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earlgreytea68Title - The Adventures of a Single Girl in London (Plus a Consulting Detective) (5/8)
Author -![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
earlgreytea68
Rating - Teen
Characters - Sherlock, Janine, John, Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson
Spoilers - Through His Last Vow
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on.
Summary - Sherlock Holmes keeps choosing flatmates who fancy themselves to be bloggers.
Author's Notes - Thank you, as usual, toflawedamythyst for the Britpick and arctacuda for the beta. They both have made this fic better.
Warning - Mary and baby die off-screen in this chapter, so...yeah.
Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4
Chapter Five
March 22, 2015
Day 58 of Operation Oh-Wait-No-Something-MUCH-More-Important-Happened
So Shezza said we had to get back on the horse. Actually, Shezza didn’t say anything about horses, before he leaves a comment to that effect.
But we decided to give pubs another try. After our long gap, we thought we’d ease ourselves into it. And, actually, we had a live one. I mean, a really terrific bloke. He was dashing and funny. A dentist, which Shezza said was just the right sort of dull career for me. I was really enjoying my time with him.
And then Shezza went flying out the door of the pub, causing all sorts of commotion, and what was I supposed to do, just *let* him? I mean, clearly something was going on, right?
I was right. What was going on was that, while I was busy chatting up the terrific dentist, Shezza had deduced that one of the patrons of the pub had just kidnapped a little girl. So what did we do last night? Yeah, we just saved a little girl's life, no big deal.
If you’re the dentist I was talking to, though, I’d love it if you could leave me a comment.
***
The dentist, thought Sherlock, might be a good fit. He was a bit bland, but Janine wasn’t John: she wasn’t necessarily looking for excitement. Janine wanted to find a good, solid bloke to settle down with, someone who was funny and kind and wouldn’t shag her best friend (and since he was apparently her best friend, Sherlock thought that the odds of him finding Janine someone who would want to shag him instead were fairly slim). Janine had high standards of attractiveness—Sherlock suspected she was pretty herself, although his concept of beauty was frequently artificial and so he was never quite sure of it—and that was often their biggest hurdle in the dating game they were playing. Sherlock had found a single person attractive in his entire life: John Watson. So judging the attractiveness of men was not his strong suit and was where he tended to go wrong. But he had apparently done well with the dentist, because Janine was twirling her hair and smiling too much, which she did when she was sexually interested in someone, so that was good, because Sherlock thought that the dentist was a good fit in all other respects.
Janine, for once, seemed to have things well in hand, so Sherlock relaxed a little bit and looked around the pub. He was bored, now that he’d finished deducing for Janine, and he wondered how much longer he was expected to stay before he could call the evening a success and leave. Although Baker Street sounded dull. He wondered if Lestrade had a case; his inbox hadn’t greatly interested him.
The mobile in his pocket buzzed, and Sherlock glanced at Janine, who had leaned even closer to the dentist. Clearly going well and not stealth-texting him.
Sherlock pulled his mobile out, hoping it was Lestrade, dreading it was Mycroft.
It was John: Thinking of you. At a bit of a loose end tonight. Anything on?
Sherlock’s first instinct was to text back immediately: I am dreadfully bored. Let’s entertain each other. Meet me at NSY and we’ll irritate Lestrade until we get something to do. Sherlock stood with his fingers hovering over his mobile screen and wanted that evening so badly he could taste it. He remembered standing in a bathroom with cocaine in his pocket and having the same feeling, nearly trembling with the fine anticipation of it.
Janine laughed, over by the bar, and Sherlock heard it and looked up at her. Janine had asked him to gain a bit of distance from John, and Sherlock had been offended, but maybe, Sherlock reluctantly agreed, thinking of the spectre of cocaine in his pocket, Janine was right. Highs inevitably wore off and then you were left in disgusting houses full of filth and vermin, on mattresses that weren’t your own. Or just Baker Street, without John Watson.
And it would inevitably end that way. John was at a loose end for a night, so John had texted him. John hadn’t texted him to say, I miss you with every thought in my head. I can’t stand to be away from you, can you please manufacture some way for us to see each other? John had said, You are temporarily less boring than the other things I could be doing. Sherlock recognized the irony of being subjected to that in a relationship. It almost made him believe in God, the cleverness of that punishment being wrought on him.
Sherlock closed his eyes and let the temptation of John scatter away from him, lost the thrill thrumming through his blood, took deep breaths to slow his heart rate. Not worth it, he thought.
He put the mobile back in his pocket, John’s text unanswered, and looked around the pub with new eyes. Something to do, he thought. He desperately needed something to do.
For a moment, he thought he was imagining everything when he caught sight of the furtive-looking man who had just come into the pub. Sherlock watched him order a pint, exchange pleasantries with a few of the other people in the pub. A regular, in for his daily pint. But surely this was an out-of-the-ordinary day. He ordered a different type of beer—the bartender, confused, correct him—and counted out the wrong amount of change. He spoke with forced joviality to the people around him, but his mind was clearly on other things. It was obvious, wasn’t it? Sherlock frowned. Why didn’t anybody else see these things?
Sherlock rose from his table and wandered over to the bar. The man had a single long blonde curl clinging to his coat. A woman, Sherlock thought. Had he just met a woman? Come from an assignation? Was that the reason for his nervousness? Had he just shagged someone’s wife?
Sherlock cast his eyes over the people the man had spoken to, dismissed that possibility.
“Are you going to order something?” the bartender asked him.
“Stop bothering me,” Sherlock told him, and glanced back at the man in question. He hadn’t noticed Sherlock. He was lost in his own little world. He kept smiling and then looking abruptly guilty about it. And he had his hand in his pocket. What was his hand in his pocket for?
Sherlock walked over to him, assumed his best attitude of casualness. “Hate to bother you,” he said, “but can you break a twenty?” Sherlock held a twenty pound note up.
“No,” the man said, shortly, and glared at him.
“Look, I don’t even need exact change. I’ll give you this twenty if you’ll just give me a couple of pounds. I’m in a bind and really need some change.”
It was a flimsy story, but Sherlock had learned there was no need to construct better ones when you were offering people money. The man sighed, but he pulled his hand out of his pocket, along with his wallet, and Sherlock got to see what he’d been fingering, because he almost pulled that out as well: a pink ribbon.
Sherlock’s eyes zeroed in on the long blonde curl on the man’s coat. Not a woman, thought Sherlock. A little girl who still wore hair ribbons.
“Sorry,” said the man. “No change.” He glared at Sherlock again as he replaced the wallet.
“Worth a shot,” said Sherlock, with a little smile, then walked back to his table. Janine was still at the bar, still chatting up her dentist. Sherlock glanced at her, then considered. Kidnapping? Could it be a kidnapping? Was he just feeling bored and restless and seeing things where there was nothing at all?
And then the man confirmed that there was definitely something to be worrying about, because the man kept looking over at him, as if worried. Sherlock took his mobile out of his pocket and dialed Lestrade, keeping an eye on the man surreptitiously as he did so.
“Lestrade.”
“Hello,” Sherlock said, with a broad smile, as if he was absolutely caught up in the most distracting conversation ever. “I think I might be in a pub with someone interesting.”
“What?” said Lestrade, blankly, and Sherlock watched the man, after casting another glance to ascertain he was absorbed in his mobile conversation, dart out of the pub.
“Got to go,” said Sherlock, and threw his phone back in his pocket and stood up so hastily that he knocked his chair over, which didn’t matter, because he had to exit the pub as quickly as possible to keep the man in sight. He pushed his way through people who all seemed to be in his way at once and finally got to the street and looked up and down it.
“Sherlock,” said Janine. “What—”
“Oh,” said Sherlock, “you should have stayed with the boring dentist.” And then he spotted the man, still moving furtively, which made him more obvious. He glanced over his shoulder and Sherlock turned and cupped Janine’s face and kissed her. Well. Barely pressed his closed lips up against hers, but from the distance the kidnapper was at, it should have been convincing.
Sherlock counted to three, then straightened away from Janine and looked back. Predictably, the kidnapper was walking a bit more leisurely now, confident that Sherlock wasn’t following him anymore. Idiot, thought Sherlock.
“What the hell was that?” asked Janine, sounding shocked.
“Come with me,” Sherlock said, taking Janine’s hand and pulling her with him. “And smile at me like I’m extremely charming and you’re very in love with me.”
“Why?” asked Janine, but she nevertheless obeyed him, batting her eyelashes at him.
“Because we’re catching ourselves a kidnapper,” said Sherlock, glancing in front of them to make sure they were still following.
“We’re what?” said Janine, although her facial expression didn’t change.
She was good at this, thought Sherlock, and then wondered why he was surprised.
They followed the man for several blocks. Janine talked non-stop nonsense so it would look like they were engaged in a conversation.
“You could be a little more convincing on your end,” she said, eventually.
“I look exactly like a boyfriend: bored and thinking of football results in my head,” replied Sherlock, watching the man slip through a doorway into a rundown old terraced house that had clearly been subdivided into flats.
Sherlock dropped Janine’s hand and picked up his pace into a jog, looking over the building as he approached it.
“This is the place,” Sherlock said to Janine, and took a step back as he phoned Lestrade. “Would he hold her in a front-facing flat, though? There could be a back entrance. I’ll have to slip around—Lestrade. I’ve apprehended you a kidnapper. Janine is going to give you the address.” Sherlock stuck his mobile out and Janine took it by instinct. “Tell Lestrade where we are and stay here.”
Sherlock left her there and slipped around the back of the terrace. Yes, back entrance, opening out onto an alley, and two figures came out of it: the man Sherlock had seen and a child, bundled up in generic gray clothing, hoodie up over what Sherlock was convinced were blonde curls. The child was stumbling, but not really resisting. Drugged, Sherlock thought. And there was nothing for it. The man was going to know he was being followed immediately. The alleyway offered no cover, and there was little reason why a man of Sherlock’s silhouette would be there. Sherlock did not often wish that he hadn’t worn his coat, but he wished it at that moment, and then he thought, Oh, sod it, and took off running as quickly as he could.
The man, hearing his footsteps, hesitated to look behind him, a fatal mistake that allowed Sherlock to gain a very valuable fraction on him. Then he started running, but he was dragging the little girl behind him (hoodie fell off, yes, long blonde curls) and then Sherlock tackled him, trying to avoid taking the little girl down with them. The man, luckily, let go of the little girl immediately, and then lashed out with a knife. Sherlock should have expected him to be armed but hadn’t quite. The knife went through his coat and into his forearm, and Sherlock was honestly more annoyed at the destruction of his coat than at the flesh wound. Sherlock rolled away from him instinctively, which stupidly gave the man the ability to roll on top of him, and Sherlock, annoyed, was just in the process of throwing him off when the man went limp on top of him.
Surprised, Sherlock struggled out from underneath him to see Janine holding a piece of wood and looking horrified.
“Did I kill him?” she asked, sounding a bit panicked.
Since the man’s sour breath was currently right in Sherlock’s face, Sherlock pushed him away and said, “No, knocked him unconscious.” Sherlock turned toward the little girl, but Janine beat him to it.
She was curled up into a ball on the pavement, sobbing. Her eyes weren’t entirely focused, but they also weren’t entirely out of it. Whatever the drug had been, it was wearing off.
“Don’t worry,” Janine said to her, and gathered her up easily, and the child clung to her. “Don’t worry, the police are coming.”
And indeed they were, the first of them spilling into the alleyway.
Medical attention was given to the girl, and the revived culprit was being led away in handcuffs, and Sherlock had finished his statement to Lestrade and turned toward Janine, who was waiting for him.
Sherlock’s focus was on the annoying bloodstain on his sleeve, so that when he said, “You were supposed to—” Janine managed to take him entirely by surprise when she whacked his leg with the same piece of wood she’d used to knock out the kidnapper. “Ow!” exclaimed Sherlock, jumping aside.
“Whoa,” said Lestrade, stepping forward.
“Oh, it’s fine,” snapped Janine, and dropped the wood. “I’m not going to actually hurt him. Just what. The bloody hell. Was that?” She punctuated her little sentences with shoves against him.
Sherlock backed up, trying to get out of her way. Lestrade watched, apparently too astonished to step forward.
“It was—” Sherlock began.
“How dare you run back here and take on a dangerous criminal all by yourself?” Janine shouted at him. “What did you think you were doing? My heart was in my throat.”
Sherlock was uncomfortably aware that they were now the focus of all of the attention in the alley. “Shh,” Sherlock tried to say, when he realized she had him up against the wall and he couldn’t back up anymore.
“And don’t you ever—ever again—stick a mobile in my hand and have me sit on the sidelines like I am too delicate to catch a criminal with you!”
“That wasn’t—” attempted Sherlock.
“You could have been killed. I saved your sodding life.”
“I’m fine—”
Janine lifted up his blood-strained sleeve. “He stabbed you.”
Sherlock twitched his arm out of her grasp, self-conscious. “It’s a scratch.”
“Say ‘thank you,’” demanded Janine.
Sherlock blinked. “What?”
“Say ‘Thank you, Janine, for coming to my aid.’”
Sherlock stared at her. Janine stared back, looking furious. Sherlock was conscious of everyone else staring at the two of them. He had no idea what to do. He half-feared that if he tried to just walk away, Janine would whack him with the piece of wood again. So he said, biting it out, “Thank you, Janine, for coming to my aid.”
“That’s more like it.” Janine looked satisfied, and then startled him even further by leaning forward and tackling him into a tight hug.
Sherlock, startled, caught Lestrade’s amused gaze before he squeezed his eyes shut to avoid further humiliation.
Janine released him and took a step back, looking monumentally calmer. “Thank you for catching that little girl’s kidnapper. That was a very good thing you did. Now come home and I’ll take care of that scratch for you.”
Janine, all of her dignity intact, marched out of the alleyway like she was queen of it.
Lestrade looked at Sherlock and Sherlock had the impression he was close to falling over with the effort of suppressing his laughter. “She’s fun, isn’t she?” said Lestrade.
“I’m going to make her move out tomorrow,” grumbled Sherlock.
***
March 22, 2015
Addendum to My Previous Entry
Heard from the dentist! Have an actual date! Shezza says he’s going to give me pointers so that I don’t ruin this chance.
***
Sherlock sat in the sitting room and watched Janine clean the scratch on his arm out of all proportion to the seriousness of the injury. It was very different from having John tend to his wounds. John tended to his wounds with a doctor’s practicality: efficient, with a minimum of fuss and movement. Janine was not at all like that. Janine was overly thorough, spent far too much time on the entire affair, should have been finished long ago. But it was strangely nice to be taken care of. It had been strangely nice to have someone come to his rescue, he had to admit. For the longest time, Sherlock had been convinced that only John would ever fill that role, that he had lost that once he had lost John. Janine had become new data, and he was grateful for the inordinate amount of time she spent preoccupied with a tiny scratch in order to give him time to sort out this new data about her.
“There,” said Janine, sitting back finally. She had piled gauze on top of the wound. It looked absolutely ridiculous. Sherlock doubted his coat would even fit over it. If his coat was even wearable anymore.
“That’s very…thorough,” said Sherlock, after a skeptical moment of silence.
“Shut up,” said Janine, and shoved at him playfully, then sat on the floor by his chair, leaning up against him. “You scared me today.”
Sherlock looked down at the top of her head because he couldn’t see the rest of her. “Did you like it?”
“Did I like it? Thinking you were going to be killed right in front of me? No, I didn’t like it.”
“Right, but other than that.”
“Other than that what?” Janine tipped her head back so she could see him.
And he her, so he was grateful for that. “Other than that, did you like it?”
Janine considered, then shrugged.
“You were good at it,” Sherlock said.
Slowly, Janine shifted position enough so she could really see him. “I get the impression you don’t say that very often.”
“On the day we met, you know how you asked me if I had a vacancy for an assistant solving crimes?” said Sherlock.
***
March 23, 2015
Like I’ve said before, Shezza is a detective. He asked me if I wanted to start tagging along on crimes, and I thought he’d lost his mind, but, actually, I decided to tag along today and it happened to be pretty bloody interesting. Maybe I’m a natural at solving crimes.
(Oh, and the date with Dentist went well )
***
Janine insisted on champagne.
Sherlock said that all they had done was solve a crime, and he solved crimes on most days, but Janine let the cork fly against the wall and then called down the stairs, “Don’t worry, Mrs. Hudson, we’re just celebrating!”
“Have fun, dear!” Mrs. Hudson called back up, and Janine sloshed champagne into teacups because they were clean and there and handed him one.
“My first crime,” she exclaimed, giddy.
“You helped solve that kidnapping last week,” Sherlock pointed out.
Janine shook her head. “That was all you. That one I just tagged along.”
“You just tagged along on this one.”
“Right, but I knew I was tagging along from the very beginning. The last one caught me off-guard. And I didn’t have to almost kill anyone this time.”
“The ones with the official police involved can be less exciting that way,” said Sherlock.
Janine took a gulp of champagne and said, “You know what we should do?” She leaned over and fiddled with his laptop until salsa music blared out of it. “We should practice dancing!”
Sherlock’s mobile buzzed in his pocket. He shook his head as he took it out of his jacket. “Oh, no. You know I said we were never practicing dancing again whilst you were drunk.” He frowned at his mobile. It was John. Calling him. John never called. Sherlock silenced the mobile and put it on the desk, turning to Janine.
Janine said, “I’ve had two sips of champagne, I’m not drunk. Who was that ringing you?”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Sherlock, because he’d been in a good mood. The crime scene had gone well, it had been nice to have an ally who was there just for him, and he didn’t want to ruin everything by reminding himself yet again that it hadn’t been John next to him. He turned to Janine and he said, “Fine. One lesson.”
***
They were still dancing when John arrived in their doorway. Sherlock didn’t notice him until he executed a move that put the doorway into his view, and then he hesitated in his step, which Janine noticed, following his lead and ceasing the dance.
“John,” Sherlock said, and leaned over to shut off the blaring salsa music.
“Hello, John,” Janine said, beaming at him. “Champagne?” She lifted up the nearly empty bottle.
Sherlock was studying John, who looked…slow-witted. John never looked like that. He looked like he couldn’t even process what was going on in front of him. He stared at the champagne in Janine’s hand without recognition.
“Don’t mind her,” Sherlock said, quickly, wondering how much of a shock it must have been to John to walk in to see him dancing with this woman. “We were just…don’t mind her—”
“Mary’s dead,” said John, his eyes still on the champagne bottle.
Everything in the flat seemed to go unnaturally quiet. Sherlock stared at John, sure he must have heard him incorrectly.
“What?” he said.
John lifted his eyes from the champagne bottle to Sherlock’s face, and Sherlock barely recognized them. They looked…dead. From the inside out. Sherlock wanted to reach for him, but he wasn’t even sure what he would do once he touched him. He just thought that he needed to give John something living so that John would stop looking so dead.
“Mary’s dead,” said John, and then stopped talking and took a deep breath through his nose, the way John did when he was trying to hold himself together. “And the baby,” he managed, his voice cracking on it.
“John,” said Sherlock, shocked, because he didn’t know what else to say. What was he supposed to do in this circumstance? There was nothing for him to do, nothing that could fix it, no one he could kill, or threaten, or even save at this point. Because it was all over, it had all happened, to John Watson, and no one had even bothered to—Sherlock suddenly remembered ignoring John’s call. He thought of the mobile on the desk, that he had selfishly set aside because he had wanted to enjoy his evening, and he wondered how he could ever make it up to John, that John had reached out to him and he had ignored him.
“I couldn’t…” said John. “I didn’t— I couldn’t—”
“Obviously,” said Sherlock, breathlessly, trying to think what to do. What did people do in this situation? In a panic, he seized on the only thing he could think of. “Tea,” he gulped out, grabbing the word like a lifeline. “Do you want tea?”
John stared at him, and Sherlock thought that had been entirely the wrong thing to say. Stupid, stupid, stupid, Sherlock cursed himself.
And then John almost smiled. He said, “Yes. Yes, I want tea.”
***
John sat at the kitchen table. And Sherlock made tea. Sherlock tried to think if he had ever made John tea before. He thought he had, once or twice, but it seemed very long ago and very far away.
Sherlock was grateful for the activity because it meant he didn't have to come up with anything to say. Then he gave John his tea and sat with his own cup of tea and still didn't come up with anything to say. John looked at the kitchen table and Sherlock looked at the ceiling and drank his tea steadily. When he was done, John still hadn’t even touched his.
Sherlock wanted to say, I’m sorry I didn’t answer when you called. I can’t believe I failed you that way. I will spend the rest of our lives making it up to you. He wanted to say, I’m sorry that I gave her to you only to have you lose her anyway. He wanted to say, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry for not loving you the way you deserved to be loved so you went and found someone else and then you lost that someone else and so all of this is, in some way, my fault.
What he said was, “I’ll play for you.”
John blinked and looked up at him, looking dazed to find himself in the kitchen at Baker Street, as if he’d forgotten he’d gone there. “What?”
“I’ll play for you. So you can sleep.”
John took a deep breath and let it out again, and Sherlock watched him process that Sherlock had always known that his violin-playing helped John’s nightmares. Sherlock didn’t know if they would be different nightmares now, impervious nightmares, but John had been up for almost forty-eight straight hours and needed to sleep. Sherlock had deduced everything he needed to know about Mary and the baby by that time: labor going poorly, baby in distress, Mary insisting they save the baby at the expense of her, and, in the end, the inability to save either. Mary had turned out not to be selfish in the end. Sherlock didn’t know if he was glad of that or not. If she’d been selfish, she might at least have survived.
At any rate, Sherlock didn’t need to know anything more than he already knew, which was that he’d put John Watson together again once before, when he had arrived with a psychosomatic limp and an inability to know what he needed. And Sherlock was willing to do it again.
Sherlock stood and said, briskly, thinking John needed him to take charge now, the way he had in the early days so very long ago, alternately bullying and charming John into giving himself what he needed, “You can have your room, of course. It’s just as you left it.”
John looked up at him. He said, shaking his head a little bit, “No. I have to—”
“There’s nothing you have to do now except rest. Go on.”
“You don’t understand,” said John, dully, and stared into his teacup. “You don’t understand how much there is to do when someone dies unexpectedly. I’ve already done this before. I’ve already…” John looked at him suddenly, and his eyes were no longer dull, they were sparking with something close to fury. And Sherlock was almost relieved to see it. “You have no idea,” said John.
And Sherlock didn’t. Because the last time John had had to unexpectedly bury someone, it had been him.
Sherlock swallowed and said, “I know. But this time I’m here, and so this time you don’t have to do it alone. I will help. I will do it all, if you want me to. I will not let you do it again alone.”
John held his gaze for a very long moment. And he said, “It’s my fault, isn’t it?”
“It’s not,” Sherlock said, immediately, firmly.
“Why these things happen to me. It’s my fault.”
“No.” Sherlock leaned over him, looming, and John stared at him. “It isn’t your fault. I don’t know why it happened, because it doesn’t make sense, because you deserve all good things, all of the best things. So I don’t know why it happened. But I know it wasn’t your fault. And I’m never wrong. Am I ever wrong?”
After a moment, John almost smiled. “You’re never wrong.”
That wasn’t true, and they both knew it, but Sherlock was relieved he’d said it. “Let me play for you. Go to bed and sleep and in the morning I’ll be here and we’ll…You won’t be alone,” he said, helplessly, because he didn’t know what else to say and it seemed like the most important thing for John to know at the moment. He had to know that he wasn’t going to be alone, that Sherlock had failed him when he’d reached out to him earlier but he would never do it again.
John nodded once and seemed to droop. He dragged his way upstairs without a single word, and Sherlock walked into the sitting room to retrieve his violin and was startled to see Janine there, standing next to the window, looking nervous and stricken.
The sight of her confused him. He reached for his violin and said, vaguely, “I forgot you were here.”
“I know. What can I do, Sherlock? To help?”
Sherlock plucked at a string. Tuned it. Said, “Tell me what I’m supposed to do.”
Janine gave him a tremulous smile and said, “I think you’re doing it.”
And Sherlock played.
Next Chapter
Author -
earlgreytea68Rating - Teen
Characters - Sherlock, Janine, John, Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson
Spoilers - Through His Last Vow
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on.
Summary - Sherlock Holmes keeps choosing flatmates who fancy themselves to be bloggers.
Author's Notes - Thank you, as usual, to
flawedamythyst for the Britpick and arctacuda for the beta. They both have made this fic better.Warning - Mary and baby die off-screen in this chapter, so...yeah.
Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4
Chapter Five
March 22, 2015
Day 58 of Operation Oh-Wait-No-Something-MUCH-More-Important-Happened
So Shezza said we had to get back on the horse. Actually, Shezza didn’t say anything about horses, before he leaves a comment to that effect.
But we decided to give pubs another try. After our long gap, we thought we’d ease ourselves into it. And, actually, we had a live one. I mean, a really terrific bloke. He was dashing and funny. A dentist, which Shezza said was just the right sort of dull career for me. I was really enjoying my time with him.
And then Shezza went flying out the door of the pub, causing all sorts of commotion, and what was I supposed to do, just *let* him? I mean, clearly something was going on, right?
I was right. What was going on was that, while I was busy chatting up the terrific dentist, Shezza had deduced that one of the patrons of the pub had just kidnapped a little girl. So what did we do last night? Yeah, we just saved a little girl's life, no big deal.
If you’re the dentist I was talking to, though, I’d love it if you could leave me a comment.
***
The dentist, thought Sherlock, might be a good fit. He was a bit bland, but Janine wasn’t John: she wasn’t necessarily looking for excitement. Janine wanted to find a good, solid bloke to settle down with, someone who was funny and kind and wouldn’t shag her best friend (and since he was apparently her best friend, Sherlock thought that the odds of him finding Janine someone who would want to shag him instead were fairly slim). Janine had high standards of attractiveness—Sherlock suspected she was pretty herself, although his concept of beauty was frequently artificial and so he was never quite sure of it—and that was often their biggest hurdle in the dating game they were playing. Sherlock had found a single person attractive in his entire life: John Watson. So judging the attractiveness of men was not his strong suit and was where he tended to go wrong. But he had apparently done well with the dentist, because Janine was twirling her hair and smiling too much, which she did when she was sexually interested in someone, so that was good, because Sherlock thought that the dentist was a good fit in all other respects.
Janine, for once, seemed to have things well in hand, so Sherlock relaxed a little bit and looked around the pub. He was bored, now that he’d finished deducing for Janine, and he wondered how much longer he was expected to stay before he could call the evening a success and leave. Although Baker Street sounded dull. He wondered if Lestrade had a case; his inbox hadn’t greatly interested him.
The mobile in his pocket buzzed, and Sherlock glanced at Janine, who had leaned even closer to the dentist. Clearly going well and not stealth-texting him.
Sherlock pulled his mobile out, hoping it was Lestrade, dreading it was Mycroft.
It was John: Thinking of you. At a bit of a loose end tonight. Anything on?
Sherlock’s first instinct was to text back immediately: I am dreadfully bored. Let’s entertain each other. Meet me at NSY and we’ll irritate Lestrade until we get something to do. Sherlock stood with his fingers hovering over his mobile screen and wanted that evening so badly he could taste it. He remembered standing in a bathroom with cocaine in his pocket and having the same feeling, nearly trembling with the fine anticipation of it.
Janine laughed, over by the bar, and Sherlock heard it and looked up at her. Janine had asked him to gain a bit of distance from John, and Sherlock had been offended, but maybe, Sherlock reluctantly agreed, thinking of the spectre of cocaine in his pocket, Janine was right. Highs inevitably wore off and then you were left in disgusting houses full of filth and vermin, on mattresses that weren’t your own. Or just Baker Street, without John Watson.
And it would inevitably end that way. John was at a loose end for a night, so John had texted him. John hadn’t texted him to say, I miss you with every thought in my head. I can’t stand to be away from you, can you please manufacture some way for us to see each other? John had said, You are temporarily less boring than the other things I could be doing. Sherlock recognized the irony of being subjected to that in a relationship. It almost made him believe in God, the cleverness of that punishment being wrought on him.
Sherlock closed his eyes and let the temptation of John scatter away from him, lost the thrill thrumming through his blood, took deep breaths to slow his heart rate. Not worth it, he thought.
He put the mobile back in his pocket, John’s text unanswered, and looked around the pub with new eyes. Something to do, he thought. He desperately needed something to do.
For a moment, he thought he was imagining everything when he caught sight of the furtive-looking man who had just come into the pub. Sherlock watched him order a pint, exchange pleasantries with a few of the other people in the pub. A regular, in for his daily pint. But surely this was an out-of-the-ordinary day. He ordered a different type of beer—the bartender, confused, correct him—and counted out the wrong amount of change. He spoke with forced joviality to the people around him, but his mind was clearly on other things. It was obvious, wasn’t it? Sherlock frowned. Why didn’t anybody else see these things?
Sherlock rose from his table and wandered over to the bar. The man had a single long blonde curl clinging to his coat. A woman, Sherlock thought. Had he just met a woman? Come from an assignation? Was that the reason for his nervousness? Had he just shagged someone’s wife?
Sherlock cast his eyes over the people the man had spoken to, dismissed that possibility.
“Are you going to order something?” the bartender asked him.
“Stop bothering me,” Sherlock told him, and glanced back at the man in question. He hadn’t noticed Sherlock. He was lost in his own little world. He kept smiling and then looking abruptly guilty about it. And he had his hand in his pocket. What was his hand in his pocket for?
Sherlock walked over to him, assumed his best attitude of casualness. “Hate to bother you,” he said, “but can you break a twenty?” Sherlock held a twenty pound note up.
“No,” the man said, shortly, and glared at him.
“Look, I don’t even need exact change. I’ll give you this twenty if you’ll just give me a couple of pounds. I’m in a bind and really need some change.”
It was a flimsy story, but Sherlock had learned there was no need to construct better ones when you were offering people money. The man sighed, but he pulled his hand out of his pocket, along with his wallet, and Sherlock got to see what he’d been fingering, because he almost pulled that out as well: a pink ribbon.
Sherlock’s eyes zeroed in on the long blonde curl on the man’s coat. Not a woman, thought Sherlock. A little girl who still wore hair ribbons.
“Sorry,” said the man. “No change.” He glared at Sherlock again as he replaced the wallet.
“Worth a shot,” said Sherlock, with a little smile, then walked back to his table. Janine was still at the bar, still chatting up her dentist. Sherlock glanced at her, then considered. Kidnapping? Could it be a kidnapping? Was he just feeling bored and restless and seeing things where there was nothing at all?
And then the man confirmed that there was definitely something to be worrying about, because the man kept looking over at him, as if worried. Sherlock took his mobile out of his pocket and dialed Lestrade, keeping an eye on the man surreptitiously as he did so.
“Lestrade.”
“Hello,” Sherlock said, with a broad smile, as if he was absolutely caught up in the most distracting conversation ever. “I think I might be in a pub with someone interesting.”
“What?” said Lestrade, blankly, and Sherlock watched the man, after casting another glance to ascertain he was absorbed in his mobile conversation, dart out of the pub.
“Got to go,” said Sherlock, and threw his phone back in his pocket and stood up so hastily that he knocked his chair over, which didn’t matter, because he had to exit the pub as quickly as possible to keep the man in sight. He pushed his way through people who all seemed to be in his way at once and finally got to the street and looked up and down it.
“Sherlock,” said Janine. “What—”
“Oh,” said Sherlock, “you should have stayed with the boring dentist.” And then he spotted the man, still moving furtively, which made him more obvious. He glanced over his shoulder and Sherlock turned and cupped Janine’s face and kissed her. Well. Barely pressed his closed lips up against hers, but from the distance the kidnapper was at, it should have been convincing.
Sherlock counted to three, then straightened away from Janine and looked back. Predictably, the kidnapper was walking a bit more leisurely now, confident that Sherlock wasn’t following him anymore. Idiot, thought Sherlock.
“What the hell was that?” asked Janine, sounding shocked.
“Come with me,” Sherlock said, taking Janine’s hand and pulling her with him. “And smile at me like I’m extremely charming and you’re very in love with me.”
“Why?” asked Janine, but she nevertheless obeyed him, batting her eyelashes at him.
“Because we’re catching ourselves a kidnapper,” said Sherlock, glancing in front of them to make sure they were still following.
“We’re what?” said Janine, although her facial expression didn’t change.
She was good at this, thought Sherlock, and then wondered why he was surprised.
They followed the man for several blocks. Janine talked non-stop nonsense so it would look like they were engaged in a conversation.
“You could be a little more convincing on your end,” she said, eventually.
“I look exactly like a boyfriend: bored and thinking of football results in my head,” replied Sherlock, watching the man slip through a doorway into a rundown old terraced house that had clearly been subdivided into flats.
Sherlock dropped Janine’s hand and picked up his pace into a jog, looking over the building as he approached it.
“This is the place,” Sherlock said to Janine, and took a step back as he phoned Lestrade. “Would he hold her in a front-facing flat, though? There could be a back entrance. I’ll have to slip around—Lestrade. I’ve apprehended you a kidnapper. Janine is going to give you the address.” Sherlock stuck his mobile out and Janine took it by instinct. “Tell Lestrade where we are and stay here.”
Sherlock left her there and slipped around the back of the terrace. Yes, back entrance, opening out onto an alley, and two figures came out of it: the man Sherlock had seen and a child, bundled up in generic gray clothing, hoodie up over what Sherlock was convinced were blonde curls. The child was stumbling, but not really resisting. Drugged, Sherlock thought. And there was nothing for it. The man was going to know he was being followed immediately. The alleyway offered no cover, and there was little reason why a man of Sherlock’s silhouette would be there. Sherlock did not often wish that he hadn’t worn his coat, but he wished it at that moment, and then he thought, Oh, sod it, and took off running as quickly as he could.
The man, hearing his footsteps, hesitated to look behind him, a fatal mistake that allowed Sherlock to gain a very valuable fraction on him. Then he started running, but he was dragging the little girl behind him (hoodie fell off, yes, long blonde curls) and then Sherlock tackled him, trying to avoid taking the little girl down with them. The man, luckily, let go of the little girl immediately, and then lashed out with a knife. Sherlock should have expected him to be armed but hadn’t quite. The knife went through his coat and into his forearm, and Sherlock was honestly more annoyed at the destruction of his coat than at the flesh wound. Sherlock rolled away from him instinctively, which stupidly gave the man the ability to roll on top of him, and Sherlock, annoyed, was just in the process of throwing him off when the man went limp on top of him.
Surprised, Sherlock struggled out from underneath him to see Janine holding a piece of wood and looking horrified.
“Did I kill him?” she asked, sounding a bit panicked.
Since the man’s sour breath was currently right in Sherlock’s face, Sherlock pushed him away and said, “No, knocked him unconscious.” Sherlock turned toward the little girl, but Janine beat him to it.
She was curled up into a ball on the pavement, sobbing. Her eyes weren’t entirely focused, but they also weren’t entirely out of it. Whatever the drug had been, it was wearing off.
“Don’t worry,” Janine said to her, and gathered her up easily, and the child clung to her. “Don’t worry, the police are coming.”
And indeed they were, the first of them spilling into the alleyway.
Medical attention was given to the girl, and the revived culprit was being led away in handcuffs, and Sherlock had finished his statement to Lestrade and turned toward Janine, who was waiting for him.
Sherlock’s focus was on the annoying bloodstain on his sleeve, so that when he said, “You were supposed to—” Janine managed to take him entirely by surprise when she whacked his leg with the same piece of wood she’d used to knock out the kidnapper. “Ow!” exclaimed Sherlock, jumping aside.
“Whoa,” said Lestrade, stepping forward.
“Oh, it’s fine,” snapped Janine, and dropped the wood. “I’m not going to actually hurt him. Just what. The bloody hell. Was that?” She punctuated her little sentences with shoves against him.
Sherlock backed up, trying to get out of her way. Lestrade watched, apparently too astonished to step forward.
“It was—” Sherlock began.
“How dare you run back here and take on a dangerous criminal all by yourself?” Janine shouted at him. “What did you think you were doing? My heart was in my throat.”
Sherlock was uncomfortably aware that they were now the focus of all of the attention in the alley. “Shh,” Sherlock tried to say, when he realized she had him up against the wall and he couldn’t back up anymore.
“And don’t you ever—ever again—stick a mobile in my hand and have me sit on the sidelines like I am too delicate to catch a criminal with you!”
“That wasn’t—” attempted Sherlock.
“You could have been killed. I saved your sodding life.”
“I’m fine—”
Janine lifted up his blood-strained sleeve. “He stabbed you.”
Sherlock twitched his arm out of her grasp, self-conscious. “It’s a scratch.”
“Say ‘thank you,’” demanded Janine.
Sherlock blinked. “What?”
“Say ‘Thank you, Janine, for coming to my aid.’”
Sherlock stared at her. Janine stared back, looking furious. Sherlock was conscious of everyone else staring at the two of them. He had no idea what to do. He half-feared that if he tried to just walk away, Janine would whack him with the piece of wood again. So he said, biting it out, “Thank you, Janine, for coming to my aid.”
“That’s more like it.” Janine looked satisfied, and then startled him even further by leaning forward and tackling him into a tight hug.
Sherlock, startled, caught Lestrade’s amused gaze before he squeezed his eyes shut to avoid further humiliation.
Janine released him and took a step back, looking monumentally calmer. “Thank you for catching that little girl’s kidnapper. That was a very good thing you did. Now come home and I’ll take care of that scratch for you.”
Janine, all of her dignity intact, marched out of the alleyway like she was queen of it.
Lestrade looked at Sherlock and Sherlock had the impression he was close to falling over with the effort of suppressing his laughter. “She’s fun, isn’t she?” said Lestrade.
“I’m going to make her move out tomorrow,” grumbled Sherlock.
***
March 22, 2015
Addendum to My Previous Entry
Heard from the dentist! Have an actual date! Shezza says he’s going to give me pointers so that I don’t ruin this chance.
***
Sherlock sat in the sitting room and watched Janine clean the scratch on his arm out of all proportion to the seriousness of the injury. It was very different from having John tend to his wounds. John tended to his wounds with a doctor’s practicality: efficient, with a minimum of fuss and movement. Janine was not at all like that. Janine was overly thorough, spent far too much time on the entire affair, should have been finished long ago. But it was strangely nice to be taken care of. It had been strangely nice to have someone come to his rescue, he had to admit. For the longest time, Sherlock had been convinced that only John would ever fill that role, that he had lost that once he had lost John. Janine had become new data, and he was grateful for the inordinate amount of time she spent preoccupied with a tiny scratch in order to give him time to sort out this new data about her.
“There,” said Janine, sitting back finally. She had piled gauze on top of the wound. It looked absolutely ridiculous. Sherlock doubted his coat would even fit over it. If his coat was even wearable anymore.
“That’s very…thorough,” said Sherlock, after a skeptical moment of silence.
“Shut up,” said Janine, and shoved at him playfully, then sat on the floor by his chair, leaning up against him. “You scared me today.”
Sherlock looked down at the top of her head because he couldn’t see the rest of her. “Did you like it?”
“Did I like it? Thinking you were going to be killed right in front of me? No, I didn’t like it.”
“Right, but other than that.”
“Other than that what?” Janine tipped her head back so she could see him.
And he her, so he was grateful for that. “Other than that, did you like it?”
Janine considered, then shrugged.
“You were good at it,” Sherlock said.
Slowly, Janine shifted position enough so she could really see him. “I get the impression you don’t say that very often.”
“On the day we met, you know how you asked me if I had a vacancy for an assistant solving crimes?” said Sherlock.
***
March 23, 2015
Like I’ve said before, Shezza is a detective. He asked me if I wanted to start tagging along on crimes, and I thought he’d lost his mind, but, actually, I decided to tag along today and it happened to be pretty bloody interesting. Maybe I’m a natural at solving crimes.
(Oh, and the date with Dentist went well )
***
Janine insisted on champagne.
Sherlock said that all they had done was solve a crime, and he solved crimes on most days, but Janine let the cork fly against the wall and then called down the stairs, “Don’t worry, Mrs. Hudson, we’re just celebrating!”
“Have fun, dear!” Mrs. Hudson called back up, and Janine sloshed champagne into teacups because they were clean and there and handed him one.
“My first crime,” she exclaimed, giddy.
“You helped solve that kidnapping last week,” Sherlock pointed out.
Janine shook her head. “That was all you. That one I just tagged along.”
“You just tagged along on this one.”
“Right, but I knew I was tagging along from the very beginning. The last one caught me off-guard. And I didn’t have to almost kill anyone this time.”
“The ones with the official police involved can be less exciting that way,” said Sherlock.
Janine took a gulp of champagne and said, “You know what we should do?” She leaned over and fiddled with his laptop until salsa music blared out of it. “We should practice dancing!”
Sherlock’s mobile buzzed in his pocket. He shook his head as he took it out of his jacket. “Oh, no. You know I said we were never practicing dancing again whilst you were drunk.” He frowned at his mobile. It was John. Calling him. John never called. Sherlock silenced the mobile and put it on the desk, turning to Janine.
Janine said, “I’ve had two sips of champagne, I’m not drunk. Who was that ringing you?”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Sherlock, because he’d been in a good mood. The crime scene had gone well, it had been nice to have an ally who was there just for him, and he didn’t want to ruin everything by reminding himself yet again that it hadn’t been John next to him. He turned to Janine and he said, “Fine. One lesson.”
***
They were still dancing when John arrived in their doorway. Sherlock didn’t notice him until he executed a move that put the doorway into his view, and then he hesitated in his step, which Janine noticed, following his lead and ceasing the dance.
“John,” Sherlock said, and leaned over to shut off the blaring salsa music.
“Hello, John,” Janine said, beaming at him. “Champagne?” She lifted up the nearly empty bottle.
Sherlock was studying John, who looked…slow-witted. John never looked like that. He looked like he couldn’t even process what was going on in front of him. He stared at the champagne in Janine’s hand without recognition.
“Don’t mind her,” Sherlock said, quickly, wondering how much of a shock it must have been to John to walk in to see him dancing with this woman. “We were just…don’t mind her—”
“Mary’s dead,” said John, his eyes still on the champagne bottle.
Everything in the flat seemed to go unnaturally quiet. Sherlock stared at John, sure he must have heard him incorrectly.
“What?” he said.
John lifted his eyes from the champagne bottle to Sherlock’s face, and Sherlock barely recognized them. They looked…dead. From the inside out. Sherlock wanted to reach for him, but he wasn’t even sure what he would do once he touched him. He just thought that he needed to give John something living so that John would stop looking so dead.
“Mary’s dead,” said John, and then stopped talking and took a deep breath through his nose, the way John did when he was trying to hold himself together. “And the baby,” he managed, his voice cracking on it.
“John,” said Sherlock, shocked, because he didn’t know what else to say. What was he supposed to do in this circumstance? There was nothing for him to do, nothing that could fix it, no one he could kill, or threaten, or even save at this point. Because it was all over, it had all happened, to John Watson, and no one had even bothered to—Sherlock suddenly remembered ignoring John’s call. He thought of the mobile on the desk, that he had selfishly set aside because he had wanted to enjoy his evening, and he wondered how he could ever make it up to John, that John had reached out to him and he had ignored him.
“I couldn’t…” said John. “I didn’t— I couldn’t—”
“Obviously,” said Sherlock, breathlessly, trying to think what to do. What did people do in this situation? In a panic, he seized on the only thing he could think of. “Tea,” he gulped out, grabbing the word like a lifeline. “Do you want tea?”
John stared at him, and Sherlock thought that had been entirely the wrong thing to say. Stupid, stupid, stupid, Sherlock cursed himself.
And then John almost smiled. He said, “Yes. Yes, I want tea.”
***
John sat at the kitchen table. And Sherlock made tea. Sherlock tried to think if he had ever made John tea before. He thought he had, once or twice, but it seemed very long ago and very far away.
Sherlock was grateful for the activity because it meant he didn't have to come up with anything to say. Then he gave John his tea and sat with his own cup of tea and still didn't come up with anything to say. John looked at the kitchen table and Sherlock looked at the ceiling and drank his tea steadily. When he was done, John still hadn’t even touched his.
Sherlock wanted to say, I’m sorry I didn’t answer when you called. I can’t believe I failed you that way. I will spend the rest of our lives making it up to you. He wanted to say, I’m sorry that I gave her to you only to have you lose her anyway. He wanted to say, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry for not loving you the way you deserved to be loved so you went and found someone else and then you lost that someone else and so all of this is, in some way, my fault.
What he said was, “I’ll play for you.”
John blinked and looked up at him, looking dazed to find himself in the kitchen at Baker Street, as if he’d forgotten he’d gone there. “What?”
“I’ll play for you. So you can sleep.”
John took a deep breath and let it out again, and Sherlock watched him process that Sherlock had always known that his violin-playing helped John’s nightmares. Sherlock didn’t know if they would be different nightmares now, impervious nightmares, but John had been up for almost forty-eight straight hours and needed to sleep. Sherlock had deduced everything he needed to know about Mary and the baby by that time: labor going poorly, baby in distress, Mary insisting they save the baby at the expense of her, and, in the end, the inability to save either. Mary had turned out not to be selfish in the end. Sherlock didn’t know if he was glad of that or not. If she’d been selfish, she might at least have survived.
At any rate, Sherlock didn’t need to know anything more than he already knew, which was that he’d put John Watson together again once before, when he had arrived with a psychosomatic limp and an inability to know what he needed. And Sherlock was willing to do it again.
Sherlock stood and said, briskly, thinking John needed him to take charge now, the way he had in the early days so very long ago, alternately bullying and charming John into giving himself what he needed, “You can have your room, of course. It’s just as you left it.”
John looked up at him. He said, shaking his head a little bit, “No. I have to—”
“There’s nothing you have to do now except rest. Go on.”
“You don’t understand,” said John, dully, and stared into his teacup. “You don’t understand how much there is to do when someone dies unexpectedly. I’ve already done this before. I’ve already…” John looked at him suddenly, and his eyes were no longer dull, they were sparking with something close to fury. And Sherlock was almost relieved to see it. “You have no idea,” said John.
And Sherlock didn’t. Because the last time John had had to unexpectedly bury someone, it had been him.
Sherlock swallowed and said, “I know. But this time I’m here, and so this time you don’t have to do it alone. I will help. I will do it all, if you want me to. I will not let you do it again alone.”
John held his gaze for a very long moment. And he said, “It’s my fault, isn’t it?”
“It’s not,” Sherlock said, immediately, firmly.
“Why these things happen to me. It’s my fault.”
“No.” Sherlock leaned over him, looming, and John stared at him. “It isn’t your fault. I don’t know why it happened, because it doesn’t make sense, because you deserve all good things, all of the best things. So I don’t know why it happened. But I know it wasn’t your fault. And I’m never wrong. Am I ever wrong?”
After a moment, John almost smiled. “You’re never wrong.”
That wasn’t true, and they both knew it, but Sherlock was relieved he’d said it. “Let me play for you. Go to bed and sleep and in the morning I’ll be here and we’ll…You won’t be alone,” he said, helplessly, because he didn’t know what else to say and it seemed like the most important thing for John to know at the moment. He had to know that he wasn’t going to be alone, that Sherlock had failed him when he’d reached out to him earlier but he would never do it again.
John nodded once and seemed to droop. He dragged his way upstairs without a single word, and Sherlock walked into the sitting room to retrieve his violin and was startled to see Janine there, standing next to the window, looking nervous and stricken.
The sight of her confused him. He reached for his violin and said, vaguely, “I forgot you were here.”
“I know. What can I do, Sherlock? To help?”
Sherlock plucked at a string. Tuned it. Said, “Tell me what I’m supposed to do.”
Janine gave him a tremulous smile and said, “I think you’re doing it.”
And Sherlock played.
Next Chapter
