Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

John had to admit that bear sausage didn’t taste as bad as gut instinct had told him it would. It reminded him vaguely of pork, and Seb had agreed, before adding a few more comparisons to animals that it had never crossed John’s mind to eat.

Still, there was bear sausage in the freezer, and Seb had dried large swathes of the thing into jerky that, with a little garlic, had also ended up tasting good. He had bags of the jerky stashed all over the place, and John had to admit that smugly pleased with a fading sunburn was a good look on Seb. He mostly wasn’t considering the new rug they’d also acquired or Seb’s wicked grin whenever he looked at it.

Harry was never going to let him live it down that he’d taken Seb all the way to Alaska to let the man hunt a grizzly bear, even if it had been a birthday/upcoming Christmas/next birthday gift. It wasn’t as if it had been a waste of a trip for John. He’d gotten a very passable camera from Seb, better than the cell phone shots he was used to taking of things, and had gotten to give it an extensive workout the whole trip, even with the cold fall air.

The weather made England seem positively balmy by comparison. He never thought that after a vacation he’d be so eager to see November in London, but there it was.

It wasn't that he was particularly into hunting himself, but he had a partner who was and at least he had applied legally and it was sanctioned. And the look on Seb's face had made it worth it. He’d lit up like a kid and had been excited right up to the trip, and all through it. What was a good result was Seb's musings that he might just start writing again, as if the experience had kick started his own creativity. That would make it two of them, as John’s own books about some of his cases with Sherlock had now been published – their pick up probably due to his high profile, rather than any real particular writing ability. His blog of various cases and his recovery had been just as popular, to his amazement.

He still managed to do a few investigations along with Seb, on the more legal side of things, and that was fun. All in all things were looking pretty good. They'd even had given Baker Street a lick of paint and had plans to look at new kitchen fittings, with Mrs Hudson's approval. He smiled a little as he walked the last bit home, still limping and having his cane handy for all he could manage jogging in the morning with Seb sometimes. By the end of the day of the whole shift at St. Bart's, it still ached badly.

Sometimes, he thought it was the standing part of it, the standing and waiting that made him feel it worse, those moments when everything wasn't exciting, because it never seemed to bother him when he had a really horrible injury come across his surgical path. Occasionally, he wondered what happened to those patients after they passed out of his hands and on to ICU, if they survived. Mostly he tried to not linger on his own mortality, and focused on not getting shot again because the painful recovery lingered in his memory. After all, just because the work was legal didn't mean it was safe, or sane. The danger of the things Mycroft passed along hadn't stopped Seb from bringing John along on it, just as long as the danger John faced wasn't ending up in jail for getting involved in the darker side of his business.

It wasn't all sunshine and roses, but most days it was good. They fought occasionally, mostly out of fear and reaction, John supposed. Seb had managed to come home just the day before sporting a few interesting bruises and a persistent shoulder pain from getting into a confrontation with some upstart group that was moving into his territory, and that had been a good argument there. Never mind that Seb's territory was well established. Like any medieval kingdom, it faced a lot of upstarts who were interested in volleying a few rounds over the stone walls. John couldn't... quite manage to get Seb to disengage from the physical aspect of operations, but at least Seb had been training a few lieutenants to start handling the lesser day to day operations.

Most of them were still alive, John supposed, so that whole notion was going as well as could have been expected.

Seb now had back-up, trusted back up and that was a better situation for them all. It meant more time to spend with their respective families although Harry had been on again off again with Clara for the last year or so and that meant intermittent contact. He was contemplating working on the Irene Adler story, even though Mycroft was not amused even though he had promised to reinvent them. He described his books as fictionalized versions of true crimes, but Mycroft did not like the Royal connection at all, so he might have to go with the Baskerville novel. The funny thing was that people tended to assume the truthful bits were the ones that were fictionalized because Sherlock's behaviour had been so outrageous so as to not seem real to ‘normal’ people.

Nearly home, and if he didn't want to eat more bear orientated stuff, he was going to have to cook. Something healthy as the Christmas party season would be kicking off. Greg had invited them round in a couple of weeks, and they were apparently going to Becks’ for Christmas itself. At least he'd done Seb's present already, though he would find a few small things. He supposed he'd still be eating bear sausages at Christmas, and that Seb would still be grinning that stupid goofy smirk every time he inflicted them on someone.

Home sweet home. Moving hadn't really crossed John's mind, even if he was uncomfortable with the amount of press presence that popped up from time to time -- though Seb's not untrue plea of PTSD had reared its head as he was getting out of the car when a reporter got close to him between the car and the door, and now they at least generally approached from a distance or even tried via phone when there was a bit reporter looking for god knew what. There was something unsettling about Seb when his eyes didn't lock but the fists kept swinging and hitting, the difference between that and Seb when he'd set out to put a fist through someone's face was quite sharp. Although the reporter on the receiving end probably wouldn’t have appreciated the finer points of why Seb had lashed out, even if John had patched him up afterwards and talked him out of pressing charges.

John unlocked the front door when he reached it, and was mindful to lock it behind himself again before starting up the stairs to the flat. He could hear quiet music, sounded like the radio, before he opened the door.

Seb was probably home, though he didn't usually listen to music. It could be TV on in the background or something. It was wise not to sneak up on Seb, so John made a point of being noisy, and when he stepped inside he called out, smiling to himself. "I'm not eating another one of those sausages, even if you have cooked dinner!"

"Whyever would I cook dinner?" He saw movement from the leather chair, watched a dark haired ghost stand up with a faint smile on his face. "John. You look well."

John just stood there, the cane slipping out of the grasp of his hand and clattering to the floor as his mind refused to comprehend what he was seeing.

Sherlock. Sherlock was standing there in front of him, hair still wild and curly, the cheekbones, the bright spark in the eyes. The voice, that unmistakeable tone, the voice that had broken him standing looking at the edge of roof as he fell. The recording that had broken him, everything that had shattered him was standing there and it was like being shot all over again and he hadn't breathed since he heard that voice.

"John?"

Sherlock took a step towards him, one hand halfway to reaching out, reaching to touch John’s shoulder. "John, I’m sorry that I had to..."

He didn't even think, because his emotions overloaded in that lightning strike of utter incomprehension and he lashed out in a punch, sharp. "You fucking bastard!" It was almost incoherent with the force of emotion behind is, as he felt something that had been healing slowly over break and rip raw all over again. He didn't know what was worse, the fact that Sherlock had been dead or the fact he was now alive because it meant he had chosen to stay away. Chosen to fool him and goddammit... The relief was swelling up, the pain sharper with it fighting for dominance inside of him.

John wasn’t sure which was worse, as the two mingled up in his chest while he watched Sherlock take a staggered step backwards, reaching up to hold his hand over his cheek. “I should be less surprised by that than I am. I understand you’re angry, John. I never expected it to take this long.”

And what was he meant to do with that?

"I believed in you," he said in a low voice, tightly choked back from the yelling he wanted to do. "I was the only one that did. In the end I let it go and you were *dead*, because if you weren't you chose not to come back. Even when I asked. So many times. And now you're here, and I don't know whether to kill you myself or..."

Hold him to make sure he was real and that it wasn't a dream.

Silence held as Sherlock looked at him, and John couldn’t find other words, watching the old-familiar darting of eyes, picking up pieces of evidence of… what? His life in the flat? And doing what with it? His mouth compressed, but finally Sherlock said, “You could sit down. And I’ll make tea, and we can catch up.” That was almost polite, and it was dizzying, whatever Sherlock had deduced that had spun him towards an agonizingly polite response for Sherlock. “There was a raid on a forger’s den in the business district, and Colonel Moran will be there for some time bailing his men out of various jails.”

Sherlock was never polite. Something wasn't right, aside from the fact he was here and what the hell did that mean? He practically collapsed into his chair, feeling the pulse of his heart beat rushing in his inner ears. "I can't believe this. No, bollocks, I can and..." What the hell, what the ever fucking hell was going on? Losing Sherlock had destroyed him, but then he had found Seb.

It wasn't a one for one trade, they were different. Vastly... vastly different, but it had gotten him through, and now. Now this. That gaping wound in his chest had stopped hurting so much, and now Sherlock was back?

"I needed to be sure there was no retribution against you. There were plans under plans, and they all needed to be unravelled. I had an unlikely ally in this."

"An... unlikely ally?" John asked. His tongue felt thick and clumsy in his mouth. Irene? Had to be Irene.

How the hell had she kept that from him? "Yes. And Colonel Moran, after a fashion. When one re-organizes a criminal network, even subtly, it's surprising what sorts of elements are abandoned or murdered to end loose ends." He could hear him opening and shutting cabinets, running water in the kitchen.

He still couldn't believe it. The problem was he wasn't entirely sure what he was going into shock over. "I watched you die Sherlock," he said in a voice that sounded weak even to him. Fucking hell, this better had been some sort of save the world thing because...

"I know. I wasn't..." He heard hesitance. "I'm sorry I did that to you, John, but it was necessary. You needed to believe I was dead."

“I didn't. I didn't believe it." Despite the blood on his fingers and death in the air that was real, he hadn’t believed that Sherlock, a veritable tornado of life, could have ended like that. And that had left him a lone voice at the time, paralysed with grief and need. The old feelings were there, the feelings of everyone thinking him deluded and insane. "Don't you dare tell me it was for the best. You have no idea Sherlock, no fucking idea."

"I think I have some idea. Three years on the run from trained assassins, either waiting for your lover to realise they were operating outside of his orders and kill them, or finding enough evidence to hand them over to local police." Something clinked in kitchen, and then Sherlock came out carrying the tea tray.

"Then why didn't you come to me. To us?" John said. "To Mycroft?" If Mycroft had known all along he was going to... He had no idea what he was going to do.

He was going to strangle the man. He was going to get Seb to strangle the man for him, then resuscitate him so he could strangle him again.

"My brother is at enough risk. He has his suspicions, as did Colonel Moran. Then again, I heard he also suspected Moriarty was still alive." He set tea-cups down, started to pour as well. Like everything was normal.

Seb knew? Seb had *known* and didn't say anything? After he had given him that faint hope before, and then run after him? "I see. So *everyone* else knew aside from me is that what you are saying?" John said slowly, some of the chaos inside of him becoming cold, and sharp and dangerous. "And it was for my own good?"
"Just Mycroft and Irene. I would say that Colonel Moran had more of a lingering suspicion, and given Irene's occasional lack of subtlety, I can see how that suspicion occurred. But yes, it was for your own good. If I contacted you, there was still a chance that you would be targeted. And Mrs. Hudson, and Lestrade as well."

He just sat there and breathed for a while because he didn't trust himself to say anything. His anger stirred at Mycroft. He'd taken a bullet for the man and he'd hidden this. Sworn to him Sherlock was dead. All this protection had meant nothing, he'd nearly died anyway, trying to save one last bit of Sherlock in his brother.

He shouldn't have. He shouldn't have -- fuck, he still would have, but fuck. He closed his eyes for a moment, heard Sherlock sit down across from him. Heard, vaguely, movement up the stairs and the front door open.

"John, you should've seen the look on Blakemore's face when I bailed him out. He looked at the cop and went 'Oh god, please don't release me, let me stay the night, le... Fucking hell."

"Good evening, Colonel Moran."

He probably looked more like a ghost himself than Sherlock, but his eyes immediately snapped open at the sound of Seb's voice. And he still didn't know what to say or do.

"Sherlock's alive," he said finally because so what if it were banal, he couldn't say what he wanted to say.

"Yeah, I can sort of fucking see that." He didn't turn and look, but heard Seb crossing the floor towards his chair, felt Seb's hand settle in a tight clutch against his shoulder. "How the fuck. Christ, I was right. Fuck. You and Irene and those fucking texts, fuck!"

"Quite. That's very eloquent, one would never know you had good schooling." Sherlock sipped at his tea. "I'm sorry, John."

"No, you're not." John said quietly. "No, you're not because you think you did it for the best. You... All of you decided what I could handle or not and you chose *wrong*." He struggled to get up. "Fuck this shit. I need some air."

Seb let go of him, but looked a little stunned. "What the hell did I do? I didn't, I confronted Irene and she said I was delusional..." And he was still staring at Sherlock like maybe he was, but fuck it.

John didn't want to speak to either of them, he just wrenched away and headed off out the door, away from standing there face to face with everything he had ever wanted given back to him, just when he had changed all his dreams and was happy. He didn't want to think that he had been tricked and part of him knew this was a bad reaction and he just didn't want to say something he’d regret right now. He had gotten used to holding it all inside, just letting that wound sit there unhealed until the pain of it was something normal to the way he lived.

He walked fast, fast as he could, hunched up into his coat as he limped along. It didn't feel normal now, it was agonizing, it was, fuck, Sherlock was *alive* and he just showed up and expected everything to be okay? Which, fine. It was Sherlock, and the world revolved around Sherlock Holmes, and John Watson was only secondary. Fuck.

After a few minutes, he felt someone fall into pace with him, and he didn't have to look to see who it was. There was no sense in trying to outpace Seb, and Seb at least was quiet beside him. Irritatingly present, but quiet.

He didn't even know where he was going. It was an aimless walk from Baker Street out into London and he could half wish for someone to try *something* because he wanted to hit something. Right now he could understand Seb and his need to fight perfectly... But he didn't want to hurt him. Although given long enough and the rage just sat there, coiling around him, squeezing the breath out of him until he felt physically sick with it, he might just want to really hurt anyone.

And then Seb nudged his shoulder lightly, steered him down a quieter narrow street. "John, C'mon. You're going to fuck up your leg."

He whirled on him, wanting to hit out at Seb but just… holding back. Just making a noise he didn't recognise himself. "Just don't. I..." He had to force his fist to unclench although he was shaking with the effort.

And Seb knew all the signs of an impending fight. Sometimes John wondered if he could smell it in the air. He backed John up against the wall, close and giving John no room at all. "I know you're fucking pissed. Well, be fucking pissed. I didn't know, and yeah, Irene worked me over good with that."

"You should have told me what you suspected," John said, found his hand gripping in Seb's shirt. "You... I told you about Jim, I was wrong but I told you. Then you knew, at least you knew."

"It hurt. I knew the first time, but I..." Seb pressed his forehead against John's. At least the wall was cold against his back, the back of his head, and there wasn't any going anywhere when he was pinned here. "I didn't want to inflict my fucked up delusions on you."

"I don't know what this means," John said finally. There was Sherlock and he hadn't been whole without him, but he wasn't going to lose Seb. He couldn't. "I don't know what any of this means."

"Me either. We'll figure it out." He slid a hand down, holding onto John at the hip.

He felt guilty for wanting Sherlock back so badly, when he had Seb and was perfectly happy with him. But as he closed his eyes he could still see Sherlock falling, and blood on the pavement, no pulse under his fingers. "He said it was to protect me. Us. Assassins Moriarty set in motion that you didn't know about. Is that possible?"

"Jim was fucking brilliant. It's possible." Seb nudged lips against his temple. "I can find out, if you'd like." He'd do anything John asked him to.

But he couldn't ask him to do things like that. Not now. It was true, he could have, it could be true, and what did that make him? A selfish git for not being grateful for the life Sherlock had been protecting. He had two choices: one, to regard Sherlock as selfish and a self-centred bastard who had no thought save for himself and feel good about himself, or to acknowledge Sherlock was alive and had been protecting his friends alone, on the run for three years and feel like the worst ungrateful little shit in the world.

It was possibly completely predictable what he would do, and he sighed as the guilt descended on him like a heavy weight, choking the fiery acid anger into check.

And Seb kept him pinned against the wall, thinking god knew what as he stood there. "I'll find out. And we'll... we'll figure this out. Promise to not do anything stupid and make this shittier, and I will, too."

"Aside from breathe?" John replied. Damn it, he was capable and decisive, and he could deal with this. "Okay. I'm okay, let’s go back. I've got to... deal with this. He did all this for me, us. The recording was proof of that."

"Yeah, okay." Seb leaned back a little, still lingering close. "You can still be pissed off. I highly recommend it."

"I've already hit him once. Not what I imagined doing," John answered. He'd imagined embracing him, hugging him, never letting go. But he hadn't even shaken his hand and said he was glad he was alive.

He was. He was sure he was, but he was angry and confused, and Sherlock had just shown up. Seb stepped back, and let John take a moment to get his bearings before they started a slower walk back. "It's sort of telling that you imagined him coming back," Seb pointed out quietly. "So, takeout?"

"Yeah, was going to cook but I've kind of lost my appetite a little." And his knees were wobbling a bit, but he was okay. Sherlock was alive and that really was a miracle.

Sherlock was alive, and he didn't know what came next, what... where Sherlock was staying, what came next, what... "Hey." Fingers squeezed his shoulders, and pulled gently at him as they walked. "Stay with me, hmn?"

"Sorry, I just. Too much to think about." Why did the memory of seeing him die seem more real than seeing him alive?

Because he'd spent more time with it. He'd spent the last two, almost three years with it without a day going past without the thought at least flitting through his mind somewhere and Sherlock had just come back. Like he'd popped out for bloody milk and gotten lost and finally remembered what he'd been doing. "Just don't want you veering off the sidewalk." There was a laugh in Seb's voice when he said it, but he also sounded like he was reaching. Nervous chuckle, not really Seb laughing. With his other hand, he flicked out his cell phone, absently firing off a couple of texts.

They walked for a few more blocks, and John was starting to get a sense of just how far he'd stormed off. It was a good thing he hadn't had time to get his winter coat off, because it was dead cold even with Seb beside him. "So, I had to bail Blakemore out and he was all 'nooooo, boss is going to kill me, noooooo'. I turned him loose and he's sending me these bloody apology notes. Don't even have to do anything to him, he's torturing himself. It's fucking brilliant. Wait until he finds the dead crow in his bathtub in the morning."
John quirked a smile at that. "At least it wasn't a bear," he managed aware that Seb was trying to distract him and knowing he was worrying him. He didn't want to worry him, and if their situations were reversed, he'd be worried. Actually, he'd probably be dead because Moriarty was like that, but.

He didn't know where Sherlock fit in his life anymore. He owed him, he had once loved him. Maybe he still did but he wasn't sure he was in love with him anymore. He just didn't know. For a while, he'd been sure that what he had with Sherlock transcended love. They were a matching set, had been for so very long, it had felt like.

"Wouldn't waste a bear on him." John could feel Seb's fingers massaging at his shoulder, still clutching him tight as they walked. "Keep an eye out for number six Chinese's delivery car. We can probably catch a ride with our order."

He wasn't sure he was going to be able to eat but Sherlock might be hungry. How to deal with it? Just sit there and ask him to tell the story? Let him have his say, then try and work out what he felt. Was he staying? Would it be a relief for him to leave? A surge of panic belayed that particular emotion. He didn't want him to leave again... But then he wasn't sure about him staying.

They got back to Baker Street in silence, as Seb gave up on carrying on a one sided conversation and just walked with John, fingers moving every so often, applying pressure to reel him back in every once in a while until they reached the door. "Ready to try this again?"

"Yeah." Running away didn't help anyone. He didn't do that. Back up the stairs, back into the flat and he pulled himself together the best he could as they re-entered.

It proved to not be enough, John realised as he reached the top of the steps, and stepped inside. Sherlock was a palpable presence in the room, always had been. He could smell takeout in the air.

"Oh good, you're back."

"I could say the same to you," he said trying for flippant where serious had not worked. "Okay, I'm dealing with it. Why don't you tell me… tell us, what the hell has been going on while we eat." And by then he might have figured out how to react.

Sherlock was still looking around the room, though John supposed he'd been up and standing and reacquainting himself with the place while they'd been out. Digging through god knew what. "It is both long and unexciting at the same time. As I said, there were elements nested under that original command which needed to be taken care of to ensure your continued safety. Those individuals have been taken care of, secured, either in custody or in final custody. I did keep abreast of your adventures, John. My commendation on solving the 'Bishop' issue, even if you did take a predictably military solution to the matter."

Seb was in the kitchen, pouring something, getting forks because they usually gave up on chopsticks after so much time of trying. When he came back, he was carrying two beers as well, with a grim set to his jaw. "Didn't know if you drank."

John blinked. "I nearly died saving your brother," he said eventually. "Seb helped save him. Where were you?" Were those messages from him through Irene? They had to be, his instinct told him they were.

"At the time? Sicily, and then briefly London before I headed on to Belgrade. You had it well in hand, John." Well in hand. Well in *hand*? Fuck, and he'd been in London? "I saw you were recovering well, and saw no need to complicate matters by possibly putting you at further risk."

"You really are a bastard," Seb murmured, taking a swig of his beer and just standing there beside John's chair. "Fuck. John took a fucking bullet for your brother, and you didn't want to complicate matters? I, Christ."

"And you killed a man in cold blood, the man who killed your smuggler. Did it feel good?" There was a faint smile curling Sherlock's mouth, and he took another sip of his tea. "You know it did. I can see it on your face as you pull up the memory. Pupil dilation, hitch of the breath, it's like arousal. But you hesitate to say it in front of John, because you think one day your casual violence will be too much. You're just pretending to be a--"

John was still back at *Sherlock in London* when Seb launched himself at the man, snarling curses as he tackled him hard enough to knock the heavy chair backwards, Sherlock with it and Seb on top of him.

"Whoa, whoa..." John had to launch in between them, struggling to get the two of them apart. "Stop this... Ow, Jesus, stop this the pair of... Sherlock! Back off, Seb... "

Stepping between Seb and anyone was a bad plan, and this was not going well. It still wasn't anything he'd ever imagined, but it at least felt less surreal somehow, and--

Sherlock was aware of a spray of blood from his mouth and nose, head knocked sideways when he felt his elbow connect with something hard and then heard John go down. It was funny when one could tell the difference between one falling body and another, but that particular thud cut him short viciously. "Shit." Moran, swearing, shifting his attention from Sherlock on the ground to John on the floor, elevating his head and trying to get him propped up immediately. "Shit, c'mon, John, I."

Sherlock had never really hit John before, not hit him and not pulled it. And with a bloody *elbow* of all things.

He didn't want to hurt John. Quite the opposite. How ridiculously stupid would it be to have spent all this time protecting him, to then injure him himself? It had been harder than he had thought and he thought that John was just impressed by him really, not emotionally connected to him because, really, even his own brother managed not to be affected too much. He’d assumed an understandable but ultimately shallow expression of feeling that would dry up in a short enough time. But he had watched John. Seen him. The limp was back, John's tell-tale of deep psychological distress for all the way he seemed to move on. Surely people could see that. Sherlock had thought he was the one making a sacrifice, one that led him straight through the hearts of some of the criminal undergrounds all over the world, but he hadn't thought he was making John a victim in the process.

John was meant to live.

"He's not coming around." Pulse was steady and almost calm though. Respiration even.

"Hnn." Moran edged Sherlock back from John with a very carefully placed shoulder, even as he began to arrange John propped up against his chair with a telling level of familiarity. Sebastian's respiration was uneven, but not winded; the man had no lingering trace of tobacco on him, though Sherlock had seen a darkened patch on the wallpaper by the desk, a foot or so of space just to the left side of the window, as if someone regularly sat and leaned towards the window while smoking. "He will. You just short circuited him." Crude allusion, that.

Sherlock wiped at his nose with a moment of interest in the blood splatter. "In some ways this has gone about as well as I expected."

Better in many ways, because though John had punched him -- which he had calculated to a point of near inevitability -- he had been surprisingly restrained. Moran had reacted now as he had predicted as well, but everything had come to a halt far too rapidly. John was fine, all the signals from his body was telling him that. He was probably just hiding from the situation in unconsciousness.

Moran was lingering, when there was nothing to do but move on, crouched down beside John and staying there, a hand slid under his winter coat, palm against his chest. "You've been fucking around for months now and you know it. Fuck. Why even bother coming back?"

"Because this is my home," he said, with an unspoken 'you idiot' lurking. "And, not that it matters to you, once it was safe I was always coming back. Untangling Moriarty's mess took time. He really did like to break his toys."

Moriarty hadn't just left a threat to John, he'd left dead man switch deals all over the world, in a last final fuck you to everyone. But he hadn't stayed away because of that, he'd stayed away because it would have gotten John killed. And now, well.

Now he was home, and John was at no more risk than he had been before. Still substantial enough to be interesting for the man, to keep his attention engaged.

Moran looked over his shoulder at Sherlock, gaze assessing. There was blood on his knuckles, Sherlock’s own blood, but there was older blood as well, just from that day, faint and soaked up by the inner lining of a pair of gloves. There was a shaving scrape on the left side of his jaw, pulled in a way that implied injury to Sherlock. If the man tried to get the drop on him again, he’d know where to hit back that time; his right shoulder was pulling, a horrible place for a sniper to be injured.

“What do you want?”

"I want my life back," he said immediately. "I want what I had before back. That shouldn't be too hard to understand, even for you." As for John, well... who knew? John's responses to him were complex and that made him unpredictable at the moment. But if he tried to get to John going through Seb, he would come to an unsubtle halt. "I want my friends back." He looked down at John who was stirring a little. He didn't have many, and he was possessive about the ones he had made. There, friends, not lovers.

Moran lowered his voice, fingers still lingering at John's side, which was unnecessary, really, because John wasn't able to process the sensation in any useful way. "Everyone moved on. Or tried to. People aren't clothes you can just shrug back into." His jaw moved sideways, an awkward motion that Sherlock supposed was self-calming, long habit. "And I'm not going anywhere."

"As you obviously sleep with John, my room is still empty," Sherlock said, noting the tell-tale signs. The familiarity, the ease, gestures that spoke of deep intimacy and not just fuckbuddies or friends. "There is no reason for me not to stay. If John tells me to leave I will, but..." He wouldn't. He knew John wouldn't make him go, even if it was for the sake of the mystery of finding out what happened.

John groaned a bit. "Jesus," came a mumbled groan. "What hit me?"

"Sherlock's elbow." Moran supplied that oh so helpfully, shifting back enough that John could move without hindrance, could get himself upright. "That's a very dramatic way to break up a fight, by the way. Not seeing double, are you?"

He moved back, helping John to his feet. Sherlock needed something to mop his face up with, other than his fingers; takeout napkins seemed to do the job sufficiently.

"Can we not do any more hitting?" John said getting up. "And apparently you didn't kill each other while I was out for the count. Good work."

Pupils slightly dilated, John was a little disorientated. Not a bad thing. "Moran and I were just agreeing that if you didn't want me to leave, I would use my room," Sherlock said. "As all my things are apparently still in the wardrobe there after three years."

Moran's jaw muscle twitched, and he was having an interesting anger reaction in terms of flushing on his neck, but silence was close enough to consent for Sherlock's sake just then. "My sister boxed them up after John took that bullet. Knowing her, there’ll be an inventory included as well."

"That's probably true," John said trying to shake his head clear. "I can't believe you're just...here."

"Do you want me to go?" Sherlock said diffidently, trying his bluff.

"No!" John said immediately and then hesitated. "No... I don't think so, if that's okay with you Seb?"

Seb, as if a violent criminal were some friendly and infinitely well trained rottie. Moran shrugged, a tight, calculated motion rather than anything natural. "'S fine. Whatever."

He resented Sherlock being there, that much was clear.

"Fine." Sherlock said. Considering he'd already unpacked his room, it was just as well, but it really was inevitable.

"You know what?" John said. "I think I've dealt with enough and my head is not exactly clear. I'm going to bed and I'll deal with this again in the morning when I've convinced myself this is real."

“Right. I’ll just clean up down here and then I’ll be up.” There was takeout to tidy up, apparently, and the spilled beer to deal with, and Moran was standing stiffly, watching John. Idiot.

John nodded and turned to him and just for a moment there was hint of that slight delighted smile he remembered from when the adrenalin was flowing and they were moving in tune. "Good night Sherlock."

"Tomorrow John," Sherlock replied, refusing to respond in kind as John trudged up the stairs.

Moran waited a beat, and then, rather than threatening him as Sherlock had been inclined to expect, started to pick things up to take them back to the kitchen, jaw tight but silent. "Well, well you really are trying to behave aren't you?" Sherlock said after watching him a moment. It was all rather interesting. Moran was more complex than he gave him credit for.

"You have no idea." Bottles clinked together, and he took a moment to swig out of one while he put takeout boxes into the fridge. "Fucking hell. Do you have to follow me in here?"

"I could talk to you through there, but that would be boring." He narrowed his eyes just a little. Well, John seemed to have performed a miracle. Pieced a broken man back together and made him a functioning human being capable of the more familiar human delusions of love.

"You could try not talking to me at all, yeah? That'd be excellent. We don't really have a lot to talk about." He glanced over his shoulder briefly, but he also seemed to be relaxing,

"Don't we?" Sherlock said. "Because I would have thought John was a common subject to us both."

And controlled Moran without even knowing he was doing it.

"And I don't want to talk about it. You're, fuck, you're back. Fine. I'll deal with this. I don't *share* well, but I'll get the fuck over it." He shut the refrigerator door, and straightened up, turning to stand uncomfortably close to Sherlock.

Intimidation and he was tall as well. Well if he wasn't going to be cowed by Moriarty or any of his assassins -- some of who were competent enough -- he wouldn't be cowed by Moran. "How very mature of you. This was always going to be a shock to John, I know that. But we never had a relationship."

Although he was closer to John than anyone he had been close to in his life.

"Oh, I know that. And you'd better get used to the fact that I'm probably less mature than my nephew. Army boys, you know?" He slapped Sherlock hard on the shoulder, and brushed past him. "G'night."

That left him faintly disorientated. He had expected a big confrontation, something else. He had expected anger, but he had also expected John to at least be pleased he was back. But then that was predicated on a perfectly reasonable assumption that John would have a level of detachment with regard to him brought about by time.

He clearly hadn't, which was a miscalculation on his behalf. There was nothing to do to fix it, except re-acquaint himself with the bottom part of the flat and settle back into the land of the living.

Whoever had come up with all those hoary adages about if you love something, let it go free, love shared grows bullshit was a fucking asshole, and a liar and Sebastian Moran wasn't going to fall for it. He wasn't fucking noble, he was vicious and greedy and possessive. When he got something, no one took it away from him. Which was why he waited three days, stalking the shower to time it just right to get John when he was showering.

John had been... subdued was probably the best word. Quiet and really trying to deal with whatever was going on in his head without bothering anyone else, which was crazy. Sherlock might be brilliant but he was blind to what he was doing, or he wasn't and didn't care. Everything had been so good between them, and then Sherlock waltzed back in.

And bam, things turned weird instantly, even with Seb trying to keep things as normal and easy as possible. He hadn't started fights, hadn't given into anything he wanted to do to that smug prick.

Seb closed the bathroom door quietly behind him, and cracked the shower door to sort of give John a warning. That had been another thing, a drop in John's... usual ease with shit. It was like trying to make out at his sister's. "Room for one more?"

"Hey," John smiled a little and he looked a little more relaxed with them in a quiet space together. "Just about."

A quiet space that had running water. Seb was out of his clothes in an impressive amount of no time, and stepped under the water with John. "Sorry, I just. Miss you, how can I miss you when we're in the same fucking house?" He slid an arm around John, got close because he could.

"I'm sorry," John said. "I know I'm not at my best at the moment. I'll get over things soon enough."

"Don't apologize," Seb murmured, pressing a kiss against the edge of his mouth. The water was not a hindrance for him, not when he could back John up against the wall of the shower. "I'm just worried."

"Don't worry," John replied responding to him. "I love you Seb and I really appreciate this. I just… don't know what's happening yet."

"I'm not going anywhere." He might get to the point where he chalked a line down the middle of the living-room, but he wasn't fucking going anywhere. That noble shit was for the birds, and idiots who hired him to clean up their lives. "And we've got a few minutes, so..." Hot water, John's skin under his hands, it didn't take much to get Seb going where John was concerned.

"You can't go." That was surprisingly desperate and John was clutching at him hard. Ella would probably say John was feeling insecure, but he didn't care. He had that fierce feeling of being desperately wanted and that was just what he needed himself.

John had no reason to feel insecure, none at all. Seb leaned into him, sliding his hands down John's sides, holding him close. "Hey, I'm not fucking going anywhere. You mean the world to me. I'm not, whatever you want is fine. I know that you..."
John was kissing him back. "Know that I what?" he murmured in between mouthing at skin.

He exhaled, feeling the touch of John's lips send a jolt right down to his balls. Fuck. "Nope, you killed that thought. Jesus that feels good..."

He could feel John's scars and for the first time he was possessive over them. They were something he and John had been through together. It was something he never had to share with anyone else, it was theirs. "Just, do. Yeah… Ooh god."

His fingers were maybe a little extra firm, but John was groaning, and Seb pressed in closer, close enough that he felt against his skin every time John breathed, every muscle twitch, and fuck, yes, that finally felt like enough, shifting carefully, kissing the side of his neck. "Tell me what you want. Please. Just, want to hear..."

"Fuck me," John said in a bare whisper. "I want it now... want to feel it." He had a wound up state Seb could appreciate. Seb had a second home in wound-up, and was considering an additional time-share. After nights in a row of making sure he was too tired to do more than just lie in bed and let John sleep. And listen to the asshole downstairs move books around and play his violin at bizarre fucking hours.

Getting John turned around was easy, and so was grabbing the lube that had moved into the bathroom ages ago. It was a horrible thing to put in his hair when he wasn't thinking straight late at night. Seb mouthed hard kisses against John's shoulder. It was all a little bit frantic and needy and it was strange it seemed to be that way for John as well, as if he was the one wondering if he would be thrown out on the scrap heap. Madness. He pressed back against Seb, grinding back against him.

"Remember what I said about restraining orders?" Seb murmured that against the back of his neck, shifting in close enough to slide his dick up between John's arsecheeks. There wasn't much sense in doing too much teasing, but he still put a hand between them and slid a partially slicked finger up John's hole. The *sound* John made was lovely, low in the back of his throat, and he felt nicely relaxed.

"Yeah, right now, thinking about it..." John said, bracing himself with his hands against the wall.

He laughed quietly, straightening up as he started to slide into John. Nice and slow, and hard enough to press John against the wall, to get him to arch onto his toes. So tight, John always felt so good around him, the way he clenched, the way his back moved. "Mmhn. Oh, you feel..." So good, so, so very good, while he braced an arm around John's chest, and reached down to start stroking him off.

"Oh god," and that was fucking fantastic, because it was not John trying to be quiet or do anything but being in the moment with him. Fantastic noises, hitching breaths, groans... Seb snapped his hips hard, drinking in those noises, because he hadn't heard them in what felt like forever and he loved the way John sounded against him, loved knowing he made John feel that way.

Fuck Sherlock and his presence in the flat, he would just have to deal. John was his no matter what mind game Sherlock was playing to get him back. He could lose himself in the thrust and movement and John's harsh breathing. John was his, all he really had, and he wasn't going to give it up. He was going to enjoy it, driving John harder until his breath was catching and he heard, felt John orgasm.

John gave an uninhibited cry out, clenching around him as he gripped the wall for support, even as he thrust in to his own climax. Urgent, a little rough and needy. Shower sex was fantastic. God it felt good, John and hot water and then the two of them panting while he finally pulled out, half leaning into John and half supporting him, pressing kisses against his neck. "God you feel good. Mmhm."

"You know, that felt good as well," John managed, eventually turning around. His smile was there, relaxed and amused and that was good. He’d missed that, missed just lingering against John, feeling him. He felt very alive, very… Very John. "We can do that again any time."

“I’ll hold you to that,” Seb murmured, brushing a kiss over John’s cheek. “Mm, Glorious.” Shower, interrupted in the best way. He could help John with the washing off bit, because that was no hardship at all for him, grabbing shower gel and lavishing attention over John’s skin, his scars.

"You know," John mused with a much more relaxed expression. "This possessive side of you has its attraction." He seemed very content in that moment. He didn't want to feel threatened by Sherlock's presence and right now he could almost believe he had no reason to be.

Almost.

"It's nothing new." Seb had always been proprietary, and easy with his affections at the same time. Something about having Sherlock always lurking in the public spaces of the flat made him shut down, tense up. "How's your leg?"

"Pretty good this morning," John admitted with a faint hint of surprise as if he hadn't noticed until he'd said something. He looked down at it as they rinsed off. "Must have unknotted over night or something."

Seb leaned in, running wet fingers through John's wet hair when he kissed the edge of his jaw again. All his. He was going to ignore the half jealous, half agonizing twisting feeling in the pit of his stomach, because, yeah. Psychosomatic injury that had gone away when Sherlock was around, that had come back when he'd died. Psychosomatic injury that was trending towards gone again. Psychosomatic meant Seb wasn't a fool, just. That he was going to pretend to be one for the sake of keeping the fucking peace. "Good. Don't screw it up running around in surgery today."

"It's the standing still that does it," John said, oblivious to the concept. "It means a lot to me that you are trying really hard with Sherlock. I... You're the one I want as a partner Seb, and I always will. But Sherlock, it's like something I lost came back." He shrugged a little. "I don't have the urge to kiss him or anything, I just need to know he's...alive."

And he was alive, all right. Alive and in the living room contemplating eternity or something. It was like living with Jim, minus the fun parts. "Best I can promise is to not duct tape him up and put him in the boot of my car." John cut the water off, and Seb pushed the door open slowly, mostly to reach for a couple of towels.

John laughed a little. "That's pretty much all I can ask," he said as he got a towel. "Thank you."

"Nothing to thank me for. I suppose Mycroft wouldn't appreciate me doing that, either." He wrapped one around his waist, and grabbed a hand towel to scruff through his hair.

"Probably not." John's expression darkened. "I'm going to have words with him. One word was all it needed."

"Who, Mycroft?" Seb lifted an eyebrow at John, moving to dry his hair off, too. "You're getting fuzzy."

"I like a bit of length there," he said, scruffing at his hair. "Yeah. I was the only one who believed and yet I'm the last one to know."

He slid his fingers leisurely through the faint curls at the base of John's neck. "Well, technically I only suspected."

"I know," John said. "I know, I just... Mycroft know, Irene had to know. Even Molly Cooper knew...Mycroft should not have been a surprise."

"Yeah, well. Media's gotten wind of it again." Round three, Sebastian supposed as he kept drying off, lingering comfortably beside John. The bathroom might as well have been a meter wide for all the space they weren't using.

"Oh God. Which means it'll be 'Sir John' again, and endless rehashes of everything," John replied. "It's not like what Sherlock did was even believable. Well, not by anyone who hasn't hung out with a genius."

"I know, but didn't you feel daft when he was done explaining it? Like oh, well, fuck, I should've known all along." He wandered over to the cabinet to do a quick touch up shave over the sink. Of course he'd obviously jump into a skip he’d prepared earlier and then jump down and the drugs that slowed his heartbeat would make it plausible enough that he'd end up immediately in Molly Hooper's care for corpses. It was so simple that it made Seb remember the days he'd hoped Jim had been a trick, with a blank, or, or... Or anything.

False DNA records, a trick Irene had used, and he was set. He had planned it, gone up there knowing the way it would work. It was something that Jim would have done if he hadn't been coming at it from the other direction. "I'll get a taxi to work, definitely. You still going to see Becks?"

"Oh, yeah. Coffee place with the proprietor whose wife has the dodgy paperwork. Figure public setting should cut down on her urge to do heart to hearts." And John probably needed to get going, while Seb lived a criminal's leisurely schedule.

He leaned and kissed him again. "Okay, I've gotta get a move on. I'll pick up breakfast there as I had...better things to do." He smiled a little. "Gotta go."

"Good luck. I'll do something for dinner. No bear, I promise." He waved at John in the mirror, waving the razor. Best to not follow John upstairs and make everything run later, so he took his time and didn't leave until he heard the outer door shut.

It had done something to assuage some of his unease, to think of John with his marks on him, walking around feeling that he had been in him. He seemed committed to him, but there was no doubt his sleep had been troubled and he seemed to feel the need to check Sherlock was there a lot.

There was nothing to do but bear it, and be there for John. As much as humanly possible for Seb.

He wandered out of the bathroom, starting up the stairs to get a suit to throw on. He'd get breakfast at the coffee shop.

"Really, Moran, first John, now you." Sherlock was sauntering out of the kitchen, looking him up and down in a way that reminded him more than a little of Moriarty. "I don't need to deduce anything about what you've been doing. I'm sure even Mrs Hudson has worked that out."

"It's not exactly a secret," Seb noted wryly, brushing past Sherlock. "Do you want anything? I'm going out."

"Lestrade is coming around later," Sherlock said, his hair mussed but his eyes that same preternaturally bright he remembered from Jim. "I have everything I need."

"Oh, Lestrade. Say hello to him for me. He'll wince." It was great fun, in a lot of ways -- the man knew what Sebastian Moran did for a living, but he also knew he did it for the government, or at least, assisted. So there'd never been a threat to him, but it didn't mean there wouldn't be.

"Yes, I believe he is waiting for you to run amok with some high calibre weapon," Sherlock said. "He has no sense of adventure." He started off up the stairs again even as he heard John go. Seb shook his head, and ducked into their room. It was all mechanical -- getting dressed, putting on the slick crime boss he was supposed to be. He grabbed his phone on the way out the door, and his car keys, hoping to take any lurkers outside by surprise.

They did suddenly notice him going from where he saw them clustered as if they had been trying to mob John as he left for work. "Colonel Moran!" they tried to run after him. "Can you confirm that Sherlock Holmes is really alive?"

"Oh, Christ, wasn't there a statement or something by the family?" He waved a hand slightly, taking a casual stroll towards his car. He wasn't going to get himself worked up or react, and if any of them tried to get too close, they'd regret it. "So you already know the answer to that. Go away."

"Did Sir John know all along?" one asked.

"What brought him back? Why did he fake his death for nearly three years?"

A good question.

Sir John. Fuck, Sir *Watson* as least. "Not really my story to tell." He held up the clicker for his car as he finally got close enough for it to unlock. "Now, if you don't mind..."

"Why is he living with you and Sir John?" Oh and he could see the sordid threesome headlines already.

And the first answer on his tongue was 'apparently to piss me off', but oh, that'd make it to print and then he'd never live it down. "Because they're close. If my sister wanted to move in, I wouldn't say no, either." He opened his car door, and made a shooing motion. "Now, go away."

It didn't stop them making one last attempt to get a scoop before he drove off. They were old hands at this particular media dance now. But Becks was likely to be really angry, as much at Mycroft as anything.

Still. He'd gotten loads better at that shit than he had been, which was really just trial and error. He was nigh on a fucking war criminal, and they just kept pleasantly and sometimes harassingly asking him questions. It was fucking bizarre.

The drive to the coffee shop was smooth, and he made a few phone calls as he went, juggling old pressure points against each other smoothly. It was funny the shit people got wound up and held grudges over, even in their world.

When it came to life and death, he wondered why they bothered sweating the small stuff.

Becks was already there waiting, in her smart work suit, sharp and together. There were times where he wondered if she could have had the same level of control as Irene. He swung by the counter, ordered a good strong cup of coffee and a croissant, and then headed over to her. "You look frightening today. Morning."

"Lunchtime meeting at the palace," Becks said. "With Mycroft. So, I guess you're late due to reporters in the road?"

"And sex in the shower, yeah. Sorry. The reporters are hellish." He leaned back in the chair, crossing his legs at the ankle.

"I'd say too much information but you know I'd ask details," Becks answered sipping her latte. "So what's going on? Mycroft is suspecting some sort of sordid liaison. I don't think John would do that.”

"Mycroft suspects that? Really? Oh, that's bloody classy. So he should be expecting a car bomb any day now, then?" Seb said it lightly, but fuck. Mycroft was lucky that they didn't have their regular meeting until Friday. "I don't know what the hell is going on."

Becks shrugged a little. "You've got nothing to be worried about," she said with irritating confidence. "John loves you, that's all there is to it."

He glanced over his shoulder towards the barista, just a brief motion. "Mmm. I don't plan on doing anything stupid like running off. Already had that discussion in my head. I'm not allowed to kill him, so. Just gunna have to put up with the arsehole."

"When you say put up, is that like... Secretly planning an untimely end when I can get away with it or..." Becks asked raising an eyebrow. What else did he expect from her, really? She was his sister. She knew him too well, even when he *was* trying hard.

“No.”

He fell quiet when he heard the Barista come up with the coffee and Croissant, thanked her quietly, dismissed her in the same breath. “I uh... I’m not sure if I’m being a doormat or a better person, but I’m trying.” And Sherlock reminded him of Jim. Too much, because he’d gone a long time without thinking about Jim as anything other than a historical fact. Once upon a time, there’d been Jim. But it was there in Sherlock’s eyes, that. That whatever the hell it was that had been in Jim’s eyes.

He couldn't deny there was something magnetic about it, something that John must feel as well. He knew what it was like to be sucked into the orbit of someone so amazingly brilliant it was like staring into the heart of the sun. There was... something there. He didn't think it was desire and probably not for John either, but it was an attraction so profound, it could be interpreted as such.

"I'm impressed," Becks said and she didn't seem to be joking. "Seriously, that's... wow. So you don't think he is poaching?"

"No." He started to rip his croissant into appropriately sized pieces. It was still possible that they'd fall into bed together, but there was that strange detached thing that made him think of Jim again -- like it'd be exploring and nothing actually substantial. Sort of, oh, that was interesting, pass me my chemistry set. He ate a bite, and then chased it with a sip of coffee. "At least, he wouldn't on purpose. And honestly, what the fuck am I going to do if he does?"

"I know what you would have done before," she said. "I remember Bradley."

He shouldn't have laughed, but he did, a quiet chuckle. Yeah, that one was hard to forget. He'd come back from Kosovo, gotten a nice welcome home, and found someone else's trousers in his drawer. "Would've been more than a fractured jaw if the neighbours hadn't called the cops."

"Look, I don't think John would do that. He doesn't seem the type," Becks said. "He'd not do anything behind your back. Sherlock… from what I've heard from Mycroft, he doesn't have friends, he's got one friend and that’s John. He's going to be a part of his life one way or another I guess, but... That doesn't mean they get to take advantage. You don't have to agree to everything."

"Is this what passes for a pep talk, Becks? Because you're still shite at it." He cocked an eyebrow at her, and popped another piece of croissant into his mouth. "I'm stuck with him, but I don't have to be a doormat? Did you really just hand me that contradictory sentence? It's like living with *Jim*, without the sex. You don't know what it's like until you've done it."

She laughed a little. "There is a middle ground to everything. Yeah, he might have to be there, but you don't have to just accept everything he says just because of that." She stole a bit of his croissant. "We're not particularly good at pep talks are we? It was all... suck it up, get on with it. I just... don't want you to be unhappy."

Seb pushed the plate closer to her, offering another piece if she wanted one while a smile pulled the edge of his mouth. He supposed it was nice that she didn't want him to be unhappy, because things had been... really blindly good. Unbelievably good and easy, which he supposed was why Sherlock Holmes was back. Karma. "I think it's easier to suck it up and get on with it. The rest will follow." Jim and his unbelievable compound fractured leg and being stabbed and just letting himself bleed while he took care of shit that needed to be done. Everything he did while John had been in the hospital. The trip to Malaysia without John, and the gunshot wound he'd taken to his shoulder while exfiltrating.

Suck it up and get on with it.

"I could always tip Mycroft off," Becks said. "He... I'm not sure how long he has known. He definitely believed it to start with though." She stole another small piece of croissant and ate it.

"Tip him off to what, exactly?" Seb leaned back in the chair, setting the coffee cup in his lap and mostly just holding it to have something to do with his hands. "I threw out a sighting... Christ. Must've been my first meeting with him, after." After his stint in custody, after that day Mycroft had bugged John's sleeve, after he'd gotten his organization up and standing on two legs again.

"No, I mean if Sherlock causes big problems," Becks said. "He owes John and well..." She didn't say it out loud but she managed to convey he owed him too.

He shook his head slightly, trying to not look amused by what she was saying. "I think you're romanticising what I do for a living, again. It's excellent to be out and walking around, Becks, but I'm not going to push my hand. Tried it once, got a nice warning for it. He's a cold operator."

Iceman, Jim had called him. Cold and brilliant. More dangerous in his way than Sherlock because he persisted, as slow and inexorable as a glacier creeping to cover the world in an iceage.

"He can be," she agreed. "You can come round to dinner. Sherlock, too, if he can stand children. If he is anything like his brother... he won't come."

"Might out of spite." Still. He gave a shrug, and nodded. "I'll see if John's interested." Because they sort of did and didn't live out of each other's pockets, but Seb always automatically re-extended any invitation made to him to John. It just made sense.

His cell phone gave the annoying buzztone he'd attached to Blakemore's number; it was something he wanted to ignore, but then another one hit, and that was just too much to be coincidence. He set the coffee cup on the table and leaned forward to pull it from his pocket. "Sorry, looks like I've got something to deal with. It's bizarre, like being on call 24/7 -- and it's always for simple, stupid shit..."

"It's okay. You keep those underlings of yours under control," she said and patted him on the hand gently. "Call me when you want to come over, Seb."

"Will do." He grabbed another bit of croissant, and popped it into his mouth while he stood up. It was, in some ways, like having a brigade again. Annoying, baffling-ly stupid at times, but he liked it. Liked steering and guiding the idiots, and knowing that one day one of them would probably take his place and if he'd done it right, they wouldn't be complete fuck-ups by the time they did it.

He gave his sister a wave, and dialled Blakemore's number as he walked. The day had started far too early, so it was clearly going to be a long one.

Sherlock wasn't sure why he had willingly done something he would ordinarily have equated to a close second of being hideously tortured, but he felt he hadn't really had an option. It was a sacrifice, again for John, and he vaguely felt a sense of obligation to him for coming back from the not-dead and it was written in every movement and nuance of him how much he was struggling to deal with the concept.

For John, he had jumped off of a building and faked his own death. This...while hard, surely not that bad.

He was starting to doubt it.

“How’re you not dead?”

"Because I'm not," Sherlock said a little tersely. Children never quite seemed to get the hint. "I never died so therefore I am not dead. It is really very simple."

"Uncle John told us stories, and you were always dead in them, which is why you never came around." Terse apparently didn't make her interest wane in the least. At least the boy had wandered off to the backyard of his own cognizance.

"He's not your uncle and adults tell children stories all the time," Sherlock replied. "They are called lies. Adults lie all the time."

"He is too my uncle." She was screwing up her face a little, but it was more very small anger than tears. "He's Uncle Seb's partner, and that's like Aunt Lily's husband. Uncle John doesn't lie, he writes."

"Blogging? You call that writing. And the books, they are pure fiction, save some vague similarities," Sherlock dismissed. "I was there and I can tell you, most of it was... embellished. People just don't think, they don't look at things. If you look at things properly you can tell anything and everything about them."

She put her hands on her hips. "Okay. Do it, then."

Children were notoriously messy with their clues and Sherlock ran over Louisa with a practiced eye. "You've recently become interested in a boy, and you've tried on you mothers make up though she doesn't allow it. You've been writing in your journal because you know your mother can check your email and facebook account. You had cocopops for breakfast but you are starting to worry about what you eat because you think you are putting on weight. It's puberty, but you haven't worked that out. You have a secret stash of chocolate hidden in your room and you play the violin, but you are not holding your wrist correctly so you play flat and you've never understood why."

Easy. Traces of lipstick in the wiped clean lips, nearly scraped off nail varnish, ink smudges on hands in a glittery girl pen purple - definitely not homework. Stretching from the top she was wearing, showing she was self-consciously pulling it down all the time, and string indents on the fingers with a tendency to hold her wrist strangely. She might as well have had a neon sign over her head.

Louise’s eyes went wide, and for a moment she was stock frozen and staring hard at Sherlock. It wasn't even satisfying because it hadn't been at all challenging. "How did you do that? Do my mom! Do Uncle Seb!" Not her father, that was interesting. She apparently thought he had no secrets to hide worth knowing.

"Which part of observation did you not understand?" he asked. "It is deduction. A holistic approach to scientific evidence. It is a very simple principle which you have to be exceptional to master. I knew all that about you from looking at you, observing you. People shout out what they re doing with ..clues all the time. You have traces of lipstick in the cracks of your lips, you have tiny smudges of nail varnish here. Why would you start trying on make-up and hiding it? Because you are a teenage girl and it is forbidden. Ink smudge on your finger... there... unusual in this electronic day and age. Not homework as no school allows sparkly purple ink… and so on." He gestured vaguely at her.

"But how do you know what means something and what doesn't mean something? Not everything means something." And rather than attempting to apply it herself, she tried to make further sense of it. Still, that was better than blind acceptance, he supposed.

And then Seb swooped in, rolled up shirtsleeves with an expensive watch on one wrist and a leather cuff on the other, catching Louise under the armpits to lift her up a little before setting her down. "Hey, girly girl. Your mum wants you to wash up before dinner. You, too, Sherlock. I already herded Tommy in to the sink."

"I assure you my hands are clean," he said. He spotted the leather cuff -- there was a world of information right there that they really didn't want him to reveal. Still, it might be amusing if one of the children started observing their 'Uncle Seb'.

Louise giggled. "Sherlock's amazing! He told me all sorts of stuff. It was so cool!"

“Yeah, it is. It's hard to do, too. Go on, wash up." He nudged Louise along, the straightened up, crossing his arms over his chest. "I assume you can deduce your way to the dining room?"

"I think I might manage," Sherlock drawled, standing up and heading that way. He had to admit it did smell good, a proper roast dinner. It was just not something they did often. Moran did seem to be good with his niece and nephew, another element to the puzzle. He wasn't sure what puzzle he was building out, but he was letting it casually develop until he knew what he wanted to do with it.

"Good. Hate to see you standing in the wrong room," Seb murmured, walking along. He could hear glasses, water being poured, John talking casually with Moran's sister and her husband.

"...I should have the first draft to the editors by the end of the month," John was saying. "Once their legal department has ensured that Sherlock and I won't get sued for contravening official secrets about glowing rabbits."

Seb snorted, sitting down next to John at the table. Rebecca and Jeremy were on either end. Sherlock supposed the chair to John's left was for him, and the two across the way were the kids'.

He sat down, unable to stop his cataloguing of things. Everything noticed, from the tired lines under make-up for Rebecca, to the comfortable familiarity John had with the place and the way that he "fitted."

"Seb, carve the meat will you?" Rebecca instructed pushing it over. Interesting sibling dynamic really.

Rebecca ordered, Moran rolled his eyes and did what he was told. It was a shame he couldn't get Mycroft to do what he was told, but there Moran was, standing up to carve the meat in a deft way that was probably similar to carving up animals and people for disposal. "Thanks for having us over. I'm pretty sure my backup plan of lasagne with bear sausage hidden in it would've had me sleeping on the sofa."

"There has been a lot of bear related product since Alaska," John said.

"It's your own fault John," Jeremy said as he brought in bowls of vegetables and roast potatoes. "Help yourselves, I'm just getting the gravy." Alaska? Alaska. That was something interesting to turn in his head as the children scuffed their way into the room.

"We should run out of bear in... What, another six months?" He looked over his shoulder at John, smirking. "Less if Mrs. Hudson keeps helping. By then something else will be in season somewhere."

"Uncle John and Uncle Seb killed a *bear* last month," Tommy grinned. "It's cool!"

"It'll be crocodile or something next," Rebecca said. "If you will give him presents like that."

"You gave him a bear...ah of course, Alaskan hunting permits and the tendency for Sebastian to shoot things," Sherlock commented, taking the food.

Moran continued to hand out the meat, still smirking. "Seriously, how much stuff did you nose through when we were at work this week?" He sat down, and John thankfully blocked the view.

“Oh please, a glance around the room in five seconds told me that much," Sherlock dismissed. "Books on the shelves, coarse animal hair in various places. "

"The way you give your guns pet names…" John added as a light tease.

He bumped his shoulder against John's, and Sherlock watched the gesture. "You named your camera."

"Yeah." John grinned a little and Sherlock found that fascinating.

The meat was served and Sherlock noted it was a beef sirloin, and deduced that Rebecca was trying to impress. Considering the familiarity of John and Sebastian logically she was trying to impress him. That was interesting.

Why bother? Except that Sebastian had mentioned that she worked for Mycroft, so perhaps she was going the curry favour through the brother's brother route. "Sherlock, can you do that trick?" Louise asked. She was kicking her legs underneath the table, grinning as she started to eat her veg.

"It is not a trick," Sherlock said. "I told you it is deduction and observations. Only those who actually think can see it."

John and Sebastian both laughed, and Sebastian was mostly shaking his head between bites. "I'm sure Scotland yard is glad to have you back doing your, well, it may just be observations but you have got a unique mind," Jeremy offered.

"They hate it of course," Sherlock dismissed the blatant flattery. "No one likes to have their noses rubbed in their stupidity."

Louise giggled, and Sherlock wondered why she was hanging off of his every word. Clearly she didn't take after the adrenaline fuelled streak in the family, if she had an interest in 'Uncle John' and some complete stranger who could work things out. A thinking child, perhaps?

"What, uh." Rebecca was all relaxed smiles, but that tension around her eyes was interesting. "Are you back to stay?"

"Assuming another debacle like the one that precipitated this does not occur, then yes," Sherlock said practically daring Moran to contradict him. He saw John's inadvertent smile.

And Moran... didn't contradict him. "It generally takes time for criminal masterminds to develop. They don't rise up whole cloth. I think you're safe for another couple of decades," Moran scoffed.

"Hah, like Athena?" Tommy supplied. "We've been reading about myths, and Greeks! So, like Athena, she stepped out of her da's head." Oh, they still told that one? That was a story that was *clearly* a lie, but there a small child was willing to say adults didn't lie, they just told you people stepped out of other people's heads. Excellent logic, that.

"Loosely based metaphors couched in fictional rubbish," Sherlock dismissed.

"Sounds like a review of my last book," John dead-panned.

"You forgot to add 'searing study of unlovable characters'," Moran grinned, taking a swig of water. "I thought you were staying away from the book reviews."

"Oh, that's rich coming from you," Jeremy said. "I bet you still have the address of the writer who accused, what, Three Months in the Jungle of being a romantic ode to machismo and colonialism?"

"Pffft, that was a decade ago. They probably don't even live in Newcastle anymore."

"Unlovable characters?" Sherlock queried rhetorically. "I think they mean realistic." John's portrayal of him had been surprisingly truthful, and even in a fictional way, very revealing in terms of John's characters internal workings.

He wasn't correct on everything that had crossed Sherlock's mind during the case, but it was fictionalised as well as already in print, so there wasn't too much point in attempting to correct his misinterpretations. On that one. "Same thing. Lestrade was offended enough for everyone. I'd give you that guy's address if I thought it'd end in anything other than an ASBO."

"I should be worried about how you get these addresses?" Rebecca asked.

"Relentless googling. Remember, kids,” Seb offered around a sip of his water, “anything you put on the internet stays there forever. And gets found by creepy bastards years later, when you least expect it."

"A useful tool though," Sherlock added. The food was actually very good. He usually had very little time for food, because there was something interesting to do. "But no substitute for using your mind and senses."

John nodded. "A phone on the other hand..."

"Indispensible."

"I vaguely remember life before blackberries and smart phones," Jeremy offered wistfully.

"I remember when you had a pager," Moran offered, gesturing vaguely with his fork at Jeremy. "And I thought you were a drugdealer, not a cop, because who else carries pagers?"

"Can I have a smart phone?" Louise asked hopefully. "...For emergencies. When I'm at school. All my friends have one!"

"Some people become over reliant on their phones," Sherlock said. "It's a tool not a way of life." It was actually comparatively pleasant conversation, even with John making a disbelieving sound at Sherlock's comment.

"It's a tool and a leash," Moran noted regrettably. "And it empowers my employees to leave me bizarre text messages at 3am, with stuff like 'Can't get the conex unlocked'. Really? Put your phone down for thirty seconds and use your bleeding brain."

He approved of that sentiment at least. "Sherlock sends me texts when he's sitting downstairs asking for cups of tea," John said. "Which I generally ignore."

"Please mum!" Louise asked again.

"We'll see," Rebecca said, but he knew that she would give in. It was all there in the tone of her voice -- indulgent, doting, likely an about-face reaction to whatever sort of house she and Moran had grown up in, though for all of their relaxed demeanour, neither child seemed to be running rampant.

"Christmas is coming," Moran reminded her.

Tommy was diligently finishing off his veg, eyeing the adults across from him. "So's my birthday. Louise calls it Tommy-mas, and it lasts two weeks."

"Just because you have your birthday between Christmas and New Year, doesn't mean it is all about you," Louise said. "I want a phone for Christmas, please."

At least she showed some manners about it. Sherlock was slightly impressed. Screaming spoilt children was not what he wanted to deal with because Christmas day would no doubt involve this family, and Mycroft of course. He was half looking forward to their own rituals having missed it for three years.

He'd clearly missed a great deal over the last three years if he was missing sparring with his brother, and if he was willing to tolerate a domestic scene in quiet observation without it having any application to a case. It wasn't as if any of them were really challenging, except John, perhaps Moran. They were very normal people who wore everything on their sleeve -- occasionally literally in glitter pen.

Jeremy tsk’d, and touched Louise's arm gently. "All right, let's not spoil any surprises. Enough phone talk." Still, by saying that he'd as good as ruined the surprise. It was probably already sitting in a box on a high shelf in the master bedroom, or perhaps the guest bedroom -- where-ever they knew the children were least likely to sneak in and look.

Human behaviour was rather predictable sometimes. "I believe I would like an interesting case for Christmas," Sherlock said having finished his plateful. "Should anyone wish to oblige." He couldn't bear the tedium where the country shut down.

"We'll alert the criminal community immediately," John said with a faint smile.

Moran snorted, taking a swig of water, and Jeremy shot him a look before grimacing like someone had kicked him under the table. "Hey, they've got families and in-laws and crap to deal with just like the rest of us. Lestrade'll mostly have domestics to review around then. Maybe one of those'll be interesting." He looked at Rebecca, picking up his own plate, who just nodded back, and the process of clearing the table started.

"An interesting domestic? I'd rather watch paint dry," Sherlock said. He was behaving, he could be good at charming it just usually wasn't worth the bother. They couldn't understand what it was like in his head. Even sitting there his mind was calculating all over the place, multiple variables soaking in information. Soon he would exhaust the possibilities of the room, and move on to the people.

That was where the trouble in pretending to be polite usually came in. There wasn't even anything sordid about them, nothing that jumped out at him as a secret that should've been so obvious it burned, like the fact that Lestrade's wife was *still* cheating on him, regularly, in fact, and that the man had no obvious physical reaction to the fact other than outrage that Sherlock dared to *verbalise* it.

He sat and watched while Moran and Rebecca cleared the table, and disappeared into the kitchen. Jeremy joined them after a moment, and came back sooner with a plate of biscuits. He'd recently had to re-qualify his shooting abilities for the police, but he was an inferior marksman -- the slide bite on his hand, the fact that no one was discussing it meant it was of no exciting import. There was no worry around his eyes, so he'd passed his qualifications with the likely same low standard he did every year. Never asked his brother in law for help, he assumed, or it wouldn't be a reoccurring incident. The question there was why?

"It must be good to be back in London."

"In comparison to some of the places I have been, it is practically a paradise," Sherlock replied. He half wanted to grab hold of John and say, 'look, look, I'm making small talk and not being insulting for you'. He wasn't sure how long it could last. "Why don't you ask Sebastian for help with your aim?" he asked unable to keep the curiosity down for more than two seconds.

"I, uh." It startled the man, and that was a pleasant moment, watching the wheels tick in the back of the man's brain, to look sideways and watch John trace what Sherlock had just said and understand it before Jeremy himself did. He'd almost been worried that the slight progress he'd made with John would've been lost in the intervening time, but he'd apparently at least kept up his ability to follow a thread. He blinked hard at Sherlock, which was a sure sign that he had an immediate answer to it and wasn't going to say.

"I'd just rather not."

Then Moran leaned into the room, as casual in the place as John was, as if they were back at the flat. "Coffee? John?"

"Sure, whatever Becks has," John replied, getting up to apparently help. "Hold on."

"Black, strong," Sherlock said. After the meal they had eaten he didn't need anything else. He mulled at the issue. Why wouldn't Jeremy ask for help from someone he was comfortable enough to allow in his house with his children? Ah, professional distance. Where would they practice? It would involve inviting Sebastian there and practicing. Was it to protect his own reputation or his brother in law from the rumours of him consorting with a police inspector?

Either or both were quite valid options. After all, there were no public rumours of Sebastian's criminal activities, but his cover story of Defence Contracting was generally viewed by the public at large as a semi-criminal endeavour, or at least a ruffian's life, imagining armed civilians in warzones shooting up the local populace even if it mostly involved paperwork. Still, a man couldn't be faulted for having a soft spot for his wife's interest in her brother, which kept his reputation defensibly clean should things ever go wrong. Perhaps he was genuinely discomfited by thinking about what Moran got up to during his work hours.

He hadn't inquired from John yet how complicit he was or wasn't, but it was something Sherlock found interesting. And how his own presence in the flat would affect the man's reputation. Criminal and consulting detective under the same roof. He could probably solve the city's uninteresting crimes by just breaking into the man's laptop, but that was *easy*. That was boring.

"It really is uncanny," Jeremy murmured, eyeing Sherlock was the kids picked through the biscuits.

"Uncanny implies a level of superstitious inexplicability, that is not present in my deductions," Sherlock said. "Of course, there are multiple explanations but I believe you are maintaining plausible deniability and keeping professional spheres separate. Ask John then."

"Ask John what?" John moved back in towards them.

"To help me improve my shooting skills," Jeremy said, while Rebecca and Sebastian came back into the room. A perfectly decent cup of black coffee was put in front of him, and then Sebastian lounged his was into the chair on John's other side.

"John is a surprisingly good shot for someone who was a doctor in combat." Sherlock recalled the shot John had made after they first met, killing the cabbie killer.

"I was a soldier, too, Sherlock," John repeated.

Yes, but a doctor foremost. "And a frightening shot with a pistol," Sebastian agreed, leaning forward to snag a biscuit.

"At the risk of inflating John's ego, he is an adequate shot with a handgun," Sherlock said. "And he has a very strong public profile."

"Steady, I can feel my ego inflating from my adequacy," John said wryly.

"What's a public profile?" Louise asked.

"Something your uncle Seb lacks," Moran drawled, putting an arm over John's shoulders. "Thankfully, I haven't been barred from the country club."

Sherlock smiled a little at that. "Your... Uncle John is a knight of the realm. People write lurid stories in the newspapers about him, generally wildly inaccurate but flattering," he said.

"Once again my adequate ego is inflating."

Rebecca took a sip of her coffee. "And Mycroft says he's seldom heard a complimentary word pass your lips."

"A compliment isn't worth anything unless it is about something extraordinary," Sherlock said. "I have high standards." He finally sipped his coffee, noting it was a superior roast. Again, the need to impress.

Strange, she didn't seem like she felt she needed to impress. Still, there had to be a reason, a thread to pull and follow. She had tired eyes and she'd touched up her concealer. Something was worrying her, but what? Could be simple domestic issues, work, could be a secret she was keeping for work. That was likely, given the nature of Mycroft.

"Well, if you want to, Jer," John said. "Although Seb would be the more skilful choice, I get why."

"So have you been working cases?" Jeremy asked as he nodded at that.

"I haven't been back that long, so only a few." Sherlock acknowledged.

He was still waiting for one that was really inspiring. Nothing so far had really taken a hold of him passionately. "And John's helping again, or...?"

"If you call blogging helping," Sherlock needled John a little.

"I am useful in stopping people from trying to throttle Sherlock," John added amicably enough.

"Someone has to." Sebastian's voice was pitching towards humorous, but Sherlock didn't buy it, not entirely. Jealous then, still jealous and afflicted by eros, sexual love. Filios, eros and agape, the Aquintian concepts of love. Sherlock contemplated the fact that eros eluded him but he had surprised himself by feeling *intensely* about John.

"I look forward to the next big case."

"Well, then. To cases?" Rebecca lifted her coffee cup in a mockery of a toast. From John's grin, yes. To cases.

Sherlock believed he had done exceptionally well. No one had been reduced to tears, John seemed amused and mellow. Only Moran still seemed tense as they drove back to the flat.

"That went well," John said, master of the banal.

Tense might've been the wrong word. Absent, perhaps, or strained. Emotions were fickle and hard to pin down, after all. "It's always nice to see the kids. And Jeremy, I suppose. You're not allowed to tell him that."

"He is somewhat mediocre," Sherlock commented. "But astute enough to know when not to mix business and pleasure."

"He is a very good chief inspector," John put in.

"I meant in comparison to present company." It wasn't an insult, just a fact.

"Next year's their twenty fifth wedding anniversary. They took forever to finally have kids." Sebastian shifted in the driver's seat, eyes fixed on the road. "Maybe mediocre but loyal to Becks, so. He gets a pass from me on managing his office politics well."

"Something is bothering your sister," Sherlock said. "I exercised tact and did not raise it."

"I think I'm going to have to note this down on the calendar," John quipped.

"Mmm? Oh, yeah. We talked about it." And he volunteered no further information. The only thing Sebastian had proved tight lipped about was Moriarty's criminal empire.

"You're not going to share?" John asked sounding a little disappointed. "Is it something we can help with?"

"Oh course he's not going to. Haven't you noticed he doesn't talk about that in my presence?" Sherlock pointed out.

"Right, yeah. That. So no, I can't. It's just one of those things. I'll fucking deal with it as it comes. And I didn't need your asshole brother making my sister worry about it, either. Fuck. I can't sort out which if you is a bigger asshole. I used to think it was you, but I'm really not sure anymore." The car accelerated just a hair more, faster and faster, and then Moran seemed to catch himself.

Sherlock noted that John's fingers were just lightly touching the back of Sebastian's hair as they drove, inducing the calmer state.

"Mycroft is in a league of his own when it comes to that," Sherlock agreed.

"It's to his advantage to let this play out. So. Nothing to do but watch Becks twitch in the meanwhile." His fingers drummed on the steering wheel, but touch, it seemed, was all it took to settle the man.

It was an interesting to watch John communicate in touch with Sebastian. "He makes mistakes," Sherlock said. "You have to be aware of that."

"Oh, we are," John said. "He baited a trap for Seb at the start. Kept him as a prisoner."

"A week in custody." Hardly anything at all, given the tally of bodies the man had no doubt left in his wake. "He miscalculated with Jim, so yes, I'm well aware he makes mistakes. But given that I work for him..." And apparently respected the chain of command.

"You assume that Mycroft would not sacrifice someone if it suited him," Sherlock said. "I know my brother."

And had not gone to him. Tainted as he was with fraud and the manoeuvring, he knew Mycroft would not protect him. He watched Sebastian's profile as he started to say something, and then stopped himself, and just fell quiet. "I'm not an idiot. But thanks for the reminder."

"Didn't say you were," Sherlock said. "But give me a few minutes and I probably will."

John snorted a little at that, and he could see the stroking of fingers in the nape of Sebastian’s hair.

If he hadn't been driving, Sherlock would've expected the man to close his eyes and purr. Mating rituals were so unnecessary and strange, though John was apparently doing better with Sebastian than he had with the parade of girlfriends who Sherlock barely remembered. The scenes that had happened, those he recalled with much greater clarity.

Usually he had been cited as some sort of factor in the inevitable break up. All he had done was carry on as normal and expected John to do the same.

He gave John a look, and John raised an eyebrow right back at him, not stopping. Well, that was interesting. Silence persisted, but it felt less tense, easier. The car wasn't speeding, and it wasn't much longer until they reached familiar streets and they parked up.

It was also funny, how they automatically fell into a walking pattern with John in the middle and Sebastian to his right and him on the left. Fascinating.

"Maybe we should see if Lestrade has anything tomorrow," he said aloud. "I'm bored."

Sebastian snorted, and unlocked the front door, ushering them all in. It was a slow trudge up the stairs, unwinding for the night and after a good meal. "That shouldn't send a shiver up my spine, but strangely, it does."

"Feel free to join in," Sherlock said, feeling an uncommon generosity. "If ruling the underworld with a rod of iron bores you."

"It's not really a job anyone retires from, but I appreciate the offer." John got the door at the top of the stairs, and then there was the usual shrugging off of coats and milling about. Yes, hopefully Lestrade had a *good* case for him.

John was having a fantastic time running after Sherlock through the streets of London on some possibly insane mission. There was some degree of familiarity there, but there was not any of that empty feeling because there was Seb as well...who, yes, needed a lot of reassurance right now, but that was pleasurable as Seb preferred physical forms of reassurance.

"Left, left!" Sherlock shouted, cutting to the right and all right obvious scissor manoeuvre so they could question a suspect who *ran* -- why did they always run?

What was good was he could run now, fast and hard through the chill air. He knew he was grinning, because Sherlock was running with his coat flaring behind him like batman for god’s sake. He'd have to share that with Seb.

All Sherlock had said to the 'witness' was "I know about the printer dye..." and he took off like a rabbit.

John wasn't even sure he quite followed it all, but he knew that the kidnappers had been paid for in counterfeit money, and the man who was running was the father's executive assistant. He banked left on the street, starting towards John, just as John heard a car coming up behind him.

"Shit!" He had to zig-zag out of the way or risk getting knocked over. "Sherlock!"

The car pulled up and screeched to a near halt as their quarry threw himself in, even as John tried to get to the door.

Someone inside hauled him in, and the door was pulled shut hard, locked and sealed as it started to drive off just as fast as it'd arrived. He swore he'd seen those gloves before, the gloved hand that had hauled the door shut. Where...?

"Bugger it." Sherlock was panting as he staggered to stand beside John. "Counterfeiting. Of course. He'll turn up dead by tomorrow."

"Where does that leave us?" John said bending over to get his breath back, hands braced on his knees. "Just established that... counterfeit money was involved. Does that help with the kidnapping? We've still got to find the girl and our best lead has just... disappeared into the night. "

"Our best lead for finding out who the man hired, yes. Call Sebastian." Sherlock didn't undignify himself by bending over, but he sounded worse than John felt. "He might as well have leaned out the window and shouted he'd be home for breakfast. Well, what're you waiting for?"

That was the gloved hand. He winced a little, but they had established boundaries and the deal was if one of his people was stupid enough to get caught, then they deserved to get caught.

He dialled Seb, coughing a little as it rang.

"Colonel Moran." Bright and alert; in the background, he could hear a low noise that was possibly of human origin, attempting to talk.

"Seb, hey," John said. "You just picked up someone we were chasing, so Sherlock informed me."

With complete and utter certainty. There was a quiet pause, and he was certain he could hear Seb thinking, and someone attempting to yell against a makeshift gag. "Might've."

"Look, internal politics, Seb, I don't want to know. But I do want to know anything about the kidnapped little girl that the kidnappers have who were paid for with counterfeit bills by that guy. Can you do anything for us on that front?

He was quicker to respond that time. "Give me ten minutes. Wait for me to call. Please stop standing in the middle of the fucking street."

"I was chasing a suspect!" John protested. "You nearly ran me over, you bastard." He grinned as he said it, imagining Seb's expression. He had to take the compromise of knowing what would happen to their suspect but on the other hand, Sherlock had that streak in him too. Throwing the man who hurt Mrs Hudson out of the window more than three times.

"No, that was Frank. Ten minutes." And then Seb hung up.

And Sherlock was standing there looking smug and bored already. "We might as well head back to the flat. We won't need to come back to this part of town again soon."

“I want to you to see if you can deduce where she is before Seb, comes back with information," John said turning to walk back in a more sedate way.

Sherlock snorted, but his smile was wide. "Yes, and it takes, hmn, how long to break a human's spirit? Fifteen minutes? Less if you know the person, so let's call it ten. Ten minutes, and the Executive Assistant paid for his bosses's daughter to be kidnapped. The how is boring. Why? He wasn't colluding with the kidnappers, he'd paid them, so he wasn't going to get a share of the cut. No, that's too simple."

"Could he be working on behalf of someone? Where did he get access to the money that he shouldn't have?" John asked. It was a strange thing.

Sherlock groaned, shaking his head. "The dye! The dye, John. Just think. Being an executive assistant doesn't *pay* well, but the man had good taste in clothes, drove a very nice car, now if you have family wealth to fall back on you don't become a businessman's housemaid in a suit. No, so he was either going legitimate for the first time, or he liked the job but liked a nice lifestyle more, and somehow fell into doing things like making counterfeit money, but I know it's the reverse in this case. So the how, as I said, is *boring*. Someone decided to use the product for themselves, and get themselves killed when their employer finds out. It's a very *final* sort of firing, but -- why pay for the girl to be kidnapped? What was he getting out of it?"

"If it wasn't money, then that leaves love or revenge. People do crazy things for love," John said with a shrug.

He caught the sideways look Sherlock gave him, and then punched Sherlock lightly in the arm when he uttered, "Obviously." It got him a low chuckle from Sherlock, clearly delighted with himself. God it felt good to hear Sherlock laugh. "So, love. All right, John. Tell me why, in your small mind, you'd kidnap a small girl for love."

"If you were in love with..." He frowned. "If it is the soon to be wife? The kid is the daughter of the first one true love, no love lost there. She was pre-nupt to the hilt when she married in.”

"Really? You'd kidnap a woman's child to get her attention?" He was giving John a deeply dubious expression. "Or, perhaps, to help her pull a fraud off. Was he attempting to frame the boss? We can't tell, but perhaps if the police hadn't gotten us involved it might've happened. So, if the man is willing to shit where he eats with the counterfeit money, then I would say that the 'kidnappers' such as they are, are related to the workplace. The legitimate business."

"Got to be a set up by her," John said frowning. "You know, pulling the strings for the extra money she knows he can lay his hands on.”

"That she's been barred from," Sherlock agreed. "Now, which employees? We won't be speaking to our suspect again, so let's skip the flat and speak with the wife instead."

"Right." John headed out to try and flag down a taxi. "Got an address? Or will she be at the family home playing the concerned mother?"

"Wouldn't be one to break character, she's far too precise for that." And Sherlock stepped out, waving as well. Of course, it stopped for Sherlock. There was just something about being short that forestalled getting picked up by a taxi in a timely manner.

John fought the urge to roll his eyes and piled into the taxi with Sherlock. "14 Kensington Drive," he said looking it up on his phone.

Sherlock made a go forward gesture to the taxi driver, and they were off. "Six minutes. I wonder if he still has all of his fingers."

"Yeah, I don't need to think about that," John replied wincing a little. Torture was not something he liked to think about having seen some of the effects in Afghanistan.

Sherlock tsked quietly, but let it drop. "Then continue not thinking about it. So she trusts them to not actually harm her daughter -- so I'd say one of the 'kidnappers' is a woman. Now, how many women were in the office?"

John mentally reviewed who he had seen. "Sheena Christopher the Marketing PA, Doreen McAllistair a senior accountant, Christina Hall, one of the secretaries and...shit...Georgina West, the Human resources Director." He was proud of himself, he remembered them.

Sherlock had known them all before he'd even asked, but he looked pleased as he nodded. "Now, Human Resources Director we can toss to the side immediately -- she's a careerist, too oriented to do anything petty like this. Miss Hall -- no as well. No, I believe it was Miss Christopher. PAs commiserate, don't they?"

"They would have that in common." Bitching was probably the usual term for it. "And they are used to strange requests, know how to adapt," John said playing it through in his head.

"This is the ultimate form of adaptation. I suspect we'll have the girl back to her dubious custodial situation within the hour." He glanced at his watch, and almost right on cue, John's cell phone rang.

"Hey Seb," he said seeing the caller ID pop up. "What have you got? We've got a working theory."

"He said it was a Sheena Christopher." Seb sounded not at all happy. "And her boyfriend. Is that all you needed?"

"Fits in with Sherlock's theory," he answered and Sherlock looked smug. "Didn't say where then?"

"Very creative location -- their respective apartments. One's off of... Fuck, hold on. Right. 48 southwark. Or, 27c, Rood lane. Is that enough?"

"Fantastic Seb, thanks..." He hoped everything was okay. "I owe you one." More than one. "See you later?"

"Yeah, I'll be back in the morning. Good luck with it." He rang off, harried sounding. Then again, there was probably a dying or struggling man in the back seat.

"We have two addresses, 48 southwark or 27c Rood lane," John announced. "Do I call Lestrade now or...?" Two possiblities and very little evidence that could be presented.

"Yes. We'll sort out the hows later." Sherlock was on his own phone, flicking through screens. "Southwark first, that's Miss Christopher's. Findable via, hmm, Facebook."

John leaned over and instructed the cabbie to change direction. He reached for his gun, checking it as still handy and then dialled Greg.

It felt good to be coordinating. It felt good to hear Lestrade while for a moment he weighed who went where and were reminded that they were consulting detectives, not police.

They were still going, and Sherlock looked alive and bright eyed next to him and for one strange moment he wanted to laugh for just being in this moment. "Greg says we should stay out of it."

He looked un-amused, but nodded and told the taxi driver to change back -- so the wife it was. "Then we'll change the tracks of this particular train and speak to the wife. We've already closed it." This was finishing it off, savouring it. There was probably more that Sherlock knew and was just holding on to, to unveil with as many witnesses as possible.

He'd missed it all. The big cases, the little cases, all of it.

Seb couldn't or wouldn't let him in on his world unless it was cases like these and they didn't come along that often. But he felt alive, he felt like it had been double or nothing and he'd managed the pay off.

He gave the other address to the cabbie ignoring his muttered 'make up your fucking mind' and leaned back.

Sherlock was all pleased with himself faces, typing away on his cell. "That was nominally satisfying. You carried on quite well, John. You really do keep up satisfactorily. Shame the suspect got away."

But not got away with it, John thought with a hint of satisfaction. Someone who would kidnap, terrorise and do who knew what to a little girl was not someone he was going to lose sleep over. "As ever, I shall take your words of encouragement to heart Sherlock."

"That was encouraging?" He barely flicked an eyebrow at John, but he was still smiling. "Then I'm sorry, and I take it all back."

John looked at him and then snorted with laughter. "Yeah, thought you might."

He'd been right in the end -- that the wife had been cheating on her husband with his personal assistant, that she was going to jail for conspiracy and they had a warrant out for the PA's arrest. It wasn't what John would call a happy ending, and it was coming back around to 8am by the time they got a taxi back from the police's to the flat. Not a happy ending at all, actually. When a little girl's own mother would have her kidnapped, and then to have that mother go to jail or worse for what she'd done....

Case was solved, and everyone was miserable except Sherlock, John and the cops.

John extravagantly got breakfast from the cafe next door to the flat, and extra for Seb if he was back, or would be back. "We are awesome," he declared.

"Why, was that a religious experience for you?" Sherlock drawled from his stretched sprawl in his chair. He'd thrown his coat and scarf loosely onto the rack, and was peering vaguely around. "No, he's not come back."

"I'll send him a text, otherwise I'm eating his bagel," John replied. "Damn, I'm hungry. Eat something... otherwise you get irritable. More irritable."

Sherlock levered himself up from his chair, snatching up a bagel on his way to the kitchen to make tea, John was sure. He fired off a quick hello, we're done sort of text, and re-pocketed his phone.

"You're not my mother." Said around a mouthful of bagel.

Almost too quickly, John's phone dinged. 'Blakemore's dead. Back whenever. Love you.'

"And there I was thinking you'd appeared full formed from the ether," John said frowning a little. "Looks like we get to eat Seb's breakfast. Got a staffing issue."

For someone to get Blakemore, that was worrying. He was one of the inner circle so he might not see Seb for a few days, so he sent back a hasty acknowledgement 'See you soon, be careful. Love you'

"Staffing issue? He's had a lot of problems lately, hasn't he?" Sherlock threw that out there as he leaned against the edge of the kitchen table, chewing slowly.

He had been absent a reasonable amount of time, but John had half wondered if that had been Seb being 'noble' and giving him time.

"Yeah. I guess," he replied. "He's taking care of it."

Sherlock gave a bored sort of shrug. "If you say so."

John paused. "Okay, what?" he asked. "Or I'm keeping all the pancakes. Waffles, whatever they are."

"No, I'm sure he's taking care of it. It just does seem to have been taking him away a lot, and I was under the impression that he was usually home. Unless I was wrong about that?" He cocked an eyebrow at John.

"No, he is mostly," John frowned a little. "But things have been a bit different, since..." He looked at Sherlock. "Is there a pattern?"

Sherlock was silent for a moment, just a moment. It felt like forever. "Nothing definitive as of yet. I have endeavoured to stay *out* of his affairs."

"Let me know if anything comes up," John said and poked at his pancake. Seb would be fine. He was fast, smart, and had not lost his edge so he would be fine. Seb had handled Moriarty, he could handle the usual infighting.