking up from his mop of unkempt hair.

After a few seconds Sherlock dropped his comical pout and stared off moodily towards the ceiling instead. At this angle his face was almost directly in line with the camera, making his expression much easier to read.

"I tried asking her to stop," he grumbled.

"You asked  *one time,"* Crenshaw replied in an exasperated tone. "An' when she didn't listen you just gave up."

Sherlock turned a vaguely confused frown up at him. "Having to ask more than once means you're just whingeing."

"Says fuckin' who?"

"Says, er…" Sherlock trailed off, seemed to consider a moment, then looked away as if embarrassed. "Mycroft, I guess."

Crenshaw scoffed and shook his head, muttering something too quietly for the camera mic to pick up. Sherlock scowled.

"He is still my  *brother,* you know," he snapped. Crenshaw lifted his good hand in a placating gesture.

"Fine, sorry," he groused. "Just seems like he ain't ever much cared whether folks are bein' awful to you."

*"No one*'s ever cared about that," Sherlock retorted with an exasperated eye roll. "You're the first person to give this much of a shit, and honestly I'm not even sure *why* beyond maybe you think trying to be nice is some sort of requirement for getting to shag me? Which it most decidedly is not, given prior history."

Despite the snark in his tone Sherlock's expression had darkened considerably into a vicious glare off at nothing. Over the subsequent stretch of silence this slowly morphed into a vacant stare.

Crenshaw, who'd been gazing thoughtfully into the middle distance, appeared to sense something and glanced down. His solemn expression on catching sight of the blank stare seemed far too world-weary for a face so young. With a small sigh he stubbed his near-spent cig out on the step next to him, sat quietly a moment as if in thought, then leant over and murmured something to the boy in his lap. The camera angle made it difficult to see exactly what he'd done, but John guessed it must have been some variation on the odd little ritual he'd witnessed earlier, because Sherlock's response was near-identical - he blinked, appeared briefly confused, then grimaced and shook his head.

"Fuck. Sorry," he muttered. Then a beat later scowled and added a petulant, "Sorry for saying sorry."

Crenshaw huffed but said nothing. Sherlock seemed to fall into a bit of a preoccupied sulk, and they sat in silence for a long moment.

Finally Crenshaw spoke in a voice nearly too quiet for the microphone to pick up.

"It's cause I care about you, you fuckin' moron."

Sherlock appeared taken off-guard by this, and turned a bewildered look up at his partner. A short staring contest ensued before Sherlock looked away again.

"I'll… try to tell her off myself next time," he said in a hesitant grumble. "Instead of just ignoring her."

Rather than reply in any verbal manner Crenshaw simply patted him on the head like a puppy, which Sherlock strangely tolerated. Another quiet moment stretched out.

Crenshaw was the one to break the silence again. "How does it even make sense to think I'd go to all this bother just to shag you, anyway?" His tone suggested he was intentionally trying to lighten the mood, though the teasing cadence wasn't quite enough to mask a note of melancholy. "Your arse is only cute enough to make up for, like,  *maybe*  a quarter of the dumb shit you do."

"Bullshit," Sherlock retorted immediately, expression comically serious given the next sentence. "My arse is cute enough to offset at least half of all the dumb shit I do."

Crenshaw sputtered out a laugh. Sherlock cracked a small smile along with him, then looked up towards the camera and appeared to spot some detail - he furrowed his brow as his gaze shifted to look at something near the lens.

"Mandy left that thing recording," he pointed out, nodding towards the device.

Instantly Crenshaw stopped laughing and whipped his head around, then up as he realised where the device actually was. The brief moment of levity evaporated with his angry glare.

"What? Oh fer fuck's sake. Turn it off."

Sherlock hefted himself up from his boyfriend's lap and approached the camera, his chest growing larger in the frame until just the Oxford crest on the front of his hoodie was visible. A flurry of blurred movement filled the screen as he presumably picked it up. For a brief second the image clarified to a view of Sherlock staring down into the frame with a calculating expression on his too-young face, and John realised with a start that the boy's pupils were enormously overdilated for the level of ambient light. He'd been high this entire time? Hadn't seemed any different to his usual self - perhaps a bit oddly relaxed, if anything, which was not at all the effect John expected a prodigious dose of cocaine to have on anyone.

As John was busy puzzling over this, the image of young Sherlock's face shifted, appearing to be turning a thoughtful look back over his shoulder. Then the frame shook and blurred with movement until it had settled back round to a steady shot on Crenshaw, now being filmed from a spot directly to his side and much closer, as if Sherlock had crouched down on the stairs with the camera held up to his face.

"And here we find the majestic chav in its natural habitat," Sherlock's voice said from behind the frame. Aside from a slight snicker he'd done a fair job of impersonating David Attenborough.

Crenshaw fixed him with a flat stare. Quite angry over the secret recording, it seemed, and not at all in the mood to entertain whatever nonsense his boyfriend was up to.

"What th'fuck are you doin'?" he grumbled.

"She wanted to film a documentary, right?"

"You said that were th' stupidest idea you ever heard."

"Well, I've changed my mind," Sherlock quipped brightly. The image zoomed in on one of Crenshaw's freckled cheeks, and Sherlock started mimicking a BBC programme again. "Observe the chav's unusual speckled complexion - a form of camouflage, perhaps? Or simply evidence of too much sun exposure? Researchers have yet to agree upon an explanation."

Crenshaw drew away slightly, making his expression of lingering anger mixed with reluctant amusement visible despite the extreme close-up. John furrowed his brow in confusion over what the motivation for this could possibly be, then furrowed it further in baffled realisation - was Sherlock… trying to cheer his boyfriend up? The thought felt absurd, and yet here he was. By all appearances just a kid trying to get his friend to laugh.

"Observe the pasty-arsed toff bein' an obnoxious little shit," Crenshaw replied, sounding rather upset still but willing to play along.

A few jumbled seconds of movement followed, and suddenly the both of them were in frame, Sherlock apparently now holding the camera out in front of their faces. He shoved his cheek against Crenshaw's and stuck his tongue out at the lens, then nudged his partner insistently until Crenshaw relented to follow suit. After a second of childishly sticking their tongues out they both broke down laughing, and Sherlock must have finally deigned to flip the power switch, because the video cut off.

John sat in thoughtful silence for several long moments. Well, that had certainly been… something. An unexpectedly forceful push into accepting that the boy in the rest of the photos was actually Sherlock, for one thing. For another, reasonably solid confirmation that he had, in fact, been sexually assaulted at some point during this stretch of time. Also evidence that Sherlock's behaviour on cocaine seemed to lack most of the usual tells of stimulant abuse, which of course raised concerns about whether John would've noticed if he'd relapsed.

And, perhaps the least objectively important detail yet also somehow the most fascinating, evidence that Sherlock could actually behave like a normal human being. Or like a normal twenty year-old, at least. Play-fighting, foul language, joking about having a cute arse… nothing John would've thought the man capable of before today. An entire facet of himself he kept hidden away, for whatever inscrutable reason.

Or… perhaps not hidden, exactly, but more some strange, emergent effect of how he and Crenshaw interacted? Briefly John weighed that possibility - tried to guess Sherlock's reaction should John ever say anything remotely similar to 'it's because I care about you, you fucking moron'. Nope. Wouldn't work. John couldn't even imagine himself voicing such a sentiment, certainly not with that wording, and Sherlock would take the insult far too seriously. Excruciatingly awkward just thinking about it.

And yet Crenshaw, for some reason, could say things like that, and Sherlock not only accepted it but responded by actually doing as he'd been asked. Grudgingly, but still.

An urge to grab his own laptop and start working through this via journalling arose, but he fought to suppress it. No, no. Absolutely not. He knew himself, knew that once he'd organised all his thoughts he'd want to share it and get input from other people, which would ultimately mean putting a load of Sherlock's personal business up on the internet. And while Crenshaw seemed to hold very little faith in his discretion John did at least have  *some*  standards - Sherlock's ability to forget the entire concept of planets was one thing, his relationship dynamics and dating history were quite another. Even if the urge to chat about all this with  *someone*  was sure to become a gnawing hole in his brain.

"Yoo hoo!"

Aha! Perfect! John turned a bright smile up to Mrs Hudson, who'd just appeared in the doorway holding a stack of folded linens.

"Sorry for barging in, dear, wasn't sure if anyone was home. Did you put all those sheets and things in the wash just now?"

John bit back a laugh for the reminder of why Sherlock's sheets would need washing.

"Nope," he said with only a small snicker. "That's all Sherlock's."

"Oh." Mrs Hudson looked a bit confused. "When did he learn to use the machine properly? Got all the settings right and everything."

John gave into the urge to laugh openly as Mrs Hudson walked over to hand him the stack of clean wash.

"Must've been his ex. They seem to have spent the morning, er… reconnecting."

Mrs Hudson gave him a light smack on the shoulder for the admittedly terrible innuendo, but turned a delighted smile regardless.

"Really! That young man from last night? What was the name… Eric, was it?"

"That's the one, yeah," John confirmed with a light nod. He set the wash down on the table beside him and turned his attention back to the laptop. "Apparently… " He trailed off as he scrolled quickly through the folder of photo thumbnails, then gestured triumphantly as he found and successfully opened the photo of the uncoordinated pub snog from earlier. "They were 'housemates'."

Mrs Hudson's hand went to her mouth with a small titter, then dropped to press over her chest as her smile shifted melancholy.

"Goodness, look at the state of that boy. I'd forgotten how thin he was back then."

John glanced quizzically over to Mrs Hudson.

"You knew Sherlock at this age?"

"I'm afraid so, dear!" she confirmed with a laugh. "Found the poor thing half-dead on the pavement down a side street in Tallahassee. Really should have just left him there, you know, what with everything going on. Suppose I've never regretted it, though."

"What was he doing in Florida?" John hedged, partly to confirm he'd correctly placed the unfamiliar city, and partly in hopes of prompting her to elaborate. He'd just been hoping she'd gossip with him about Sherlock's relationship dynamics, hadn't realised they'd met so soon after all this happened.

Mrs Hudson just chuckled. "Well, I'm sure you'd have to ask him! I certainly won't be going into details. Sherlock would have my head if you wound up on a hit list."

John blinked. "Sorry, what?"

Mrs Hudson flashed him a sweet, guileless smile, then crossed her arms expectantly and gestured down to the screen.

"Well, go on then. Let's see the rest."

**««**

## Chapter 11: Another Continuation, Apparently

**««**

Greg sighed, resigning himself to yet another round of trying to pick apart Sherlock's inscrutable process.

He opened his mouth to ask another question, try to get the man at least partially back on track from whatever nonsense he was on about. As he did so, though, his attention was diverted by someone coming in through the door. He glanced over, expecting to see John, which would have been a bit of welcome backup in this silly game of 'get Sherlock to just answer the bloody question'. Instead he found himself looking at the very same witness who'd provided the statement he'd just been reading from. The man who'd been in the missing suspect's flat when the fire started.

"Yeah mate so I dunno what you meant by 'the blue one', but I got- oh."

The man cut off as he caught sight of Greg. He looked to be dressed for a business meeting, with dark slacks and a buttonup in the same style to what Sherlock typically wore, and the grey woolen peacoat Greg recalled him having been wearing on the night of the arson. A leather briefcase was tucked under one arm and he held a plastic bag full of what looked like groceries in his free hand.

"Mr Crenshaw?" Greg barked, scandalised. He looked to Sherlock for some sort of explanation, but got only a bland lift of the eyebrows. "Sherlock, what in god's name do you think you're up to?"

"Consulting on your incredibly boring case?" was the answer he got, along with a vaguely confused, indignant look.

Greg threw out an arm to indicate Mr Crenshaw, who was regarding him with a bemused smile as he strode past to set his things down in the kitchen.

"You, what-? Called him out here? You can't be going round harassing witnesses!"

Sherlock's expression had shifted more towards the confused end, though now also somewhat affronted.

"I've not  *harassed*  him."

"I feel very harassed, actually," Mr Crenshaw quipped from over by the sink.

"Shut up."

"See? Rude." Crenshaw's joking tone very much did not match his words. He'd shuffled off his coat and tossed it casually to Sherlock, who caught it with a small grumble and went to hang it up on the coat rack.

Greg looked back and forth between them. Mr Crenshaw was unpacking his shopping with the air of knowing more or less where everything belonged. Hadn't reacted to the sight of Sherlock's collection of body parts in the fridge. Wasn't him just dropping in, then, he'd been here long enough to get comfortable. And when he'd removed the coat it had become clear that his outfit didn't just  *resemble*  Sherlock's, but looked to literally be the same articles of clothing. One could see where the seam lines were just a smidge off, not having been tailored to his frame.

All evidence pointed to this man having been staying with John and Sherlock for the past few days, presumably since the flat fire. Only explanation that could possibly make sense. Voicing this conclusion didn't help to make it seem any less baffling, however.

"You… invited the witness to stay at your flat?"

"Yep."

Sherlock deigned to provide no further clarification whatsoever. He just moved from the coat rack over towards the kitchen where Mr Crenshaw was, then stood leaning partially against the table with his hands tucked into his trouser pockets. Fixed Greg with an expectant look.

"Did you want to finish the consult, or just stand there gawping like an idiot?"

Greg didn't answer. He was looking back and forth between the two men in front of him. There was something niggling at the back of his brain. Like a memory he couldn't quite access…

Mr Crenshaw held up a tin of soup with a questioning noise, causing Sherlock to look his direction. And like a flashbulb going off Greg saw another scene overlaid atop the current one: dim lighting of some dingy cellar pub, an impossibly young Sherlock stood before him with his hands tucked into his jeans pockets just as this older version had in his slacks, turning his head in the exact same way to look at- ah!

"You're that freckled kid!"

Both other men turned to him looking utterly baffled, which was fair since Greg had just flung an arm out pointing at Crenshaw like a lunatic. The bloke in question stared at him a beat, then switched focus back to Sherlock, who shrugged as if to say he'd no idea either. Greg realised he'd made himself look a bit of a nutter and lowered his arm. Only to almost immediately ruin his attempt to look more sane by putting his hands on his head instead, because he'd just made another connection.

"Hang on, wait… those old photos we found during the Harwood investigation… those were from the pub where I first met you, weren't they? He's the…" Greg shook his head for his own rudeness and addressed the man he was talking about directly instead. "You're the freckle-faced kid from the photos! We couldn't get a witness statement from you because you kept hyperventilating every time someone got near!"

Crenshaw abruptly looked uncomfortable. "Oh, er…"

"When were  *you*  there?" Sherlock cut in. Greg was now the one to look baffled.

"We had an entire conversation, Sherlock. You deduced who the murderer was based on foil scraps and cotton fibres."

This elicited no hint of recognition. Mr Crenshaw glanced over and seemed unsurprised by the blank look on Sherlock's face.

"It was a bit after we'd found Benny, Shers. You'd have been crashing."

"Oh." Sherlock glanced to him, then back to Greg with a small shrug. "Well, I'm sure whatever I said was very impressive."

Mr Crenshaw looked back to Greg. "Did you, er… catch him? Th- the murderer."

"Within the hour, yeah. Thanks to him." He gestured towards Sherlock, who looked as if he still had no memory of this whatsoever but wasn't especially shocked nor bothered by that fact. Lost quite a chunk of time to the drugs, apparently. Greg found himself thinking back to the younger version of the man he'd met that night and feeling rather confused - kid hadn't seemed  *that*  badly off.

Crenshaw seemed to be trying to stifle some growing inner turmoil - brief smile of thanks, but it quickly dropped in favour of a frown towards the floor. Hands pressed together palm-to-palm in a strange sort of nervous tic, and he seemed to be curling in on himself. Greg bit his lip. Ah, hell. Hadn't meant to bring up bad memories.

Before Greg had a chance to consider apologising Sherlock shot a glance in Mr Crenshaw's direction, and as he looked back to Greg he smoothly reached out and grabbed one of the man's hands. Both to stop the compulsive tic, it seemed, and to draw him closer. Mr Crenshaw didn't appear to mind this at all - looked rather relieved about it, in fact. He'd latched onto Sherlock's hand like a lifeline and was now pressed against his side as if to maximise physical contact.

"Suppose that explains how you got my mobile number," Sherlock remarked blandly, as if there was nothing odd about him inviting another human being into his personal space.

Greg stared at them, so bewildered he'd forgot his intent to apologise. No context for this behaviour seemed to fit. If he'd learnt anything about dealing with Sherlock over the years, however, it was that things tended to go much more smoothly if one just behaved as if any sudden odd turns were perfectly normal. No sense calling anything out. As such he forced himself to shake off the confusion and carry on.

"Did you, er… think I'd just contacted you out of the blue?"

Sherlock shrugged. "Case was interesting enough, didn't see any point in asking."

Beside him Crenshaw seemed to have calmed considerably. No longer looked like he was fighting a breakdown, just a bit distant. Still holding onto Sherlock as if he were the only thing keeping him grounded. Their hands caught Greg's eye and he found himself studying the details there - wasn't the hand-over-hand sort of hold one might expect of an impulsive grab, but instead a more intimate intertwining of fingers. That, coupled with their casually close proximity, and moreover Sherlock's complete lack of visible unease about this, unlocked another near-forgotten little detail hiding away in the depths of Greg's brain.

"Hang on… hadn't you said the freckled kid in those photos had been your  *boyfriend*  at the time?"

Sherlock gave him a flat, unimpressed stare. Presumably in response to the wolfish grin which had slowly stolen over Greg's face as he spoke.

"Yes."

"So… does that mean you two are…"

He gestured towards them, hoping to get his question across nonverbally as he wasn't sure he'd be able to ask without sounding incredibly juvenile.

Sherlock continued to fix him with an irritated look. "Are we what?"

"You know, er…" Greg carried on awkwardly. "Are the two of you… I mean, is this a *thing*?"

Sherlock looked equal parts confused and pissed off. "A  *thing?*"

Crenshaw had given himself a little shake and seemed to have caught on to the picture they'd made together - he glanced down to their interlinked fingers with a light blush.

"He's asking if we're-" he started, but Sherlock cut him off.

"I know what he's asking," he snapped, not shifting his annoyed glare off of Greg. "It's just a stupid way to ask. What exactly is a  *thing,*  Lestrade?"

"I mean, just…" Greg trailed off helplessly. Couldn't think how to word it without coming right out and asking if they were shagging, which was the main thing he wanted to know. And that only because he'd find it oddly uplifting if they were. Hadn't thought Sherlock capable of being comfortable enough with someone to have that sort of connection. Couldn't find a way to say all that, though, so he settled for repeating, "... you know, a thing."

Sherlock either didn't actually understand what he was getting at, or was being willfully obtuse, because he just continued to stare. Beside him his perhaps-more-than-friend shifted awkwardly, dropped Sherlock's hand, and scooted a few inches away to a more polite distance. Sherlock broke his staring match with Greg to look over to him instead.

"What are you getting all flustered for?"

"I- I dunno, I'm just-" Crenshaw stammered. He seemed to be trying to convey some meaning to Sherlock by means of facial expression and gesturing, with little apparent success. Finally he made a frustrated noise and defaulted back to words. "I'm not sure how open you want to be with your boss, god's sake."

Sherlock looked insulted. "He's not my boss."

"Fine, er… colleague?"

"Professional acquaintance," Greg supplied helpfully. "Bordering on friend, I think? When he's not too busy jeopardising my career."

"I've  *made*  your career."

A faint spark of a smile under the snippy tone betrayed the fact Sherlock was evidently rather pleased about being counted a possible friend. Greg gave him a little smile in return. Bloke could be a nightmare, for sure, but Greg had always had a bit of a soft spot for his antics.

Crenshaw made a questioning gesture towards Sherlock, as if to say  *'alright, then, so how open?'* . When this got him only another nonplussed stare he huffed and went for words again, though this time with a bit more heat as he seemed to be growing rather frustrated.

"We never got back 'round to talking 'bout what to call this, yeah?"

Hah! Greg had sat in on the bloke's initial witness statement and spent damned near the entire time distracted by his cadence, trying to figure out why it sounded off. Eventually decided he must be covering some strong local accent, but hadn't been able to tell which. The slip just now had been enough to place it, however. East London. Perhaps even Cockney? Shouldn't laugh (and he did his best not to), but by  *god* that was funny to imagine - Sherlock with his posh public school airs dating some rough lad off the council estate.

"So?" Sherlock replied blankly.

"So I don't know how to act in mixed company!"

"Why would assigning some arbitrary label help with that?"

"Because it'd define a set of social norms, you daft prat."

"I don't care about social norms."

"I do!"

"Why?"

Crenshaw threw his hands up in defeat. "Fine! You know what, honestly a *thing*  sounds about right. Let's just go with that."

"We are  *not*  calling it a thing," Sherlock objected petulantly.

His partner was now ignoring him in favour of plucking up a few items from his half-emptied shopping bag, then brushing past him on his way out towards the door to the landing.

"I've got to take this downstairs," he threw over his shoulder in explanation, and quickly vanished.

Greg looked to Sherlock with his brows raised, and found the man watching after his guest with an unreadable expression. A beat later he seemed to shake himself and shot an irritated look Greg's way.

"Sorry," Greg offered, trying to swallow the silly grin still tugging at his lips. Couldn't help it, the whole situation had just hit him in the form of an urge to start giggling like an idiot. Couldn't  *wait*  to track down John and see what he had to say about all this.

"No you're not."

"I mean… I am, a bit. Could've handled that better."

Sherlock huffed a short, frustrated sigh and glared off at nothing.

Greg gave him an apologetic smile - alright, fair enough. He'd been an arse there, and upon the brief thought of John he realised the doctor couldn't have reacted much better. Likely been an absolute bellend, to be frank. Knowing how John tended to fall into the habit of viewing Sherlock like some sort of strange creature to be studied. The newly-reunited couple must be getting sick to death of such behaviour.

Best try to bring things back round to finishing the consult, then. He managed to swallow his remaining mirth and successfully wrestled his 'professional detective' face back on.

"Right, well. Just need that explanation for how the notes got in the horse statues and I'll be out of your hair."

Sherlock's glare dropped into a rather sheepish sort of cringe.

"Er… I don't actually know."

Greg blinked. "You… what?"

"I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know?"

"I mean I've had a lot on and I forgot to look into it!" Sherlock snapped, gesticulating by throwing his hands up, then pushing one through his hair to leave it slightly dishevelled. "I'd been trying to stall you long enough to figure it out on the fly, but then Eric showed up and, just- ugh. I can't focus on him and the work at the same time."

Mindful of his conviction to stop being an arse about this, Greg fought very hard not to burst into laughter. The Great Detective admitting he'd got distracted by a  *bloke,*  though, good lord.

Sherlock caught on his struggle immediately, of course. "Don't give me that. I'm allowed to have off days."

"Sure, just-" Greg tried to go on without sniggering, didn't well manage. Let himself have a bit of a chuckle to get it out of his system and then carried on with a more even, "Ahem… sorry, just- we  *do*  need that bit if we're to strike Mr Crenshaw's friend off the suspect list."

"Ah, right." Sherlock considered, then shrugged. "Fine, give me a day or two. Molly's just told me she's got a body that might be related. Between that and questioning Mick there should be enough for a solid lead."

"Questioning Mick?" Greg repeated. Didn't like the sound of this, but he had to know for certain. "Are you meaning to imply you've been in contact with the missing suspect?"

"Nope!" Sherlock replied brightly. He'd pulled his mobile from his pocket and sent a text. Almost immediately a chime sounded from the grey peacoat he'd hung up by the door, and they looked towards it in tandem, then back to each other. Greg caught on to the vague implication and sighed.

"Has  *Mr Crenshaw*  been in contact?"

"Maybe. Perhaps you should've asked him instead of tittering like a schoolgirl."

Sherlock had looked away dismissively to flip through a few papers he'd collected off the table, clear signal he was done talking for now. Greg worked his jaw a tick, but… fair enough. He'd got caught up in personal business and lost focus on the case. Best pretend he'd not heard anything, then. Sherlock could be trusted to flush the man out if he were the actual culprit.

At the sound of Greg's tiny sigh Sherlock looked to him expectantly, gestured to the door as if to ask why he'd not left yet. Greg took a few steps that direction, then stopped.

"Er… Sherlock."

Wasn't sure what he was meaning to accomplish by saying something, but… it felt important, somehow, to at least have a go at expressing support. Like something a friend would do.

*"God,*  what?" Sherlock spat, rolling his eyes with the usual overdramatic pomp.

"Just… wanted to say I'm happy for you."

Greg smiled for the man's predictable reaction of horrified disgust.

*"What?"*

"He seems like a really nice bloke," he went on. Couldn't stop a cheeky grin - Sherlock looked absolutely mortified, which was perhaps the exact reaction Greg had secretly been hoping for. Which wasn't entirely kind, yes, but still. There'd at least been the  *intent*  of offering moral support. And, anyway, what were friends for if not a bit of good-natured harassment?

"Get out."

Cackling to himself, Greg did just that.

**««**

Eric shook his head as he made his way downstairs. Christ's sake, not an hour ago he'd been in a meeting with a benefactor in some posh corner office without so much as a hint of anxiety. Slipped into his usual role of  *trustworthy administrator*  and got the donation sorted. Just as he always did. Outgoing to a fault.

Being able to keep calm in high-pressure social situations was the entire reason he was even on this trip - they'd have just stuck with email and phone if he weren't so 'uncommonly personable', as Zahida put it. She'd set up all these face-to-face meetings specifically to take advantage of his social skills. He'd gone along with it because it hadn't seemed like much bother, aside from the travel. A whole week handing off most of the boring admin work to just focus on talking to people instead? Brilliant. Sign him up.

Staying with Mick for a few days had been his idea, of course. Old mate of his from Manchester who'd since relocated to London. Been glad of the chance to reconnect; he'd always liked Mick, mad bastard that he was. Eric had figured they'd catch up a bit, maybe go for a pint, and that would be the extent of non-work-related socialising for the trip.

Despite having grown up in London it hadn't ever crossed his mind he might run into anyone else he'd known. Especially not anyone from  *Stockwell,*  of all places. Figured they'd have all been dead by now. Supposed they were, really. Apart from the one lunatic.

And of course he'd gone and got swept up with that lunatic again. Fallen for the idiot as surely as he had the first time round. Harder, in fact, because he'd gone all this while thinking he was doomed to be alone. Given up on anything beyond casual flings years back, when he'd realised he kept picking fights on purpose every time a relationship got too serious. All the stupid drama he'd caused just to avoid having to get close to anyone, christ. Too terrified to risk being asked about his past.

Here he was now, though. Confronted by the one bloke he knew wouldn't ask, because he already bloody knew. Well aware of all the fucked up shit Eric had been through. And whose fucked up shit Eric knew in return. Every barrier pre-broken in a distant haze of drug-fuelled conversations, waking each other from nightmares, staving off panic attacks, keeping each other stable. And that might have been a lovely bit of connection, if not for the jarring disconnect in which he now found himself. Torn between the man he thought he'd become and the boy he'd once been.

Come to London on business of a confident administrator. Kept it up, mostly, even in the face of rekindling an old flame. And then some random policeman had recognised him as 'that freckled kid' and dashed the whole act to pieces.

Suddenly he'd been nineteen years old again. Sick weight of nebulous dread in the pit of his stomach, oncoming panic attack, fell back to holding his breath and pressing his palms together even though he'd learnt far better coping skills over the years. Must have been painfully obvious about it, too, because Sherlock hadn't taken one look his way before he'd grabbed his hand and tugged him close to ground him like he used to. Let Eric press up against his side like a limpet even though his bloody  *colleague* was right there and they must have looked stupid as hell…

In a bid to distract himself he let his mind shift to wondering how Sherlock even remembered what to do. Had he just acted on autopilot, same as Eric had the other day? When he'd spotted the dissociative spell and just broke him out of it without having to think.

Christ, what did that even say about the pair of them? They'd been together scarcely a month the first time. How screwed up did two boys have to be to turn their mutual support actions into lifelong habits? How unstable they'd been. How unstable they still were, apparently.

A harsh blow to come to terms with. All that work putting himself back together just to find he'd only been painting over the cracks.

He'd gone down to put the detergent in the shared downstairs cupboard, having bought it to replace what he'd used doing laundry. Finished that task, but then remained standing there. Lost in thought. Found himself starting to creep back into a panic state, deeply upset about it. Even more upset that his first instinct was to go back upstairs and get Sherlock to hold his hand again.

No, god. Not while the policeman was still there. Already bad enough the man had recognised Eric as the trembling coward of a boy he'd once been, didn't need to drive that impression any deeper. He was a professional bloody *adult* now and he'd stay right here in the hall until he'd got himself sorted out enough to act the part.

"Everything alright, dear?"

Eric jumped, then internally scolded himself for being jumpy. Looked over to find Sherlock's landlady peering at him from the entrance to her flat. He smiled, sheepish. Must look an absolute pillock, just standing by the cupboard staring into space.

"Ah… hullo, sorry. I'm fine. Sherlock's just finishing up a consult upstairs, figured I'd best wait down here till he's done."

"Oh well that's a load of bollocks, isn't it?"

Eric blinked again, gave her a bewildered smile. "... what?"

"You're obviously upset about something. Have you two had a row?"

"N-no…? We've not had a row. And I'm not, er... upset? I'm fine. Really."

Mrs Hudson stared him down for a long, searching moment. Eric tried to look sincere. Which was absolutely stupid as he'd not been lying - there really wasn't anything the matter and he wasn't all that upset. Just a bit rattled over having had a traumatic memory brought up out of the blue, that was all. Normal to need a minute to oneself.

"Right, then, in you come," she finally said, beckoning him into her flat. He gave her a baffled look. What, was she about to offer him tea? God, no thank you. Navigating social pleasantries with a stranger was the last thing he wanted right now.

"I really don't-"

"It wasn't a suggestion, dear."

He opened his mouth to object, but Mrs Hudson gave him a stern glare and he decided just going along with things would be the least stressful path. Not as if he'd be trapped with her for long, after all - Sherlock would be down to find him soon enough. And he knew (though at the moment he rather hated the fact) that no matter how anxious he might get trying to muddle through a pleasant conversation in this state, it'd all die back down to baseline the instant Sherlock turned up again. No risk of building up a compounding bubble of stress and having a breakdown later, as so often happened back home.

Reluctantly he followed her into her kitchen. She'd already set herself to retrieving a tin off a shelf by the window, which she then opened and rummaged around in.

"Here we are, then!" she exclaimed. In her hand was a tightly-rolled joint and an old Zippo lighter.

Eric sputtered out a shocked laugh. "What are you-?"

Mrs Hudson flapped a hand at him. She'd got the joint between her lips already and lit it in one smooth motion. Clearly no amateur.

"Oh hush. I've seen the photos."

He shut his mouth and tried not to look too chagrined. Brilliant, yet another person knowing what a wreck he used to be. Just rub it in.

"It's nothing to be ashamed of, dear. All of us were rubbish at that age."

She'd taken a seat at the dining table, gesturing he do the same. When he reluctantly did so she plucked the joint from between her lips and handed it across to him. Eric didn't even bother trying to object - smell of the stuff reminded him of how much it had helped, once. And he could certainly use a bit of that relief right now.

To his vague surprise the joint pulled smooth as butter and hit like a high-quality medicinal strain. Clearly the old bird had standards.

"Proper gear, innit," he remarked as he passed it back. Registered his own words a split-second later and realised he was  *not* going to be able to keep track of his accent whilst stoned. Christ, as if he'd not been embarrassed enough already.

Well, at least Mrs Hudson was nice enough not to draw attention to it. Instead she accepted the joint and took a drag of her own before passing it back, starting up a familiar rhythm calling back to his younger days smoking with Benny. And Sherlock, a few times. Though the latter always got distracted a few puffs in and forgot to pass it back.

"It is, yes. Indica strain out of Canada. Best thing I've found for the hip, you see."

She patted the joint in question, which struck Eric as funny enough to get a little chuckle out of him as he passed back. Leant back in his chair and set to simply enjoying the sensation of the background hum of anxiety melting away. Hadn't realised now tense he'd got.

Mrs Hudson seemed content to sit and smoke in silence, so they simply took turns sharing the joint for a bit. Eventually she stopped passing and just held it between her fingers as she settled into her chair. He met her intense study of his face with a wan smile. Stoned enough now to not be bothered by the scrutiny, thankfully, but it was still a bit weird.

"Tryna read me thoughts?"

Mrs Hudson gave an easy shrug. "A bit. Hoping I might guess what's got you so out of sorts. Imagine it's something to do with himself up there, hm?"

"Eh… sort of," Eric admitted. Didn't seem so difficult to open up a little, now. Weed dulling his nerves the way he'd once relied on. "We ain't had a disagreement or nothin', it's more like… I dunno. Just feels like I'm that stupid kid again, 'round him. Actin' like how I used to.  *Talkin'*  how I used to. Not really sure how t'square all that."

"Ah. Same trouble Sherlock's been having, then."

Eric smiled, confused. He'd not noticed Sherlock having anywhere near the same level of concern about all this - been willing to hold Eric's hand in front of that policeman, after all. And hadn't been especially upset over John figuring out they'd been together. Really nothing off about him at all beyond the single staring spell.

"He's not seemed too bothered, actually."

Mrs Hudson scoffed. "And you're taking that at face value? Thought you'd have known him better than that."

Eric frowned, considering. Heard a strange echo in his head of his own lecture to John the other day, about how the daft prat wouldn't ever  *tell* you he minded.

"S'pose I have been a bit dense," he conceded.

Knew he was being vague, but he couldn't think how to put any of it to words. All the concepts swirling through his head, dulled by weed and stress. Reckoned this was the sort of woman who'd understand, though. Not be inclined to press for more.

Sure enough, she gave him a warm smile and a pat on the arm. Passed over the joint as if giving him a treat for having done a good job introspecting. He accepted with a chuckle and passed it back. What a delightfully strange lady.

Mrs Hudson looked up as she took the joint back, smiled sweetly as she blew out the smoke off another drag.

"Hello, dear!" she called. Did a silly little wave with her free fingers.

Eric turned to follow her gaze and found Sherlock stood in the doorway frowning at them. Couldn't help a sudden fond smile, which must have been much more sentimental a look than usual because Sherlock seemed to find it deeply perplexing. Or perhaps it wasn't the smile which confused him, but the strange scene he'd walked in on.

"Eric, are you smoking weed with my landlady?"

Eric smiled wider, leant back in his chair. "Er… I am, yeah. Did you want a hit?"

Memories from years ago: that same face on a boy much younger trying to take a drag without coughing, the lunatic things he'd say whilst stoned and all the wild stories they'd swapped. Revelling in the freedom to just talk about the awful shit they'd been through without having to care about it.

But then, other moments… grey-green eyes gone blankly feral, flash of panic for realising how incredibly dangerous the bloke could be if he forgot where he was, trying desperately to figure out how to bring him back without getting hurt, or worse. The fear he'd shared, once, of being nothing more than what his dad had turned him into.

Their eyes met for a moment, and Eric wasn't surprised to see a similar thought process reflected back at him. Sherlock wouldn't want a hit - not now, with everything between them. Been too harried trying to reconcile all the threads of past and present, knew getting stoned would be risking a violent break with reality.

"Think I'll pass," he finally said, glancing to Mrs Hudson with a vague frown as if annoyed with her for even putting him in such a position.

And Eric felt his expression shift melancholy. Because, ah... *that's* what he'd not been able to put to words. How he'd forgot, for a moment, that the parts of Sherlock's past self he'd locked the furthest down weren't the childish or silly things. That the boy he'd left behind wasn't the coke-addled toff, but the *other* one - the one in the street with the blood down his face.

He got to his feet and grabbed Sherlock's hand, turning to Mrs Hudson with a smile.

"I'll be heading back upstairs, then, if you're alright by yourself?"

The wink she gave him seemed to imply she'd be perfectly content finishing the rest of the joint on her own.

**««**

## Chapter 12: And Again

**««**

Given the text he'd just got, John was somewhat surprised to find Crenshaw (or Eric, rather - first name basis still felt odd, but the man had insisted so he supposed he'd best make the effort) sat in one of the armchairs. He'd acquired a pair of reading glasses from somewhere and appeared to be using Sherlock's laptop to catch up on work. In his hand was a half-full mug of tea, which he'd just taken a sip of when John walked in.

"Cheers," the bloke offered, tipping his mug towards him. John furrowed his brow in confusion.

"What are you doing?"

"Er… reviewing monthly budget reports?" the man replied, equally confused. He gestured vaguely to the laptop screen. In the reflection off his spectacles it did indeed look to be open to the stark white of a spreadsheet.

"No, I mean why aren't you with Sherlock?"

Eric raised a brow. "Because I've no interest whatsoever in visiting a morgue."

"Oh. Well. Sherlock's just texted me," John held up his mobile to illustrate, then stowed it in his pocket as he went to fetch his coat. "Says he's found a lead and to meet up with him at King's Cross."

"Alright," Eric replied blankly. "Have fun?"

In any other circumstance John might have dismissed the bloke's lack of interest and moved on with his day. Now, though, he was baffled - he and Mrs Hudson had looked through the photos (and handful of videos, though none as interesting as the chatting-on-the-stairs one) and seen dozens of snapshots of a younger version of this man behaving like a regular teenaged hooligan alongside an adolescent Sherlock. Drink, drugs, mischief… and now he was, what, choosing to look at spreadsheets?

Obviously John understood that normal people — those not like himself and Sherlock — would prefer not to throw themselves into dangerous situations on a regular basis. How anyone could be content living that way he'd no idea, but he could accept the fact for what it was.  *This*  man, however? The only person John had ever seen Sherlock treat with implicit trust? He couldn't be normal. There had to be something more to him than  *spreadsheets.*

"It's… an investigation," he explained, thinking perhaps Eric just didn't fully understand what they were up to. "You know- searching for clues, solving mysteries, possibly fighting dangerous criminals. You're sure you don't want to go?"

Eric had begun to look rather perturbed. "Er, no thanks. That sounds awful."

They stood at a stalemate for a few beats - John trying to process how a man capable of romancing Sherlock Holmes could possibly be this dull, and Eric looking like he'd quite like for John to leave already so he could get back to his budget report.

A tinny burst of some classical song startled the both of them. Eric scrambled to dig out his phone, caught sight of the screen, then rolled his eyes before answering.

"I'm not interested," he snapped as soon as he'd brought the device to his ear. John could just make out the distinct timbre of Sherlock's voice on the other end, though not clearly enough to catch any words. "... it doesn't matter what you want. I'm busy." A pause, another eye roll. "The 'stupid spreadsheets' controlling a dozen peoples' livelihoods, yes." He shot a flat look to John as he listened to the next bit, but then his expression quite suddenly shifted to a mix of offended and… concerned? "You've need of a bleedin'  *what?"*  His accent had slipped a few notches with the outburst - he was glaring at the wall now but seemed almost unsure whether to be angry or not. "Oi, no, don't y'dare leave off on that you fuckin' cu- ah, fuck's sake."

He took the phone from his ear and scowled at the screen, which seemed to imply Sherlock had hung up.

"Everything alright?"

Eric huffed and tucked his mobile away. "Wants me to go with you. Said he has need of a *cockney translator."*

John made a valiant effort to keep his expression neutral. "Ah. Well that's… certainly an ask."

Eric sat for a few seconds fixing a glower on the laptop screen. Then, with an air of profound reluctance, he closed the computer, set it aside and got to his feet. He rubbed a hand down his face and seemed to take stock of his clothing - pyjamas, more or less, and Sherlock's housecoat.

"Hang on a moment, I'll find some proper trousers," he grumbled as he shucked off the housecoat.

John was baffled again, but didn't get a chance to ask what had brought about the abrupt change in opinion before Eric disappeared into Sherlock's bedroom. When he emerged a few minutes later he was wearing most of one of Sherlock's typical outfits, though he'd left off the button-up in favour of a t-shirt with yet another band logo. John had to do a double-take - he was forced to assume the shirt was one of Sherlock's, but trying to imagine him buying  *that…*

Eric had stopped off to set his tea mug in the sink, then strode over to grab his peacoat from the hook. As he did so he seemed to realise John was giving his attire a very odd look and smiled down at the shirt.

"It's great, right? He's got loads of these old band shirts. Said he used to wear 'em to briefings to annoy people."

"Is that… Judas Priest?"

"Yeah!" Eric grinned, apparently pleased John had recognised the design. "Are you a fan?"

"Ah, sure. On occasion." In truth John wasn't much of a casual music-listening sort of person, but he'd been known to throw on a pair of headphones during downtime while on tour. Mainly to drown out a range of unpleasant background noises. Louder the better, in that regard, so he'd at one point taken to cycling through various rock and metal CDs. Wasn't sure he'd appreciate hearing any of that these days, though. Not least for the mental associations he'd inadvertently created.

His wrong-footedness must have been obvious, because Eric gave him a lopsided smile as they left the flat.

"I just want you to know I continue to find it absolutely hilarious how boring you think he is."

"I definitely don't think he's boring." Fought the urge to point out that he'd just been thinking Eric, in fact, was the boring one. Bit rude. A beat later though he realised the man couldn't possibly be the sort of person who cared about politeness. "Actually, just now, with the spreadsheets and all, I'd been thinking how strange it is that  *you're*  quite boring."

Eric raised a brow at him, amused. "Sorry to disappoint, mate."

"I'm just saying it's odd," John went on without really knowing why - felt awkward, he supposed, having seen all those photos the other day. Wanted to fill the space between them with idle surface chatter to avoid thinking too deeply on the darker implications. And also, one had to admit, to avoid giving in to the growing temptation of asking Eric a load of invasive questions. Who the weasel-faced man was, or where the little trance-dispelling ritual had come from. How he and Sherlock had met and what led them to separate. Stick to surface-level topics instead, he'd decided. Build up a bit of trust. "If I had to pick a personality type I thought Sherlock would go for, it wouldn't be, well…"

"Someone's very dull boss?" Eric supplied when John trailed off.

"That, yeah."

Eric smiled sidelong, a sudden odd spark of mischief in his eye. When he spoke he'd switched from his usual laid-back clip to a fairly decent mimic of Sherlock's accent, adding enough of a cold spin to make himself sound like the villian in some spy film.

"Have you considered the possibility that I'm coming off that way intentionally?"

The shift in tone was jarring. Despite himself John shot the man an alarmed look, struck by the sudden absurd thought that they'd been fooled by some criminal mastermind playing a role to get close to Sherlock. Quickly realised that made no sense. The two of them had been sharing a *bed,* for god's sake - surely Sherlock would've caught on to anything nefarious by now.

"How do you mean?" he nonetheless found himself asking, wary.

All he got in answer was a cheeky wink, before the man turned attention to his mobile screen. Casual as anything. John stared flabbergasted for a few beats before it finally clicked. Bloke was messing with him.

"Oh god. You're as manipulative as he is."

Eric was scrolling through some sort of document on his phone, and hardly looked up as he replied with a bland, "I'll take that to mean he's improved his social skills."

They'd come upon the Tube station now, so John hadn't much chance to reply until they'd got to the platform. And at that point Eric beat him to the punch by speaking first.

"I would like to note that I have, actually, put down my spreadsheets to go off on this little adventure with you. So I can't be  *that*  dull," he remarked. He'd finally slipped his mobile back in his pocket after appearing to have been checking his email.

"Fair enough," John conceded. "What changed your mind on that, if you don't mind my asking?"

Eric gave him a vaguely confused look. "He said something completely stupid."

He said this in a tone as if it should have been obvious how this was related, but of course John had no idea what the connection should be and conveyed this by his expression.

"He doesn't do that with you?" Eric asked, rubbing at the back of his neck. "It's, er… I guess it's that I know he must have a good reason for asking me to come, because he's given me a very stupid reason instead. If that makes any sense."

"Um… no, that doesn't really make sense at all."

Eric sighed to himself. "Yeah, alright, it doesn't. Entirely possible I'm just gullible, then."

The train arrived, and the ensuing short ride to King's Cross was spent in the usual state of polite silence reserved for public transport. Eric had returned to his mobile and was busy with emails again. He did that rather a lot, John had noticed - always engaged in some sort of work-related administrative task. Made sense; bloke was the head of a school, after all. Such diligence just seemed like yet another odd trait to pair with Sherlock's general state of irresponsible chaos.

Soon enough they got to their destination. John started to look about for the familiar greatcoat as they emerged into the square. A squawk of surprise behind him nearly made him whip out his firearm right there in public. Thankfully he spun round to assess first - found Eric giving a very disgruntled look to Sherlock, who'd somehow appeared directly beside him.

"Took you long enough."

"Excuse me?" Eric snapped, which rather ruined Sherlock's attempt to seem cavalier. He blinked and looked to his not-exactly-boyfriend.

"What?"

"Don't drag me out here, grab my arse and just say 'took you long enough', christ." As he spoke Eric began to stalk off in the direction Sherlock seemed to have appeared from, forcing the both of them to have to jog a bit to catch up.

"I just thought it would be a cool line," Sherlock explained as he fell into step with his not-partner, causing John to snort to himself behind them. Nice to hear the overdramatic lunatic admit to such a thing for once.

"Guess it was, a bit. Could've said it without giving me a heart attack, though."

"Not my fault you weren't paying attention."

Eric took a hand from his pocket and gently shoved the man's head to the side.

Sherlock didn't react to the shove aside from giving his hair a quick shake to resettle it. Would have been bizarre had John not spent the past few days watching the two of them fall to casual contact on a near-constant basis. By this point they'd become almost literally inseparable; never more than a foot or two apart unless one or the other was away on business. A long-standing habit, apparently - a detail Mrs Hudson pointed out in the photos they'd looked through together. How in every single scene where the boys appeared together they were always touching, usually pressed right up alongside one another. This held even in pictures where they were only seen in the background, which would imply the photographer hadn't just been after favoured shots. Seemed they'd just been  *that* sort of teenaged couple.

And were that sort of adult couple as well, evidently. Because of course the two men had now fallen into close enough proximity to be brushing shoulders as they walked. John wondered if they even realised they were doing it.

"So were you meaning to actually explain what's going on?" Eric asked, interrupting John's pondering. "Or is this some stupid mystery game?"

"Uh… it's a stupid mystery game," Sherlock replied offhandedly. Eric must have given him a look (John was a few steps behind the two of them, not having the benefit of matched leg length) because he elaborated with, "Sort of. You'll see."

They seemed to be heading for a side street, which they turned down, and then hooked another turn into an alley. John spotted the man tagging a wall down the other end of it and tensed before realising it was just one of Sherlock's street contacts - the vandal kid who knew all the kinds of paint. Couldn't imagine what on Earth they needed  *him*  for.

"Piss off, you f- oh! Hey. Back already?"

Sherlock stopped, looking to Eric, and swept an arm grandly at the vandal as if presenting him. Eric gave him a puzzled look. Shifted focus back to the younger man, who was scrutinising him in return. John came up on Sherlock's other side just as the tagger barked out a sharp laugh of recognition.

"Holy fucking shit! Is that Eric?"

"What… Rhys!?" Eric exclaimed. He gave Sherlock a quick shove to the side of the arm, as if to say  *'you sly bastard',* then jogged up to meet the other bloke halfway down the alley where the two of them met with a crushing hug and a rush of fast-paced chatter. John could hardly make out individual words for how thick both their accents had gone.

He glanced over to Sherlock. Found the man watching on with a quiet smile.

"You've known that tagger since you were nineteen?" John asked, guessing at what was going on here.

"Twenty," Sherlock corrected.

He offered no further explanation, but then none was really needed. Sherlock hadn't, it seemed, always been quite so alone as he insisted.

"Another bloke who doesn't count as a 'friend', then?"

Sherlock snorted in amusement. "Rhys? God, no. More like a persistent menace."

"Eric seems happy enough to see him." John punctuated this by nodding down the alley, where the young man was showing Eric the graffiti he'd been working on.

"Yes, well Eric actually made an effort to play mentor to the little delinquent. I was just after free labour."

John gave him the disgruntled look he'd no doubt been fishing for, which Sherlock met with a bland stare.

"I was purifying drugs. We worked for a distribution ring. Rhys was a fourteen year-old runaway I coerced into playing lab assistant in exchange for a warm place to sleep."

Ah. Well. That clarified some things. John could tell Sherlock was trying to make himself out to be some sort of soulless ghoul, as he was occasionally wont to do. But his attempt fell rather flat given he appeared to have gone to significant effort to ensure Eric got a chance to reunite with the boy.

Wouldn't do much good to call attention to such things, though. Decided getting back to the matter at hand would be a better use of time.

"Were you serious about having found a lead?"

"Yep." Sherlock flipped a plastic baggie out of his pocket and handed it to John without looking. "Shard of red ceramic embedded in the left palm. Victim's workplace is just down the road there. Texted you on the way and then happened to run into Rhys."

As he spoke Sherlock had retrieved his mobile and sent a text. Eric down the other end of the alley took his own phone out his pocket, looked at it, then flipped them a little wave and a smile. Sherlock slipped his phone back into his pocket and turned on his heel to stride off with John in tow.

"Eric's not coming with?" John asked, glancing back over his shoulder.

"Don't think he's really the 'investigation' sort."

John chuckled. "Can't imagine what the two of you did to pass the time, then."

"Drugs, mainly."

"Ah. Walked right into that one."

"You really did."

They walked a few minutes in companionable silence. John was happy enough with this - off on another adventure. Though by a sidelong glance he noticed Sherlock seemed a bit ruminative. Understandable. An entire chunk of the bloke's past had encroached upon his present overnight. Couldn't be an easy thing to process.

At least he seemed markedly calmer than his usual response to such things. Effect of getting laid, maybe? Oh god, he'd just been joking to himself but now he'd gone and pictured it again. Been trying to avoid the topic ever since overhearing their conversation that first morning. Wasn't the act itself that bothered him - lord knew he'd seen plenty enough in the military to get used to the idea. It was just the sheer mental strain of trying to imagine how intimacy could possibly work between a murder-obsessed lunatic and the sort of bloke who answered emails on the Tube. The mind boggled.

Out of nowhere Sherlock spoke again.

"Actually, that's not quite true."

John blinked from his uncomfortable thoughts. "Sorry?"

"What we did to pass the time. It wasn't always drugs. We also played video games, watched stupid films, listened to whatever strange music we found on the internet. He taught me guitar and I taught him chemistry. It was… fun. For the most part."

John hesitated, unsure how to respond to this. Finally he gave up and just went for the obvious. "Sounds like you were happy."

The rare sliver of openness vanished again as Sherlock scoffed. "Hardly. It was a drugs den, we were all just waiting to die."

John stared into the middle distance - old memories bubbled up. Afghanistan, the frigid moonlit night, mortars blazing overhead and the ringing crack of gunfire and he and his mates howling with laughter over a morbid joke.

"Happiest I've ever been was when I was being shot at in a war zone."

He felt eyes on him, and looked over to meet Sherlock's questioning gaze. Squared his shoulders and set his jaw against the discomfort of admitting such a sentiment. Daring the other man to call attention.

Sherlock didn't, though. Instead he took up a thoughtful, faraway look and turned his focus back ahead.

"The best and worst memories of your life, all crammed together into one brief stretch of chaos?"

A short silence as John contemplated what he was actually asking - whether they'd more in common than they'd realised. If the experiences of a soldier on a tour of duty might resemble, however distantly, those of a burnout junkie caught up in the city's criminal underworld.

Perhaps they'd both been chasing that same intoxicating rush of feeling alive.

"Yeah," he decided. "Think that about sums it up."

**««**

## Chapter 13: Second Epilogue

**««**

Molly smiled politely after John as the man bustled off. He'd not had time for more than a quick hello; had to get a few last-minute things sorted with the wedding party, apparently. This was fine, of course, but it did leave her standing rather awkwardly alone in the hall. Really wished she and her boyfriend hadn't had a falling-out so near to this. Not that she wanted to get back together, obviously. Bastard could go die for all she cared. Would've been nice to have a date, though - attending a wedding alone was just depressing.

Nice of John to invite her, of course. Considering they'd rather dropped out of contact whilst Sherlock had been dead and all. Not seen  *him*  yet either. The Great Detective, back from the grave.

As she ventured down the hall she spotted a few people milling about, scattered conversations. No one she knew. Likely because she'd been so nervous about arriving late that she'd overcompensated the other way and got there ridiculously early. Only guests arrived already seemed to be the wedding party and their plus-ones.

Well, best find somewhere to wait. Not like she wasn't used to keeping herself company.

Headed towards what she thought was likely the reception hall, though of course the unfamiliar building got her turned around quite quickly. She'd been so distracted trying to understand the layout that she failed to watch where she was walking - craned her neck to look down a side hall, and then next thing she knew she'd collided mid-stride with a man coming from the other direction.

"Whoa, hullo there! Sorry!" he exclaimed as he grabbed hold of her upper arms to keep the both of them upright. Bloke was so much taller he'd very nearly bowled her over.

"Oh my god, sorry! I'm fine, sorry, I wasn't looking where I…"

She trailed off as she finally caught a good look at him. Oh god, this was the most handsome man she'd ever seen in her life.

Alright, that was an exaggeration. Definitely. Probably.

But in any case he  *was*  quite striking. Tall, slim, with warm brown eyes, sandy brown hair and short beard. At their current close proximity she could see a scattering of faded freckles dusted over his nose and cheeks, which bunched up as he smiled apologetically.

The hands on her biceps suddenly felt like they were radiating tingling heat down her arms. Couldn't help thinking of stories she'd read - meeting the man of your dreams at a friend's wedding. Whirlwind romance and living happily ever after.

"H-hello!" she stammered. Cleared her throat. Hoped she wasn't blushing.

"You're alright, yeah? Sorry again, I was looking for someone I'd thought went down this way," the man replied as he gave her a little pat on the arm before letting go and taking a step back to give her some space.

Molly bit her lip and cast about for something else to say, trying not to look too obviously smitten. Luckily the man didn't seem to be paying her much mind - he'd leant sideways to see past her down the hall, then huffed a sigh as he apparently didn't spot his target.

"Yeah, right, he's gone. S'pose I shoulda expected that," he muttered to himself. His accent was difficult to place. Estuary, mainly, but his muttering sounded almost Cockney. Molly wondered who he was here for. Belatedly it occurred to her that she could just ask.

"Er, are you here for the bride or the groom?" He quirked a brow down at her as if he found this an odd question, and in a flash of anxiety she rushed to explain herself. "Sorry, I mean, just- I've not met you before, so I wanted to know, um-"

The man chuckled and gestured they should head into a nearby seating area, which she now saw was just a bit down the hall in the direction he'd come from. She nodded.

"Groom, I guess," the man said as they set off.

"You guess?"

"Well, I mean, I wouldn't exactly say I'm on great terms with the bloke at the moment. More just here as a plus-one. And live music, I suppose, but mainly 'cause playing at the reception seemed like a lot less bother than coming up with an actual wedding gift."

"Music?" Molly repeated curiously. "I thought Sherlock would be doing that."

The man seemed to perk up at the name. "Oh! You know Sherlock?"

Molly shrugged. She'd  *known*  Sherlock. Hadn't really got a chance to reconnect since he'd returned.

"Used to," she admitted. "Haven't seen much of him since he, er… stopped being dead."

The man's smile turned slightly apologetic, which was perhaps odd, but Molly was too busy thinking how nice his smile was to put much thought towards it.

"Ah, yeah… been a bit of a shut-in, hasn't he?" The man shook his head, sighing. They'd come upon an open table and sat down. Molly hadn't yet spotted anyone she knew besides John off at the far end, who just flipped them a little wave before vanishing through another door. Sherlock was nowhere to be seen, of course.

"Mightn't even show today, I imagine. With how reclusive he's been," Molly remarked with a bit of an embarrassing sulk to her voice. Mostly because she'd have  *loved*  to skip this. Absolutely would have, if she'd not been so riddled with social anxiety over the idea of having to ring John up and cancel. Stung that Sherlock could so easily get away with such behaviour.

For some reason the man sniggered to himself. Molly frowned at him. What? She'd not said anything funny.

"What?"

"Sorry, sorry," the man said, shaking his head. The casual way he'd stretched out his legs with the ankles crossed and leant back in his chair distracted Molly rather badly, though she tried to keep hold of the frown. "Just, literally had that conversation this morning, about whether he could get away with ducking out. Decided it'd be a waste of a tuxedo fitting."

Molly tilted her head, confused - was he saying he'd been speaking to  *Sherlock*  about this? Or someone else? Before she could think much further the man suddenly gave himself a light smack to the forehead.

"Ah, speaking of rude arseholes! We've been going without names this whole time!" He held his hand out towards her with an apologetic smile. "Eric, lovely to meet you."

"Oh! Er, Molly," she replied, taking his warm, calloused hand. Definitely blushing like mad. Wasn't sure if she hoped he wouldn't notice or hoped he  *would*  and perhaps reciprocate. No trace of such in his expression, though. Just a friendly smile as he tucked his hand back into his pocket.

Speaking of hands, though… rough patches on his fingers. Molly absently rubbed her own fingers together, confirming the pattern she'd felt.

"You play a stringed instrument," she concluded aloud. Winced to herself, because she really could have tried to work that in more naturally. Eric didn't seem to mind the bluntness, though. In fact he seemed oddly delighted.

"Hah, yeah! Got me. The calluses?"

Molly nodded. "I see those a lot on cadavers. Erm, in the morgue, I mean. B-because I work there. Autopsies."

Oh lovely, Molly. Just great. Bring up your creepy job right off the bat, that'll go over a treat. She tried to keep the cringe off her face, but Eric didn't seem put off. He just kept up his friendly smile and the laid-back posture and moved right along like she'd not just brought up the most unpleasant topic imaginable.

"Really! Never met anyone in that line of work before, surprisingly enough. What's your favourite part of the job?"

Molly blinked. Not exactly the way she was used to this conversation proceeding. Usually people were more… unsettled. It was a thoughtful question, though. Not one she recalled having been asked before. She paused to consider, then hesitantly answered.

"Erm… I like the puzzle of it, I think? It's… it's sort of like a jigsaw, you know, only you're taking it apart before you put it back together, and no two bodies are ever the same."

She'd expected Eric's smile to shift, perhaps go somewhat forced, but if anything it only seemed to grow more warm. God, she really was in danger of becoming obsessed with this bloke.

"Wonderful you can do that, help bring closure to folks and be able to enjoy the work while you do."

Molly smiled, flattered - certainly never got a response like  *that* , good lord. Before she could collect herself to reply, though, a deep voice interrupted them.

"Eric!"

Both Molly and the man in question looked up as Sherlock strode their way, having appeared from a door leading outside. He too was dressed in a tux, of course, and wore it every bit as well as Molly had imagined he would. Eric, though, had by this point largely usurped her fancy, so she quickly shifted her gaze back to him. He'd not moved from his laid-back, confidently attractive position - in fact he'd now made himself even  *more*  attractive by flipping a casual little wave and a wink over to Sherlock, which came off very dashing. Like the plucky male lead in a romance.

Sherlock scowled at him as he walked up. "Where were you? I said keep up."

"And I said I'm not running in dress shoes. Guessing you didn't catch that bit," Eric replied with a shrug. "Met this lovely young lady instead. I think you two know each other?"

Molly tried not to do the meek little schoolgirl smile as he gestured towards her, but knew she'd probably failed. Sherlock seemed to finally take notice of her and looked vaguely uncomfortable.

"Oh… hello, Molly."

"Sherlock," she replied with a coolness to her voice. Definitely not pleased he'd been keeping away, especially after involving her as much as he had prior to dying.

Eric glanced between them, raised a brow, then tilted his head to look up at Sherlock.

"Perhaps a bit presumptuous, but I imagine she's annoyed you've been such a recluse."

Sherlock seemed to wince. "Oh, ah… of course. I've been…" Suddenly his bearing loosened, and he shrugged with an oddly silly, helpless expression. "Well, turns out coming back from the dead is just a  *complete*  logistical nightmare. Mountains of paperwork. No time for much else. Terribly sorry."

For some reason Eric looked irritated by this. He huffed a breath that wasn't quite a sigh and looked to Molly with that warm smile again, though now with a touch of something like resignation.

"Best you'll likely get, I'm afraid."

Sherlock looked affronted. "What? That was a perfectly legitimate apology. I  *literally*  said the word 'sorry'."

Despite residual bitterness, Molly let out a tiny laugh. Couldn't help it - she'd missed having this overdramatic enigma of a man in her life. Reclusive or no, she was glad he'd come back.

Sherlock gave her a faint, but genuine, smile, then looked back to Eric.

"Didn't matter you fell behind anyway, he managed to slip pursuit."

"Good on him," Eric replied blandly. "Still not sure why exactly you felt a need to try to chase the man down."

Sherlock huffed. "I told you already, he was acting suspiciously."

"And you couldn't just let your brother's security team handle it because…?"

"They've also been acting suspiciously. I think they're hiding something."

Sherlock seemed to be growing ever more tense as he spoke, gaze darting about as if scanning for threats, and had now turned a dark frown off through the door he'd just come from. Eric looked up at him with a concerned, vaguely exasperated look. With a small sigh he hauled himself up to his feet. He touched Sherlock's shoulder to get his attention, then, bizarrely, placed both hands to either side of the man's face as if to force him to hold eye contact. Even more bizarrely, Sherlock seemed to take no issue with this, despite Molly distinctly recalling his having told her many times over the years that he hated being touched.

"They're not hiding anything. They've just started to get a bit short with you because you keep going on about how they're all incompetent," Eric said gently.

"They are! It's been a parade of  *blatant*  lapses in vigilance, overlooking multiple risk vectors which should have-"

Sherlock's voice had begun to go a touch manic, like it used to do back before he'd died, when he'd got carried away explaining some complicated case. Before he could devolve into full-on crazed ranting, however, Eric cut him off.

By kissing him.

On the lips.

Molly's heart stopped cold in her chest.

"You're not on duty, love," Eric was saying as he drew away. "Just try to calm down and let the nice men with guns do their jobs, yeah?"

Sherlock seemed to deflate as some of the tension left his shoulders. "... fine."

Molly, meanwhile, sat frozen in shock.

Just a quick peck, that's all it had been, but she very suddenly realised that every odd thing Eric had said to her over the past few minutes made perfect sense within the context of… oh, god.

"Y-you're gay!?" she blurted out, then covered her mouth in horror. Sherlock just tilted his head to shoot her a baffled frown. The man he was apparently  *dating,*  as insane as that sounded in her head, dropped his arms as he turned a vaguely apologetic smile her way. One of his hands went back to his pocket, and the other shifted to rest around Sherlock's waist in a casual side-hug. In her current mental state it almost felt like mockery.

"Yes? I told you that ages ago," Sherlock replied, sounding a bit disgruntled.

"No you didn't!"

Fairly sure she would've remembered being told something like  *that,* for god's sake.

Sherlock frowned. "Oh. Well, I strongly implied it at least."

"When!?"

"I pointed out a man's underwear," Sherlock countered indignantly. "Why would I have noticed that?"

"Because you notice everything!" Molly objected. "You… you just let me keep flirting with you!? For  *years?"*

Eric's expression had shifted in the direction of incredibly amused as he failed to hold back a snigger. Sherlock glanced over with frown.

"What the hell are you laughing about?"

"I'm not laughing," Eric said through a poorly-stifled laugh. He shook his head, managing to sober a bit, and stepped away from Sherlock to take a seat once more in front of Molly. This time he took up an unfairly suave sort of casual posture, sat sideways on the chair so as to be facing her. She tried to glare - this was no laughing matter, thank you. But something in the combination of his bearing and facial expression made outrage strangely difficult to maintain.

"Awful way to find out someone you'd fancied doesn't feel the same way, didn't mean to put that on you," Eric's voice had shifted to a particular firm yet gentle tone which somehow made her feel as if she'd been transported back to primary school. "For what it's worth I doubt he meant to lead you on. More likely he just didn't know how to bring it up without hurting your feelings."

Molly frowned at him, then up at Sherlock, who simply gave a small, helpless shrug. To his credit, he did look genuinely sorry. And, as she looked back to Eric, she found his amusement had transformed into a sincere, almost mesmerising aura of kindness. Dimly she wondered how on Earth someone so supernaturally friendly had managed to pair up with the rudest man she'd ever met.

"I was… starting to fancy you as well," she heard herself admit miserably. Should've been mortifying, making such a confession to a near-stranger. But some unidentifiable aspect of the man's demeanour made it feel safe, somehow.

Abruptly Eric smirked, and the instant he did so the strange paternal aura seemed to snap straight over to playfulness - he leant back in his seat and flashed her a roguish wink.

"Ah, well, that'll be my devilish charm."

"Ugh. Don't be smarmy," Sherlock cut in, rolling his eyes. Eric turned to him with a dramatic little flourish reminiscent of one of Sherlock's sillier mannerisms.

"I'm channelling my inner James Bond! Goes with the tux, yeah?"

"You haven't got an inner James Bond. You're a schoolteacher in a bowtie."

Molly turned a small, if still somewhat baffled smile for their banter. Expected the two of them would leave now, then. Go off somewhere together away from her and her terrible, awkward company. But to her surprise Sherlock pulled out a chair and sat down at the table with them. He leant his chin on one hand and gave her a flat look as his partner sniggered beside him.

"Sorry you had to meet him like this. And… that I've not made more of an effort to reach out. Just really haven't been in the mood for socialising."

"Oh, look at that!" Eric exclaimed, grinning at her. "You got a proper apology after all! What an honour."

Without shifting his gaze Sherlock reached out and gave the man a light shove as if perhaps to push him off his chair and out of sight. Eric just laughed, then sobered somewhat as he shifted to both sit more properly forward and closer to his partner. In doing so he brushed a light touch on Sherlock's arm, shot him a questioning look, got a tiny shrug in response.

Molly watched the exchange and felt her heart sink even further. She'd done enough wistful people-watching to know what that level of silent communication meant - these two had been together  *ages.* Years, at minimum. Which meant she'd very likely been chasing after Sherlock whilst he was already in a relationship. And he'd felt too awkward to say a thing to try to stop her. What a nightmare.

Beyond her mortified discomfort, though, she did have to admit it was… rather nice to see. She'd never given much thought to how stiffly guarded Sherlock tended to be around people - supposed she'd always chalked it up to personality. Just another facet of that otherworldly aura of his she'd once found so enticing.

Sat next to this unassuming freckled bloke, though, he seemed almost… normal? Like a man who happened to be a brilliant detective, not the other way around.

As the two continued to engage in some unvoiced conversation, Molly found herself studying Sherlock's face. Taking proper stock of the changes there for the first time since his return. Saw the lines grown deeper than a scant few years should have etched, the scattered strands of white amongst dark curls.

"What exactly have you been up to all this time?" she asked quietly.

Sherlock blinked, flashed her a grim smile. "Hm? Oh, you know. Tying up loose ends. Few odd jobs here and there."

"Just a bit of a lark," Eric added in a low voice. His shift in demeanour seemed to suggest quite a lot more depth to the topic. And danger, if the note of anxiety was anything to go by.

Molly could make a guess at things unsaid - spy work, most likely. The deadly serious sort. Explained why he'd vanished without a trace and reappeared just as suddenly.

She'd always been vaguely aware Sherlock was involved with military intelligence, of course. Something adjacent to his brother's job. Hadn't ever known details, though. Hadn't  *wanted*  to know. By the time she'd met him she'd already worked enough classified cases to understand some questions were best left unanswered.

Blowing out a determined breath, she set her gaze on the tabletop and nodded to herself. Right, then. Clearly Sherlock hadn't just abandoned them all for convenience as she'd secretly feared, his partner seemed a lovely bloke, they'd both been kind enough to stay and chat instead of leaving her to fumble through small talk with strangers - well worth making an effort to be sociable. No more of this painfully awkward nonsense.

Raising her eyes, she found Eric watching her with a bemused little smile, whilst Sherlock seemed to have got distracted by something off across the room.

"So, erm… you're a schoolteacher?" she asked of Eric, hating how she still hesitated despite all effort not to. Come on, Molly. Just chat like a normal person, you can do this.

Eric didn't seem to pay her pause any mind. Instead he chuckled warmly.

"Nah, not really. He just said that to be funny." He gestured to Sherlock, who was still looking elsewhere. "I have technically got a teaching licence, but I've been admin most of my career."

"Admin?"

"He's that boring headmaster everyone thinks lives at the school," Sherlock clarified. He'd turned back round and slouched down in his seat as if possessed by the spirit of a sullen teenager.

"I'm a  *comfortingly predictable*  special program director, not a headmaster, and unfortunately none of the kids think I live at the school now because  *somehow*  they all found out I've shacked up with a famous detective." He said this pointedly to Sherlock, who rolled his eyes.

"Not about to lie to a load of children just to keep up your charade of being dull."

"Yeah well there was nothing stopping you waiting in the office like I'd asked."

Molly couldn't help another small laugh. Alright, maybe she could accept it wasn't quite so awful she'd crashed and burned on that doomed romantic endeavour. At least she'd managed to keep Sherlock as a friend, and perhaps even had a shot at gaining another.

"Sherlock, there you are!" a voice cut in, and Molly glanced over to find John had appeared through one of the side doors. "What are you doing all the way out here? You're meant to be with the rest of the wedding party!"

Sherlock furrowed his brow as John strode up. "You never told me where to go."

"He did, love," Eric pointed out blandly. "Several times."

"Oh." Sherlock gave Eric a quick glance, then looked to John with an oddly daft little smile as he stood up. "Well, then, obviously I was just about to head that direction."

"Obviously," John intoned. He shot a rather stilted nod towards Eric, who'd not moved beyond shifting his hands to his trouser pockets and leaning back in his chair again. His only response to John's nod was an unimpressed stare. Molly glanced back and forth between them, and noticed Sherlock doing the same.

"You two aren't still having a row?" he asked in exasperation.

"Course not," John said with an easy shrug. "Wouldn't have a row with a wedding guest."

"Can't have a row anyway wit' nothin' left to discuss," Eric added, accent seeming to drop several notches along with his tone.

"Oh for god's- you're both acting like children," Sherlock snapped at him. Then, seeing John's rigid bearing and darkening scowl, made a frustrated noise and grabbed the man's upper arm to drag him off.

Eric's anger seemed to dissolve the instant they were out of sight. He huffed a small sigh, shook his head as if to clear it, then smiled over at Molly.

"So! How'd you and Sherlock meet?"

She smiled back. Perhaps this wedding wouldn't be so depressing after all.

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