An Age of Silver (16/23)
"An Age of Silver" (16/23)
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5a / Part 5b / Part 6 / Part 7 / Part 8a / Part 8b / Part 9 / Part 10 / Part 11 / Part 12 / Part 13 / Part 14a / Part 14b / Part 15
----
The Chief Superintendent was good on his word.
As April became May, he still had not let up on Stanley’s suspension. But Stanley, Sherlock had noticed, wasn’t trying very hard to have it reversed. He kept in contact with the Chief, perhaps calling him once every week or two, but their conversations were always the same. Not yet, Guerra would tell Stanley, and Stanley accepted it without much fuss.
He kept himself occupied in the meantime, continuing to work on his various home improvement projects when he wasn’t spending time with Sherlock. He started to pay closer attention to Sherlock’s website, and he even began helping out on the occasional private case. They weren’t particularly taxing mysteries and never took very long to solve, but it had been too long since Sherlock had last had a partner in this realm of his work and Stanley’s presence was invigorating.
As the weeks wore on, Stanley started making noises about finding actual work. Sherlock could tell that the uncertainty surrounding his job at the Yard was beginning to get to Stanley. He was a man who liked to feel useful; who had found purpose in the work. He was still an employee of the Yard, but he was of no use to them while on suspension, and that was difficult for him to deal with. And so, as the days lengthened and the season grew warmer, he started to look for work elsewhere.
“Got an interview with a robotics research centre tomorrow,” he announced one evening over dinner at Baker Street. “Guess my degree’s still good after all these years, eh?”
“They’d be foolish not to hire you,” Sherlock said. And then he winked, and Stanley flushed scarlet at the compliment. Sherlock loved it when he did that.
They were now at the point where it was rare for them to spend even a night apart. They had fallen into a routine without thinking, and it came to them as easily as breathing. Three months since that first kiss, and Sherlock couldn’t imagine a night without Stanley at his side.
They were in bed one warm spring night, the windows thrown wide to coax in a brisk breeze, when the sharp cry of a mobile pulled them from sleep. Stanley startled, as he always did, and his sudden movements woke Sherlock. They spent a moment trying to disentangle their limbs from one another, and it was another few seconds before Sherlock could wrench a hand free of the bedclothes.
“Whose?” Stanley muttered as Sherlock reached over him to grab the ringing mobile off the bedside table.
“Mine,” he said, and then brought the mobile to his ear. “Sherlock Holmes.”
“It’s Donovan,” the voice on the other end said. “Are you at Baker Street tonight?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I’m coming to get you. Get dressed.” She lowered her voice instinctively. “And tell Hopkins it’s a case of attempted murder. Nothing to worry about. See you in fifteen.”
Sherlock rang off and threw back the bedclothes. Stanley, who had nearly fallen asleep again, roused.
“Wha’?” he mumbled. Sherlock leaned over him and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth.
“Donovan. They’ve got an attempted murder and they need me to sit in on the interview with the victim. I’ll be back.”
Stanley moved to sit up, but Sherlock pushed him back down onto the mattress.
“Stay,” he whispered. He gave a quick smile. “I’ve found I rather like coming home to you in my bed.”
Stanley snorted, and then gave him a sleepy kiss.
“Well, when you put it that way…” he trailed off, stifling a yawn. “Don’t let them keep you too long. You haven’t been sleeping well lately."
“Stanley, you’re doing it again.”
“Sorry.”
Sherlock showered and dressed in what must have been record time. When he went into the bedroom to fetch his mobile and socks, Stanley was already asleep again. Sherlock paused on his way out of the room and watched Stanley for a moment. His face was slack and calm; he looked at ease.
Sherlock wondered when he would see that expression on Stanley’s face again.
Donovan pulled up outside Baker Street three minutes later, and Sherlock slid into the car.
“He’s back,” Donovan said tersely.
“I figured. Female?”
Donovan nodded shortly. “The body was called in half an hour ago.”
“How did you know Hopkins would be here?”
At that, an unbidden, tiny smile touched Donovan’s lips.
“We talk occasionally,” she said. “For a reason that escapes me, you seem make him happy.”
Sherlock nodded. He tapped a finger against the window absently.
“If it helps at all,” he said finally, “the feeling is mutual.”
The latest victim had been dumped in the same manner as all the others, and Sherlock confirmed with a glance that she had been dead for approximately two hours. But there were no witnesses to the actual dumping of the body, and so the only clues they had were going to have to come from the body itself.
Anderson ran the standard scan on her face. After a moment, the device beeped, but it was only to tell them that no matches had been found in the database. Sherlock watched Donovan close her right hand into a fist.
“Run it again,” she said tersely. Anderson complied, and then shook his head. Nothing.
“Do the advanced scan,” Donovan ordered.
The standard scan was a quick one that only compared six data points on a person’s features, and its accuracy rate hovered around eighty-five percent. That was more than adequate for a preliminary identification, and the tool was highly useful in that regard. But if someone wasn’t found on the preliminary scan, it meant either that they had gone off the grid or that there was a glitch in the system. Two negatives in a row suggested the former.
The advanced scan ran comparisons using fourteen data points on the head, and it was used to narrow down results once the preliminary identifications had been made.
“Sally -”
“Do it,” Donovan snapped.
Anderson complied, and they all waited in silence for two, three minutes while the device worked. And when it came back with nothing, Donovan made a frustrated, broken noise in the back of her throat.
“Try -”
“No,” Sherlock said, finally stepping in. “It’s no use. We’re going to have to look for other evidence. May I?”
Donovan clenched her teeth and gave a jerky nod. She stepped aside, allowing Sherlock to kneel by the body.
Sherlock flicked his eyes over the battered and bruised flesh. There were bite marks on the victim’s shoulder and neck; bruises that had been sucked into the delicate skin by greedy, relentless teeth. Sherlock found himself wondering, against his will, if the killer growled as he made each brutal mark. Did he pant, his breath hot on his victim’s skin?
He thought of Stanley, whose own skin bore such marks under his collar; Stanley, who had begged and whined and swore while Sherlock marked him for his own not two nights ago.
Oh, God.
“Anything?” Donovan prompted, breaking Sherlock from his thoughts. Sherlock shook his head.
“Nothing that we don’t already know,” he said tightly.
Donovan nodded. She turned back to the team and began issuing instructions. As they started to resume their work, Donovan turned back to Sherlock and said, in a voice so quiet that it was nearly inaudible, “Take a walk for me. Get some air. We’re going to be heading back to the Yard soon, and I need you at your best. All right?”
The rest of the night passed in a haze as they waited for, and then tried to analyze, the various tests that Forensics ran on the victim. The past fifteen years had seen forensic technology improve by leaps and bounds, and tests that normally would have taken weeks to run now only took an hour.
But speed, in this instance, wasn’t helpful in illuminating the case, and at the end of the night they were little better off than when they had started.
“Holmes, get out of here,” Donovan said with a weary sigh. “Go home. You need sleep.”
“Since when do you care about that?”
Donovan snorted.
“I don’t,” she said. “But you stay out any longer and Hopkins is never going to believe you were here working on a case of attempted murder. I’ll call you if we find anything.”
It turned out that she needn’t have worried about keeping Stanley in the dark. As ever, he was far cleverer than Sherlock gave him credit for.
He was still asleep in the bed when Sherlock returned to Baker Street in the hour before dawn, and Sherlock was too unsettled to join him. He didn’t want to disturb Stanley, so he grabbed a lighter and headed for the roof.
It was only then that he realised that he had brought the lighter and forgotten the packet of cigarettes sitting in his desk drawer, and he sighed. He didn’t feel like going back downstairs, though, and occupied himself instead with watching the retreating darkness. Sunrise wasn’t too far off now, and the retreating night air was sharp and cool.
“What are you doing out here? It’s bloody five in the morning.”
Sherlock turned his head to see Stanley emerge from the access staircase.
“Needed a cigarette,” Sherlock grumbled as Stanley approached. “I’m gasping.”
“So why didn’t you bring them with you?”
“I forgot.”
Stanley raised an eyebrow at him. “You forgot.”
“Stanley…” Sherlock trailed off, and shook his head. He wasn’t in the mood for this. “Yes. I forgot.”
“He’s back, isn’t he?”
Stanley’s voice was flat, and his gaze was steady when Sherlock turned to look at him.
“Yes,” he said finally.
Stanley rubbed his back. “Are you all right?”
Sherlock pursed his lips.
“I’m fine.”
Stanley leaned back against the railing. “What’s different about this one?”
“She had bite marks.” Sherlock lifted chilled fingers to Stanley’s collar, resting them for a brief moment against the fabric, just over the spot where a purple bruise still stood out starkly against Stanley's skin. “What I did to you...”
Stanley fixed him with a pitying gaze, and Sherlock dropped both his hand and his eyes. He never wanted to see that look on Stanley’s face again, much less directed at him.
“They aren’t the same thing. Not in the slightest, Sherlock.”
“I know.” Sherlock swallowed hard. “I don’t want to do this. Not without you. I could bear it… when you were there, too.”
Stanley stared at him.
“I can’t always be there,” he whispered.
“I don’t want anything to do with something that doesn’t involve you, too,” Sherlock said sharply. He swallowed again and dropped his gaze. “I can’t do this, Stanley. It’s horrid.”
Stanley reached for him, and he pulled Sherlock into a loose embrace.
“I’m going to talk to the Chief later today,” he said quietly. “I’m going to beg his forgiveness if I have to, and appeal to his sense of honour if that doesn’t work. Because let’s face it - he was wrong, and I was suspended. I’m going to ask him to put me back on the case now that we know that the serial killer didn’t die that night.”
“Don’t,” Sherlock whispered. He tightened his grip on Stanley. “You mustn’t.”
“You need me.” Stanley pulled back to fix him with a grim smile. “It’s together or not at all, Sherlock, and you won’t pull yourself off the case-I know you too well to hope for that. And I need to see this through to the end.”
----
The Chief Superintendent kept Stanley waiting for three days before he made his decision regarding the suspension.
“It’s just a petty tactic of his,” Stanley grumbled. “He’s angry with me, so he’s making me wait. He’ll bring me back on; he has to.”
And Guerra did, which Sherlock found to be both a relief and horrifying. He and Donovan spent an afternoon catching Stanley up on all that he had missed, which wasn’t much, considering the fact that they had been on the verge of closing the case before the latest victim came along.
“Did you find anything of note in Dawlins’ background?” Stanley asked them, and they shook their heads.
“No family, few friends, and no one with ties to the Greater London Authority, so far as we can tell,” Donovan said.
“Forensics get back to us about that room?”
She nodded.
“The DNA on the mattress has so far been matched to the victims - every sample is accounted for. We don’t have any unknown donors,” she said. “The paint, apart from its origin, is unremarkable, and no one can tell us where those cans might have been acquired from or who they were sold to. The most we can narrow that down is that they were intended for use in the Royal Parks, but anyone in the London Authority could have handled those cans.”
“There was a paintbrush also found in the room, as you saw,” Sherlock said, “but there were no fingerprints that could be pulled from it.”
“And now he’s killed again,” Stanley said. He sighed. “Well, he must have a different kill site. That room’s been sealed off and McCormack Industries is swarming with police right now.”
“Right now it is,” Sherlock said suddenly, realisation dawning. “But not until this latest body was found. Prior to that, all police and Forensics had been pulled away from the scene and the factory reopened as normal. Because -”
“Because we were going to close the case, so why bother continuing to analyze the scene.” Stanley raked a hand through his hair. “Bloody hell.”
“So he needs that kill room,” Donovan said. “It’s the one part of this whole thing that is non-negotiable to him. He doesn’t care who he abducts and assaults, but they have to end up in that room. Otherwise - no deal.”
Stanley and Sherlock stared at her.
“Donovan,” Stanley said briskly, “have our boys pull all the footage from McCormack Industries on the night of the latest murder. Now.”
----
John and Lestrade returned to London for a weekend early in May, and they took up temporary residence in Baker Street.
“I can’t believe you haven’t rented that old room out,” John said to Sherlock one morning in the kitchen. He was referring to his old room, the one upstairs where he and Lestrade were currently staying. Sherlock shrugged.
“There’s no one else in the world mad enough to take it,” he said, and John snorted.
“I can think of one person,” John said with a wink, and Sherlock found himself caught between snorting in exasperation and choking on his coffee at the thought of Stanley moving in.
“He’s allergic to dogs, it would never work out,” Sherlock said dryly, deftly side-stepping the subject.
Lestrade came down not long after that, and they all passed a companionable half-hour together while breakfast was cooking.
They were just about to eat when there came a sudden pounding in the stairwell, and a moment later Stanley burst through the door.
“Sherlock!” he called. “Where the bloody hell are - oh. Hello.”
He stopped dead in the kitchen doorway, surveying the scene before him.
“Stanley,” Lestrade greeted warmly, rising from his seat. They shook hands. “You look well.”
John followed suit, and for a few minutes the three of them exchanged pleasantries.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Stanley said briskly, “but this can’t wait for much longer. Sherlock -”
“There’s been another,” Sherlock said. Stanley shook his head.
“No. But we think we might have something on the footage.” Stanley was still slightly out of breath. “Will you come?”
“Go,” John said before Sherlock could respond. “You’re needed. We’ll still be here when you get back. Go.”
Stanley’s team had spent almost a week combing through all the footage from McCormack Industries the day the latest victim was murdered. So far, they had detected no one bringing a young woman by the complex, which meant that the killer obviously knew where the gaps were in the security cameras.
But the reason Sherlock had been called in on this day was because they had cross-referenced the profiles of every person who appeared on the cameras with the employee database, and they had finally found one anomaly. There was someone who didn’t work at McCormack Industries on the film. He only appeared for a few seconds, but he was clearly an outsider.
So far, they had had no luck in running the suspect’s profile through the national registry. It had been a long shot in the first place. His face wasn’t visible, and the national registry didn’t usually include body shots along with the usual head shots, but it had been worth an attempt.
Now, they either needed Forensics to clean up the images or for Sherlock to find some clue on the suspect’s body that might point to his identity.
Donovan joined them shortly before the dinner hour, and together they pored over the different stills that had been pulled from the security footage at the McCormack Warehouse.
But the suspect’s clothes were unremarkable. His image was grainy, and the outfit he was weary was bulky. He could have been slim, average, or overweight, and they couldn’t tell for sure because his clothes concealed his true frame.
“Can you tell anything from his gait?” Stanley finally asked in frustration. “His shoes? His watch?”
“I don’t think you can say for certain he’s even wearing a watch,” Anderson pointed out, and Stanley glared at him. “Er - sorry, sir.”
“We don’t even know if this is who we’re looking for,” Donovan said. “He could have been delivering a package, or the post. Or maybe he was meeting someone for lunch. This is the only time we see him on the camera; we don’t know how long he was actually there.”
Eventually, Donovan and Anderson went home. Stanley was going to stay late, but Sherlock took one look at Stanley’s weary, defeated face and decided that there was no way he was letting the man put in any more hours tonight.
“Baker Street,” he said, standing finally from the chair in Stanley’s office where he had been sitting for the past few hours. His knees popped in protest. “Come on.”
They took a cab this time, as Sherlock didn’t trust Stanley driving at the moment. Sherlock let them into the building, and Stanley trudged up the stairs behind him, his gait laborious and weary. Each step sounded as though it would be his last and when they got to the top he paused, swaying slightly on his feet.
“All right?” Sherlock asked as he unlocked the door. Stanley gave an uncoordinated nod.
“Fine,” he said, but his eyes said No.
He shed his jacket and draped it over the back of a chair in the kitchen while Sherlock added the day's findings to his notes.
“So where does this leave us?” Stanley asked, coming back into the main room with a beer.
Absolutely nowhere was the correct answer, but one look at Stanley’s face told Sherlock that it was also the wrong one. He said, “I’m not sure yet,” instead, and Stanley grimaced.
“Absolutely nowhere, you mean,” he said bitterly, and took a long swallow of beer. He moved over to the sofa and collapsed on it, staring blearily across the room at the wall that was covered in Sherlock’s notes. Sherlock joined him, propping his feet on the low table in front of the sofa. Stanley kicked off his shoes and did the same, and for a while they shared a companionable silence.
“I’m sorry to have interrupted your day for this,” Stanley said finally, for it was well past sunset by now. In fact, it was approaching midnight, and John and Lestrade would have retired long ago. “How long are they in London?”
“Four days yet,” Sherlock said. “One of Lestrade’s nieces is getting married. They decided to make a week of it.”
“Mm.” Stanley finished the rest of his beer in one swallow and set the bottle aside. “I bet it’s nice to have them around again, isn’t it?”
“I could get used to it.”
Stanley’s hand, at some point during their conversation, had found its way to Sherlock’s leg, and he began absently brushing his thumb across Sherlock’s knee. The movement was so absent-minded, so automatic, that Sherlock wondered if Stanley even realised he was doing it. He himself took several minutes to notice it.
Sherlock covered the hand with his own, leaned over, and brushed his lips over Stanley’s. Stanley slid a hand into Sherlock’s hair, drawing him closer, and parted his lips with a sigh. Sherlock pressed Stanley back against the sofa and half leaned over him, sliding a knee between Stanley’s legs. Stanley grunted and let his legs fall open, pulling Sherlock closer with a hand on his hip and the other on the back of his neck. After a moment, he slid his hand from Sherlock’s hip to his groin, and cupped him through his trousers. Sherlock groaned and took Stanley’s bottom lip between his teeth, biting gently.
But Stanley broke away suddenly, just as Sherlock was reaching for his belt buckle, and rested his forehead against Sherlock’s with a frustrated sigh.
“They’re asleep,” Sherlock murmured, moving his attentions to Stanley’s neck. He brushed his lips over the rough evening stubble and elicited a quiet moan from Stanley.
“It’s not that,” Stanley said in a hoarse voice. He caught Sherlock’s wandering hands in his own. “I just - I can’t do this. Not tonight. I’m sorry.”
He paused, trying to bring his breathing back under control. Sherlock tugged gently from his grip and adjusted his trousers before sitting down next to Stanley again, one leg folded underneath him and a hand still in Stanley’s hair.
“What can I do?” Sherlock murmured, tracing the shell of Stanley’s ear with one finger. Stanley shuddered, eyes falling shut at the gentle ministrations.
“Solve this damn thing already,” he whispered.
Sherlock leaned over and kissed the corner of his mouth. Stanley turned his head and their mouths met; after a moment, he pulled away. Sherlock’s hand found Stanley’s wrist, and he swept his thumb back and forth across the back of Stanley’s hand, feeling the veins that bulged just under the surface of his skin.
“Come on.” He held out a hand. After a brief hesitation, Stanley took it and was hauled to his feet. “Bed.”
But Stanley slept badly that night, even with Sherlock next to him. When Sherlock woke at three in the morning, he was on his stomach and Stanley was half-draped over his back, his breathing far too shallow for him to be asleep. The bed was warm and Stanley’s presence was a comfort; with great reluctance, Sherlock extracted himself from the warm cocoon and went to the loo.
When he returned, Stanley was awake and staring blankly at the ceiling.
“There’s nothing you could do right now,” Sherlock murmured as he slid back into bed, interpreting Stanley’s expression with ease. “A few hours of sleep isn’t going to make or break this case. And neither is a sleep-deprived DI.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Stanley muttered. “This whole thing is madness.”
“I know.”
“Hell.” Stanley passed a hand over his eyes. “Look at me. Talking about a case in bed. No wonder my marriage lasted all of five minutes.”
“And now you’re talking about a previous relationship while in bed with a current lover,” Sherlock pointed out, unable to keep the smirk from his voice. “On the spectrum of divorce-worthy offenses, where does that one fall?”
“Somewhere between keeping severed heads in the fridge and picking my locks, I imagine.” Stanley gave him a pointed look, and Sherlock chuckled.
They dozed for a time after that. When Sherlock next woke, dawn was approaching and the bed was empty.
He found Stanley in the kitchen, the sole other inhabitant of the flat who was awake at this hour. There was no sign of John or Lestrade having been awake, and their shoes were still sitting by the door. Ajax, who had come with them, was asleep in a corner of the main room.
“It’s too damn early,” Sherlock grumbled to Stanley, laying a hand on the small of his back as he sidled past him in the cramped space.
“It’s been trained into me, I suppose,” Stanley said, his voice warm and rough with sleep. “Anyway, I need to be at the Yard soon, and I should stop home for a change of clothes before then.”
Stanley turned away to tend to the coffee he was making. Sherlock slipped an arm around his waist from behind.
“You can wear one of my shirts,” he murmured into the back of Stanley’s neck.
Stanley took a long swallow of coffee, leaning back into Sherlock’s grip. “People would talk.”
“They already do,” Sherlock said, remembering his conversation with Donovan the night of the last murder, and Stanley snorted. He downed the rest of his drink and leaned in to give Sherlock a long and thoroughly indecent kiss. The floorboards above their heads started to creak, indicating that the other temporary residents of the flat were starting to rise, and they parted when footsteps sounded on the stairs.
Sherlock showered while John and Lestrade chatted with Stanley in the kitchen. He padded out into the kitchen later dressed in only tracksuit bottoms, something that Stanley merely raised an eyebrow at while John remained completely unfazed. He’d seen Sherlock wearing far worse-as well as far less-during their time together as flatmates.
Lestrade was in the main room, reading the paper while Ajax gnawed on a bone at his feet.
“Forget something?” he asked mildly when he saw Sherlock enter the room.
“Missing a shirt,” Sherlock muttered.
“You have others.”
“I don’t want the others.”
Lestrade rolled his eyes, and Sherlock eventually found the shirt he’d been seeking-a forest-green one-behind the sofa.
“They seem pretty occupied in there,” Lestrade said as Sherlock made to leave the room, referring to John and Stanley, who were still chatting amiably in the kitchen. John kept breaking into raucous laughter, and occasionally even Stanley gave an audible chuckle, which was rare. “Come and keep an old man company, eh? We’ll let them chat.”
Sherlock intended to refuse, but something stopped the automatic retort from crossing his lips. Lestrade was here, healthy and whole, and given what he’d been through in the last few years it wasn’t likely that it would be that way for much longer. And John was in the kitchen, as he should have been, and Stanley was now here, and for the first time in years the flat felt full and complete.
“I need to get my laptop,” Sherlock said finally. “And trousers.”
Lestrade waved a hand at him, smiling, and Sherlock ducked into his bedroom. He found a clean pair of trousers under the bed and a pair of socks at the bottom of his wardrobe, under one of Stanley’s rumpled shirts. He was going to need to do the washing soon, and he should probably include Stanley’s clothes as well, given how many of them had migrated to Baker Street in so short a time -
Sherlock clamped down on the thought quickly-how domestic it all sounded-and dug his laptop out from under his pillow.
He was just at the mouth of the short corridor that led to the kitchen when a sudden lack of noise alerted him, and he paused in the shadows where he could see and not be seen in return. The hair on the back of his neck prickled as he realised that John and Stanley had lowered their voices, and that their conversation had become sombre. At first, Sherlock thought they might be discussing the case, and he hoped to glean more information by listening to their chatter.
But he quickly realised that they were speaking of another matter entirely. Stanley’s back was to Sherlock, and he appeared to be fixing another cup of coffee.
“I’m surprised he hasn’t asked you to move in yet,” John said casually. He leaned a hip against the counter, nursing his own tea while he watched Stanley.
“No,” Stanley said absently. “He won’t.”
John looked surprised.
“We’d known each other less than a day when I moved in here,” he pointed out, “and Sherlock didn’t fancy me.”
Stanley snorted and turned to face John.
“And that’s a risk he’ll never be taking again.”
“Don’t say that,” John said softly, all hints of light teasing gone from his voice. “He probably just needs some time -”
“He doesn’t want me to move in, John. Of course he doesn’t. Why would he?” Stanley said in quiet exasperation. And then, when John looked shocked at his vehemence, Stanley turned sombre. His eyebrows drew together and his lips thinned. “His father died of a heart attack when Sherlock was just a child. He was in the room when it happened, but he didn’t understand it and of course he was too young to help, even if he’d known what was going on. He watched his mother lose first her memories and then her health over the course of twenty years before she died. Victor was poisoned right under his nose, and you and Greg moved away when he wasn’t expecting it-and certainly before he was ready for it.”
Stanley added another spoonful of sugar to his coffee, stirring slowly.
“He’s lost too many people,” he added softly. “He’s terrified that everyone he loves will leave or die and it will be his fault, or that he’ll be powerless to stop it. That’s why we’ll never...”
Stanley waved a hand vaguely through the air before he picked up his mug of coffee and took a tentative sip. John was watching him silently. He looked completely taken aback, and Sherlock wasn’t sure if he’d ever seen John at such a loss for words.
“He’s had his great love. His golden age,” Stanley went on. His words were absent and quiet; he was musing more to himself than for the benefit of anyone else. “This isn’t it. He likes me well enough, but he won’t allow himself to get too close, not again.”
“And what about you? Do you love him?”
John’s question was quiet, but it sounded like thunder. It was met with silence at first.
“I’ll take whatever he’s willing to give me,” Stanley said at last. “It won’t be all of him, but it is some of him. I get to see sides of him he doesn’t show anyone else. I don’t have his whole heart, John, but I do have some of it. However long he’s willing to give that to me-I’m grateful.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” John pressed gently.
Stanley gave a wan smile.
“It should.”
----
Part 17
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5a / Part 5b / Part 6 / Part 7 / Part 8a / Part 8b / Part 9 / Part 10 / Part 11 / Part 12 / Part 13 / Part 14a / Part 14b / Part 15
----
The Chief Superintendent was good on his word.
As April became May, he still had not let up on Stanley’s suspension. But Stanley, Sherlock had noticed, wasn’t trying very hard to have it reversed. He kept in contact with the Chief, perhaps calling him once every week or two, but their conversations were always the same. Not yet, Guerra would tell Stanley, and Stanley accepted it without much fuss.
He kept himself occupied in the meantime, continuing to work on his various home improvement projects when he wasn’t spending time with Sherlock. He started to pay closer attention to Sherlock’s website, and he even began helping out on the occasional private case. They weren’t particularly taxing mysteries and never took very long to solve, but it had been too long since Sherlock had last had a partner in this realm of his work and Stanley’s presence was invigorating.
As the weeks wore on, Stanley started making noises about finding actual work. Sherlock could tell that the uncertainty surrounding his job at the Yard was beginning to get to Stanley. He was a man who liked to feel useful; who had found purpose in the work. He was still an employee of the Yard, but he was of no use to them while on suspension, and that was difficult for him to deal with. And so, as the days lengthened and the season grew warmer, he started to look for work elsewhere.
“Got an interview with a robotics research centre tomorrow,” he announced one evening over dinner at Baker Street. “Guess my degree’s still good after all these years, eh?”
“They’d be foolish not to hire you,” Sherlock said. And then he winked, and Stanley flushed scarlet at the compliment. Sherlock loved it when he did that.
They were now at the point where it was rare for them to spend even a night apart. They had fallen into a routine without thinking, and it came to them as easily as breathing. Three months since that first kiss, and Sherlock couldn’t imagine a night without Stanley at his side.
They were in bed one warm spring night, the windows thrown wide to coax in a brisk breeze, when the sharp cry of a mobile pulled them from sleep. Stanley startled, as he always did, and his sudden movements woke Sherlock. They spent a moment trying to disentangle their limbs from one another, and it was another few seconds before Sherlock could wrench a hand free of the bedclothes.
“Whose?” Stanley muttered as Sherlock reached over him to grab the ringing mobile off the bedside table.
“Mine,” he said, and then brought the mobile to his ear. “Sherlock Holmes.”
“It’s Donovan,” the voice on the other end said. “Are you at Baker Street tonight?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I’m coming to get you. Get dressed.” She lowered her voice instinctively. “And tell Hopkins it’s a case of attempted murder. Nothing to worry about. See you in fifteen.”
Sherlock rang off and threw back the bedclothes. Stanley, who had nearly fallen asleep again, roused.
“Wha’?” he mumbled. Sherlock leaned over him and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth.
“Donovan. They’ve got an attempted murder and they need me to sit in on the interview with the victim. I’ll be back.”
Stanley moved to sit up, but Sherlock pushed him back down onto the mattress.
“Stay,” he whispered. He gave a quick smile. “I’ve found I rather like coming home to you in my bed.”
Stanley snorted, and then gave him a sleepy kiss.
“Well, when you put it that way…” he trailed off, stifling a yawn. “Don’t let them keep you too long. You haven’t been sleeping well lately."
“Stanley, you’re doing it again.”
“Sorry.”
Sherlock showered and dressed in what must have been record time. When he went into the bedroom to fetch his mobile and socks, Stanley was already asleep again. Sherlock paused on his way out of the room and watched Stanley for a moment. His face was slack and calm; he looked at ease.
Sherlock wondered when he would see that expression on Stanley’s face again.
Donovan pulled up outside Baker Street three minutes later, and Sherlock slid into the car.
“He’s back,” Donovan said tersely.
“I figured. Female?”
Donovan nodded shortly. “The body was called in half an hour ago.”
“How did you know Hopkins would be here?”
At that, an unbidden, tiny smile touched Donovan’s lips.
“We talk occasionally,” she said. “For a reason that escapes me, you seem make him happy.”
Sherlock nodded. He tapped a finger against the window absently.
“If it helps at all,” he said finally, “the feeling is mutual.”
The latest victim had been dumped in the same manner as all the others, and Sherlock confirmed with a glance that she had been dead for approximately two hours. But there were no witnesses to the actual dumping of the body, and so the only clues they had were going to have to come from the body itself.
Anderson ran the standard scan on her face. After a moment, the device beeped, but it was only to tell them that no matches had been found in the database. Sherlock watched Donovan close her right hand into a fist.
“Run it again,” she said tersely. Anderson complied, and then shook his head. Nothing.
“Do the advanced scan,” Donovan ordered.
The standard scan was a quick one that only compared six data points on a person’s features, and its accuracy rate hovered around eighty-five percent. That was more than adequate for a preliminary identification, and the tool was highly useful in that regard. But if someone wasn’t found on the preliminary scan, it meant either that they had gone off the grid or that there was a glitch in the system. Two negatives in a row suggested the former.
The advanced scan ran comparisons using fourteen data points on the head, and it was used to narrow down results once the preliminary identifications had been made.
“Sally -”
“Do it,” Donovan snapped.
Anderson complied, and they all waited in silence for two, three minutes while the device worked. And when it came back with nothing, Donovan made a frustrated, broken noise in the back of her throat.
“Try -”
“No,” Sherlock said, finally stepping in. “It’s no use. We’re going to have to look for other evidence. May I?”
Donovan clenched her teeth and gave a jerky nod. She stepped aside, allowing Sherlock to kneel by the body.
Sherlock flicked his eyes over the battered and bruised flesh. There were bite marks on the victim’s shoulder and neck; bruises that had been sucked into the delicate skin by greedy, relentless teeth. Sherlock found himself wondering, against his will, if the killer growled as he made each brutal mark. Did he pant, his breath hot on his victim’s skin?
He thought of Stanley, whose own skin bore such marks under his collar; Stanley, who had begged and whined and swore while Sherlock marked him for his own not two nights ago.
Oh, God.
“Anything?” Donovan prompted, breaking Sherlock from his thoughts. Sherlock shook his head.
“Nothing that we don’t already know,” he said tightly.
Donovan nodded. She turned back to the team and began issuing instructions. As they started to resume their work, Donovan turned back to Sherlock and said, in a voice so quiet that it was nearly inaudible, “Take a walk for me. Get some air. We’re going to be heading back to the Yard soon, and I need you at your best. All right?”
The rest of the night passed in a haze as they waited for, and then tried to analyze, the various tests that Forensics ran on the victim. The past fifteen years had seen forensic technology improve by leaps and bounds, and tests that normally would have taken weeks to run now only took an hour.
But speed, in this instance, wasn’t helpful in illuminating the case, and at the end of the night they were little better off than when they had started.
“Holmes, get out of here,” Donovan said with a weary sigh. “Go home. You need sleep.”
“Since when do you care about that?”
Donovan snorted.
“I don’t,” she said. “But you stay out any longer and Hopkins is never going to believe you were here working on a case of attempted murder. I’ll call you if we find anything.”
It turned out that she needn’t have worried about keeping Stanley in the dark. As ever, he was far cleverer than Sherlock gave him credit for.
He was still asleep in the bed when Sherlock returned to Baker Street in the hour before dawn, and Sherlock was too unsettled to join him. He didn’t want to disturb Stanley, so he grabbed a lighter and headed for the roof.
It was only then that he realised that he had brought the lighter and forgotten the packet of cigarettes sitting in his desk drawer, and he sighed. He didn’t feel like going back downstairs, though, and occupied himself instead with watching the retreating darkness. Sunrise wasn’t too far off now, and the retreating night air was sharp and cool.
“What are you doing out here? It’s bloody five in the morning.”
Sherlock turned his head to see Stanley emerge from the access staircase.
“Needed a cigarette,” Sherlock grumbled as Stanley approached. “I’m gasping.”
“So why didn’t you bring them with you?”
“I forgot.”
Stanley raised an eyebrow at him. “You forgot.”
“Stanley…” Sherlock trailed off, and shook his head. He wasn’t in the mood for this. “Yes. I forgot.”
“He’s back, isn’t he?”
Stanley’s voice was flat, and his gaze was steady when Sherlock turned to look at him.
“Yes,” he said finally.
Stanley rubbed his back. “Are you all right?”
Sherlock pursed his lips.
“I’m fine.”
Stanley leaned back against the railing. “What’s different about this one?”
“She had bite marks.” Sherlock lifted chilled fingers to Stanley’s collar, resting them for a brief moment against the fabric, just over the spot where a purple bruise still stood out starkly against Stanley's skin. “What I did to you...”
Stanley fixed him with a pitying gaze, and Sherlock dropped both his hand and his eyes. He never wanted to see that look on Stanley’s face again, much less directed at him.
“They aren’t the same thing. Not in the slightest, Sherlock.”
“I know.” Sherlock swallowed hard. “I don’t want to do this. Not without you. I could bear it… when you were there, too.”
Stanley stared at him.
“I can’t always be there,” he whispered.
“I don’t want anything to do with something that doesn’t involve you, too,” Sherlock said sharply. He swallowed again and dropped his gaze. “I can’t do this, Stanley. It’s horrid.”
Stanley reached for him, and he pulled Sherlock into a loose embrace.
“I’m going to talk to the Chief later today,” he said quietly. “I’m going to beg his forgiveness if I have to, and appeal to his sense of honour if that doesn’t work. Because let’s face it - he was wrong, and I was suspended. I’m going to ask him to put me back on the case now that we know that the serial killer didn’t die that night.”
“Don’t,” Sherlock whispered. He tightened his grip on Stanley. “You mustn’t.”
“You need me.” Stanley pulled back to fix him with a grim smile. “It’s together or not at all, Sherlock, and you won’t pull yourself off the case-I know you too well to hope for that. And I need to see this through to the end.”
----
The Chief Superintendent kept Stanley waiting for three days before he made his decision regarding the suspension.
“It’s just a petty tactic of his,” Stanley grumbled. “He’s angry with me, so he’s making me wait. He’ll bring me back on; he has to.”
And Guerra did, which Sherlock found to be both a relief and horrifying. He and Donovan spent an afternoon catching Stanley up on all that he had missed, which wasn’t much, considering the fact that they had been on the verge of closing the case before the latest victim came along.
“Did you find anything of note in Dawlins’ background?” Stanley asked them, and they shook their heads.
“No family, few friends, and no one with ties to the Greater London Authority, so far as we can tell,” Donovan said.
“Forensics get back to us about that room?”
She nodded.
“The DNA on the mattress has so far been matched to the victims - every sample is accounted for. We don’t have any unknown donors,” she said. “The paint, apart from its origin, is unremarkable, and no one can tell us where those cans might have been acquired from or who they were sold to. The most we can narrow that down is that they were intended for use in the Royal Parks, but anyone in the London Authority could have handled those cans.”
“There was a paintbrush also found in the room, as you saw,” Sherlock said, “but there were no fingerprints that could be pulled from it.”
“And now he’s killed again,” Stanley said. He sighed. “Well, he must have a different kill site. That room’s been sealed off and McCormack Industries is swarming with police right now.”
“Right now it is,” Sherlock said suddenly, realisation dawning. “But not until this latest body was found. Prior to that, all police and Forensics had been pulled away from the scene and the factory reopened as normal. Because -”
“Because we were going to close the case, so why bother continuing to analyze the scene.” Stanley raked a hand through his hair. “Bloody hell.”
“So he needs that kill room,” Donovan said. “It’s the one part of this whole thing that is non-negotiable to him. He doesn’t care who he abducts and assaults, but they have to end up in that room. Otherwise - no deal.”
Stanley and Sherlock stared at her.
“Donovan,” Stanley said briskly, “have our boys pull all the footage from McCormack Industries on the night of the latest murder. Now.”
----
John and Lestrade returned to London for a weekend early in May, and they took up temporary residence in Baker Street.
“I can’t believe you haven’t rented that old room out,” John said to Sherlock one morning in the kitchen. He was referring to his old room, the one upstairs where he and Lestrade were currently staying. Sherlock shrugged.
“There’s no one else in the world mad enough to take it,” he said, and John snorted.
“I can think of one person,” John said with a wink, and Sherlock found himself caught between snorting in exasperation and choking on his coffee at the thought of Stanley moving in.
“He’s allergic to dogs, it would never work out,” Sherlock said dryly, deftly side-stepping the subject.
Lestrade came down not long after that, and they all passed a companionable half-hour together while breakfast was cooking.
They were just about to eat when there came a sudden pounding in the stairwell, and a moment later Stanley burst through the door.
“Sherlock!” he called. “Where the bloody hell are - oh. Hello.”
He stopped dead in the kitchen doorway, surveying the scene before him.
“Stanley,” Lestrade greeted warmly, rising from his seat. They shook hands. “You look well.”
John followed suit, and for a few minutes the three of them exchanged pleasantries.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Stanley said briskly, “but this can’t wait for much longer. Sherlock -”
“There’s been another,” Sherlock said. Stanley shook his head.
“No. But we think we might have something on the footage.” Stanley was still slightly out of breath. “Will you come?”
“Go,” John said before Sherlock could respond. “You’re needed. We’ll still be here when you get back. Go.”
Stanley’s team had spent almost a week combing through all the footage from McCormack Industries the day the latest victim was murdered. So far, they had detected no one bringing a young woman by the complex, which meant that the killer obviously knew where the gaps were in the security cameras.
But the reason Sherlock had been called in on this day was because they had cross-referenced the profiles of every person who appeared on the cameras with the employee database, and they had finally found one anomaly. There was someone who didn’t work at McCormack Industries on the film. He only appeared for a few seconds, but he was clearly an outsider.
So far, they had had no luck in running the suspect’s profile through the national registry. It had been a long shot in the first place. His face wasn’t visible, and the national registry didn’t usually include body shots along with the usual head shots, but it had been worth an attempt.
Now, they either needed Forensics to clean up the images or for Sherlock to find some clue on the suspect’s body that might point to his identity.
Donovan joined them shortly before the dinner hour, and together they pored over the different stills that had been pulled from the security footage at the McCormack Warehouse.
But the suspect’s clothes were unremarkable. His image was grainy, and the outfit he was weary was bulky. He could have been slim, average, or overweight, and they couldn’t tell for sure because his clothes concealed his true frame.
“Can you tell anything from his gait?” Stanley finally asked in frustration. “His shoes? His watch?”
“I don’t think you can say for certain he’s even wearing a watch,” Anderson pointed out, and Stanley glared at him. “Er - sorry, sir.”
“We don’t even know if this is who we’re looking for,” Donovan said. “He could have been delivering a package, or the post. Or maybe he was meeting someone for lunch. This is the only time we see him on the camera; we don’t know how long he was actually there.”
Eventually, Donovan and Anderson went home. Stanley was going to stay late, but Sherlock took one look at Stanley’s weary, defeated face and decided that there was no way he was letting the man put in any more hours tonight.
“Baker Street,” he said, standing finally from the chair in Stanley’s office where he had been sitting for the past few hours. His knees popped in protest. “Come on.”
They took a cab this time, as Sherlock didn’t trust Stanley driving at the moment. Sherlock let them into the building, and Stanley trudged up the stairs behind him, his gait laborious and weary. Each step sounded as though it would be his last and when they got to the top he paused, swaying slightly on his feet.
“All right?” Sherlock asked as he unlocked the door. Stanley gave an uncoordinated nod.
“Fine,” he said, but his eyes said No.
He shed his jacket and draped it over the back of a chair in the kitchen while Sherlock added the day's findings to his notes.
“So where does this leave us?” Stanley asked, coming back into the main room with a beer.
Absolutely nowhere was the correct answer, but one look at Stanley’s face told Sherlock that it was also the wrong one. He said, “I’m not sure yet,” instead, and Stanley grimaced.
“Absolutely nowhere, you mean,” he said bitterly, and took a long swallow of beer. He moved over to the sofa and collapsed on it, staring blearily across the room at the wall that was covered in Sherlock’s notes. Sherlock joined him, propping his feet on the low table in front of the sofa. Stanley kicked off his shoes and did the same, and for a while they shared a companionable silence.
“I’m sorry to have interrupted your day for this,” Stanley said finally, for it was well past sunset by now. In fact, it was approaching midnight, and John and Lestrade would have retired long ago. “How long are they in London?”
“Four days yet,” Sherlock said. “One of Lestrade’s nieces is getting married. They decided to make a week of it.”
“Mm.” Stanley finished the rest of his beer in one swallow and set the bottle aside. “I bet it’s nice to have them around again, isn’t it?”
“I could get used to it.”
Stanley’s hand, at some point during their conversation, had found its way to Sherlock’s leg, and he began absently brushing his thumb across Sherlock’s knee. The movement was so absent-minded, so automatic, that Sherlock wondered if Stanley even realised he was doing it. He himself took several minutes to notice it.
Sherlock covered the hand with his own, leaned over, and brushed his lips over Stanley’s. Stanley slid a hand into Sherlock’s hair, drawing him closer, and parted his lips with a sigh. Sherlock pressed Stanley back against the sofa and half leaned over him, sliding a knee between Stanley’s legs. Stanley grunted and let his legs fall open, pulling Sherlock closer with a hand on his hip and the other on the back of his neck. After a moment, he slid his hand from Sherlock’s hip to his groin, and cupped him through his trousers. Sherlock groaned and took Stanley’s bottom lip between his teeth, biting gently.
But Stanley broke away suddenly, just as Sherlock was reaching for his belt buckle, and rested his forehead against Sherlock’s with a frustrated sigh.
“They’re asleep,” Sherlock murmured, moving his attentions to Stanley’s neck. He brushed his lips over the rough evening stubble and elicited a quiet moan from Stanley.
“It’s not that,” Stanley said in a hoarse voice. He caught Sherlock’s wandering hands in his own. “I just - I can’t do this. Not tonight. I’m sorry.”
He paused, trying to bring his breathing back under control. Sherlock tugged gently from his grip and adjusted his trousers before sitting down next to Stanley again, one leg folded underneath him and a hand still in Stanley’s hair.
“What can I do?” Sherlock murmured, tracing the shell of Stanley’s ear with one finger. Stanley shuddered, eyes falling shut at the gentle ministrations.
“Solve this damn thing already,” he whispered.
Sherlock leaned over and kissed the corner of his mouth. Stanley turned his head and their mouths met; after a moment, he pulled away. Sherlock’s hand found Stanley’s wrist, and he swept his thumb back and forth across the back of Stanley’s hand, feeling the veins that bulged just under the surface of his skin.
“Come on.” He held out a hand. After a brief hesitation, Stanley took it and was hauled to his feet. “Bed.”
But Stanley slept badly that night, even with Sherlock next to him. When Sherlock woke at three in the morning, he was on his stomach and Stanley was half-draped over his back, his breathing far too shallow for him to be asleep. The bed was warm and Stanley’s presence was a comfort; with great reluctance, Sherlock extracted himself from the warm cocoon and went to the loo.
When he returned, Stanley was awake and staring blankly at the ceiling.
“There’s nothing you could do right now,” Sherlock murmured as he slid back into bed, interpreting Stanley’s expression with ease. “A few hours of sleep isn’t going to make or break this case. And neither is a sleep-deprived DI.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Stanley muttered. “This whole thing is madness.”
“I know.”
“Hell.” Stanley passed a hand over his eyes. “Look at me. Talking about a case in bed. No wonder my marriage lasted all of five minutes.”
“And now you’re talking about a previous relationship while in bed with a current lover,” Sherlock pointed out, unable to keep the smirk from his voice. “On the spectrum of divorce-worthy offenses, where does that one fall?”
“Somewhere between keeping severed heads in the fridge and picking my locks, I imagine.” Stanley gave him a pointed look, and Sherlock chuckled.
They dozed for a time after that. When Sherlock next woke, dawn was approaching and the bed was empty.
He found Stanley in the kitchen, the sole other inhabitant of the flat who was awake at this hour. There was no sign of John or Lestrade having been awake, and their shoes were still sitting by the door. Ajax, who had come with them, was asleep in a corner of the main room.
“It’s too damn early,” Sherlock grumbled to Stanley, laying a hand on the small of his back as he sidled past him in the cramped space.
“It’s been trained into me, I suppose,” Stanley said, his voice warm and rough with sleep. “Anyway, I need to be at the Yard soon, and I should stop home for a change of clothes before then.”
Stanley turned away to tend to the coffee he was making. Sherlock slipped an arm around his waist from behind.
“You can wear one of my shirts,” he murmured into the back of Stanley’s neck.
Stanley took a long swallow of coffee, leaning back into Sherlock’s grip. “People would talk.”
“They already do,” Sherlock said, remembering his conversation with Donovan the night of the last murder, and Stanley snorted. He downed the rest of his drink and leaned in to give Sherlock a long and thoroughly indecent kiss. The floorboards above their heads started to creak, indicating that the other temporary residents of the flat were starting to rise, and they parted when footsteps sounded on the stairs.
Sherlock showered while John and Lestrade chatted with Stanley in the kitchen. He padded out into the kitchen later dressed in only tracksuit bottoms, something that Stanley merely raised an eyebrow at while John remained completely unfazed. He’d seen Sherlock wearing far worse-as well as far less-during their time together as flatmates.
Lestrade was in the main room, reading the paper while Ajax gnawed on a bone at his feet.
“Forget something?” he asked mildly when he saw Sherlock enter the room.
“Missing a shirt,” Sherlock muttered.
“You have others.”
“I don’t want the others.”
Lestrade rolled his eyes, and Sherlock eventually found the shirt he’d been seeking-a forest-green one-behind the sofa.
“They seem pretty occupied in there,” Lestrade said as Sherlock made to leave the room, referring to John and Stanley, who were still chatting amiably in the kitchen. John kept breaking into raucous laughter, and occasionally even Stanley gave an audible chuckle, which was rare. “Come and keep an old man company, eh? We’ll let them chat.”
Sherlock intended to refuse, but something stopped the automatic retort from crossing his lips. Lestrade was here, healthy and whole, and given what he’d been through in the last few years it wasn’t likely that it would be that way for much longer. And John was in the kitchen, as he should have been, and Stanley was now here, and for the first time in years the flat felt full and complete.
“I need to get my laptop,” Sherlock said finally. “And trousers.”
Lestrade waved a hand at him, smiling, and Sherlock ducked into his bedroom. He found a clean pair of trousers under the bed and a pair of socks at the bottom of his wardrobe, under one of Stanley’s rumpled shirts. He was going to need to do the washing soon, and he should probably include Stanley’s clothes as well, given how many of them had migrated to Baker Street in so short a time -
Sherlock clamped down on the thought quickly-how domestic it all sounded-and dug his laptop out from under his pillow.
He was just at the mouth of the short corridor that led to the kitchen when a sudden lack of noise alerted him, and he paused in the shadows where he could see and not be seen in return. The hair on the back of his neck prickled as he realised that John and Stanley had lowered their voices, and that their conversation had become sombre. At first, Sherlock thought they might be discussing the case, and he hoped to glean more information by listening to their chatter.
But he quickly realised that they were speaking of another matter entirely. Stanley’s back was to Sherlock, and he appeared to be fixing another cup of coffee.
“I’m surprised he hasn’t asked you to move in yet,” John said casually. He leaned a hip against the counter, nursing his own tea while he watched Stanley.
“No,” Stanley said absently. “He won’t.”
John looked surprised.
“We’d known each other less than a day when I moved in here,” he pointed out, “and Sherlock didn’t fancy me.”
Stanley snorted and turned to face John.
“And that’s a risk he’ll never be taking again.”
“Don’t say that,” John said softly, all hints of light teasing gone from his voice. “He probably just needs some time -”
“He doesn’t want me to move in, John. Of course he doesn’t. Why would he?” Stanley said in quiet exasperation. And then, when John looked shocked at his vehemence, Stanley turned sombre. His eyebrows drew together and his lips thinned. “His father died of a heart attack when Sherlock was just a child. He was in the room when it happened, but he didn’t understand it and of course he was too young to help, even if he’d known what was going on. He watched his mother lose first her memories and then her health over the course of twenty years before she died. Victor was poisoned right under his nose, and you and Greg moved away when he wasn’t expecting it-and certainly before he was ready for it.”
Stanley added another spoonful of sugar to his coffee, stirring slowly.
“He’s lost too many people,” he added softly. “He’s terrified that everyone he loves will leave or die and it will be his fault, or that he’ll be powerless to stop it. That’s why we’ll never...”
Stanley waved a hand vaguely through the air before he picked up his mug of coffee and took a tentative sip. John was watching him silently. He looked completely taken aback, and Sherlock wasn’t sure if he’d ever seen John at such a loss for words.
“He’s had his great love. His golden age,” Stanley went on. His words were absent and quiet; he was musing more to himself than for the benefit of anyone else. “This isn’t it. He likes me well enough, but he won’t allow himself to get too close, not again.”
“And what about you? Do you love him?”
John’s question was quiet, but it sounded like thunder. It was met with silence at first.
“I’ll take whatever he’s willing to give me,” Stanley said at last. “It won’t be all of him, but it is some of him. I get to see sides of him he doesn’t show anyone else. I don’t have his whole heart, John, but I do have some of it. However long he’s willing to give that to me-I’m grateful.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” John pressed gently.
Stanley gave a wan smile.
“It should.”
----
Part 17