Sherlock fic: Thrall, NC-17 1/4
TITLE: Thrall 1/4
PAIRING: Sherlock/John, Mycroft/Lestrade
RATING: NC-17 (eventually), this part PG-13.
WARNINGS: Some violence, non-con themes.
WORD COUNT: 39,000. This Chapter
SUMMARY: Vampire!Au, sequel to Mate. Sherlock is sober, but his life is still spiraling down hill. Despite this, he has resisted the notion of ever getting a mate. The very idea of having a human balancing his life is abhorrent. As Mycroft, a case, and a new flatmate all vie for his attention, he misses the most important clue of his life: that his mate has found him.
A/N: This is too long to fit as one chapter so I've broken it down into four.
Chapter 1
It began when Sherlock's landlord informed him, politely but firmly, that he had 30 days to vacate. He hadn't bothered to list a reason, so Sherlock went ahead and did it for him: noise past midnight, smells that seeped into the hallways, permanent damage to the counters, and, of course, the altercation with the woman in the flat just beneath.
The man's response was, "I suggest you start flat hunting soon."
Sherlock considered glamouring the idea out of him, but then shrugged. To make it stick he would need to turn the dolt into a largely useless thrall. It wasn't worth it. Sherlock was a vampire with standards. Instead, he began making arrangements.
That afternoon Mycroft paid a call. Sherlock reluctantly let him in. As usual his brother was dressed impeccably and showed no signs of having been anywhere near the natural world. He'd barely touched the soles of his immaculate shoes to the oil stained pavement outside. Sherlock almost missed the days when Mycroft trolled places like Bart's maternity ward for food. Domestic bliss had turned Mycroft positively dull.
No wait, cancel that: Mycroft had an air of insufferable smugness about him. Sherlock felt a prickle of suspicion.
"It's too bad," Mycroft said in his usual mild way, gazing about the breezy open loft. "This place was quite stylish. I'll miss it."
Sherlock didn't ask how he knew about the eviction. Giving himself a mental kick for being obtuse, he revised his list of reasons for why it happened down to one. He should have smelled Mycroft's influence. So what is the game this time, brother? he thought.
Out loud he said: "Is that all? You've come to pay last respects to my flat?"
"Actually, I've come to ask you to move back in."
Sherlock did a double take. "Have Lestrade's daughters decided to skip their dreary prepubescent years and go straight to independent living? Or did you finally convince your stubborn mate to let you put them in a boarding school."
"Don't be ridiculous," said Mycroft. "I had a tough enough time convincing Greg to let them go to proper private schools. No, I wasn't suggesting you go back to your old rooms, my daughters still require them. What I meant is that the next flat over has become vacant. You can move in there."
"I see, close enough for after-dinner chats? Or close enough for you to meddle with my experiments."
"You can't keep on destroying flats," said Mycroft, tutting. "And the potential for self-injury is not insubstantial. Especially given your poor diet. Not to mention Lestrade feels you are getting a bit out of control with your use of cadavers. It's all become rather unsanitary and disrespectful of the dead."
"Lestrade's always had a weakness for sentiment, but he doesn't argue with the results. My experiments have caught him criminal after criminal."
Mycroft's eyes drifted downward, almost demurely, as he conceded the point. "Nonetheless you need a place to live, and I have one."
"As happens," said Sherlock with a bright smile. "I already have a flat lined up. Lovely lady, client of mine, has recently bought some property on Baker Street - which is far more convenient to me than your St. James Street one."
"That was quick."
"I've had four hours - ample enough time. And you'll find that she's one of mine, so don't think you can glamour an eviction out of her."
Mycroft suddenly found his nails fascinating. "Ah, very well, you've caught me. Shall we lay our cards on the table? I want you back, Sherlock. This experiment in independent living has to end."
His eyes came up and caught Sherlock's. A moment later Sherlock could feel his brother's will latch onto his own, attempting to bully his thoughts and emotions into alignment.
Attempting to glamour me like a human, Sherlock thought, caught between shock and disgust. How trite. He wrenched away from the connection. "I'm not strung out, those methods won't work on me anymore."
Mycroft relaxed. "You can't blame me for trying."
"And why are you trying?" Sherlock asked. "Have you grown bored with Lestrade? Is his blood no longer rapturous enough to make up for his imbecilic prattle? Is that what you need me for -- to give you some mental stimulation? I should think your efforts to control international politics would keep you busy enough. Or is that getting too old, too little of a challenge for you?"
"Nothing of the sort," Mycroft levelled a flash of anger. "And I won't have you insulting my spouse, Sherlock. I do this purely out of concern for you. You are my brother, and while I appreciate your sobriety, you are still hopelessly out of control. Someone needs to balance you, Sherlock. Since you have no mate, that has to be me."
"I'm not a child. Nor your responsibility." He sat down on his sofa. "Dear God, you'd think that three centuries would be enough time for you to accept that I've no need to be swaddled."
"I really don't want to do this to you," said Mycroft. "But you force my hand. I've put a hold on your bank accounts. You are cut off. I won't fund your spiral towards destruction anymore."
Sherlock hissed. "Don't pretend this is about my self-destructiveness, Mycroft. You were perfectly content to fund that for years while I did nothing more than flop uselessly around your flat. This is about your possessiveness. This is about you waking up one day to realise that something you felt entitled to has escaped your grasp. Well, I’ll not play that game anymore. You don't own me."
"You are right, I don't own you." He smiled just a bit tightly. "Do enjoy your independence, Sherlock. Remember, my arms are always open, should you care to return to reason."
With that he left, trailing behind him an aura of confidence that made Sherlock want to kill something.
Sherlock considered his options. He had built up over the last five years a respectable number of thralls. He cursed himself a little each time he did so, vowing that he wouldn't devolve into Mycroft and use them as lackeys, but truthfully, thralls were so useful that way.
The bulk of his thralls were various homeless people, who served as his eyes and ears on the street. The blood bond of thralldom made it easy to contact them and summon them to him, even at distances. The rest of his thralls were former clients. People who already were bound to him through a debt of gratitude. People who had goods or services he found useful.
Mrs. Hudson had been different. Though a former client herself, she’d had (at the time he'd made her) nothing really to offer. Her vitality was low, as was normal for a human nearing the end of her natural life. Sherlock fed only rarely on her, and when he did, her blood held almost no nourishment. She had neither street contacts, nor influence, nor any particular skill he could put to use on investigating.
And yet, she was the one thrall he had no compunction at all in making. He'd taken her for one reason only: He liked her.
He liked her the way he liked very few people and for reasons he'd never been able to fully put his finger on. She was simply very pleasant to have around. Sherlock found himself often after a case coming by her flat and sitting at her table while she gave him cups of tea that he didn't drink and plates of biscuits that he couldn't eat. He'd regale her about whatever case he'd been on, and she'd listen, raptly.
Now that her husband was ensconced in an American prison, she had been able to gather up enough funds to purchase a set of flats. 221 Baker street, A, B and C. She'd taken A for herself, being that the ground floor was easier on her arthritic hip. C was too small, and dank and dark besides. B, however, was perfect. He'd intended, before Mycroft had cut off his bank account, to use the second bedroom as a lab. Now he could see another use: a flatmate.
He'd considered the idea before: having a human around to do the domestic chores, cleaning, perhaps even some assisting. There were many times in his experiments when he cursed that he only had two hands. But the problem had always come back to him: Who could he stand to have around him that much?
And there was the other, less comfortable side of the coin as well: Who could stand him?
John was miserable. To be honest he'd been miserable for months, but in Afghanistan he'd had reason to be miserable and somehow that made it easier to bear. Now he was exactly where he wanted to be, where he'd fantasised being with his mates while bunkered down in some mud-walled hut in the rocky, goat and poppy infested war zone. They'd all imagined obsessively what they'd do when they got back to Britain: the foods they'd eat, the movies they'd see, the girls they'd shag. And he'd been right there with them, saying: "I want to live in London. I want to be surrounded by interesting things and people who aren't trying to kill me."
He hated London. The problem was, he was pretty sure he'd hate everywhere else, too.
There was something missing in his life that just didn't seemed to be filled by anything, and God knew he'd tried. Gambling might have fit the bill, if he actually had the funds for it, which he didn't. Alcohol held a double thrill, in part because it got him recklessly drunk, in part because he knew alcoholism ran in his family. But in the sober, and painfully hung over light of day, he knew that it was neither a solution, nor a very satisfying way to play Russian Roulette.
He hadn't quite gotten to actual Russian Roulette, but probably only because you couldn't play it with a Sig.
It was random chance that he'd met up with Mike Stamford while walking wistfully down memory lane at Bart's campus. If weight gain was a sign of happiness, Stamford seemed to be a very happy man indeed.
"You shouldn't be living on your own," was the conclusion Mike came to after hearing John's rather pathetic account of his last months.
"Yes, yes. So says my therapist," John replied, dismissively "I can't go back to Harry, Mike. I already tried. I lasted two days and I consider that to be a minor miracle. We are oil and water."
"Actually, I wasn't thinking of Harry." There was an odd gleam in Stamford's eye. "I was thinking more along the lines of finding a flatmate."
"Who would have me?" John asked defeated. "I … haven't been that personable lately."
Stamford smiled. "Funny, friend of mine said the exact same thing this morning."
Sherlock felt Stamford out in the hall. There was even a slight sense of his mood (happy, eager). He sighed a bit impatiently. This was the problem with thralls, they were so inconveniently distracting. How Mycroft juggled hundreds of them, all thinking and feeling and wanting and pushing, Sherlock didn't know. It was hell for one's concentration.
Mike Stamford and Molly Hooper were necessary evils, he reminded himself. Stamford gave him access to Bart's classrooms and labs and free reign over the equipment. Molly gave him access to corpses, all under the administrative disguise of medical research. It had all worked out fine for years, but lately, though, Molly'd become increasingly romantically infatuated with him. He really had aught to do something about that.
The door opened up, and a smell that was deliciously and unexpectedly not Stamford, wafted in.
Sherlock looked up, suspicious. A short man, normally of stocky build but now hiding his thinness under a loose checked shirt and a heavy jacket, limped into the room. Soldier hair cut. Injured. Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome - still shedding vitality, willy-nilly like he expected his life to end any moment. Mouthwateringly eager to have some monster snatch him up and steal away his blood, take him to the brink.
Sherlock let out a breath. Mystery solved. Just a twitchy ex-soldier. For a second he'd been worried the man might be a mate or something.
Still, distracting. Sherlock put his pipette down, thankfully having finished the minor test before these two had interrupted.
"Bit different from my day," the soldier was murmuring to Stamford.
"You've no idea," said Stamford.
Sherlock ignored the niceties. "Mike, I need your phone," he said to his thrall. "Mine is out of battery," he said for the other's sake.
Mike winced a little at the tug. "Sorry, I left it in my jacket."
Sherlock threw out a thread of glamour at the soldier. Bring me your phone.
Instantly the man twitched, he looked down and pulled a slick expensive mobile from his pocket.
Come to me. The glamour was half hearted at best. A normal person could have brushed it off with a distracting thought, but Watson seemed tugged like he'd been put in chains.
"You can use mine," he said, limping dramatically across the linoleum.
Definitely not a mate, Sherlock thought, relieved. Mates were notorious for being able to throw off glamours. Infinitely annoying at times, though he and Lestrade had long ago come to a mutual understanding. No, this wasn't a mate. This man seemed unusually susceptible glamours.
That made him something infinitely better. Sherlock didn't suppress the smile. A potential second pair of hands. Perhaps even an extension of himself.
Sherlock took him in some more. His availability positively reeked like some aphrodisiac perfume. The state of his phone and his apparent need of a flatmate screamed that he was unattached. No pesky relatives to fend off. No close friends either to become concerned. And with that smell, the man positively begged to be made a thrall. If Sherlock didn't take him, Mycroft undoubtedly would.
No, that wasn't going to happen.
Sherlock had come to that conclusion in the time it took to rattle a quick text off to Lestrade and solve a case.
"I think you'll make an excellent flatmate," said Sherlock, handing the man back his phone. "Yes, you'll do nicely. Good eye, Mike.”
"Wait," said the soldier, turning to Stamford with confusion. "Did you tell him about me?"
"Not a word," said Stamford, smug that his master had praised him. "He just knows things like that."
"Pity I can't stay with you now," said Sherlock with a smile. "But you are far too distracting and I've business that needs attending. The address is 221B Baker street. I'll meet you there at seven tomorrow and we can see about getting you moved in."
"221 B- wait now. Hold up!" said the soldier completely consternated. "Listen, we've only just met, don't you think we should get to know each other before agreeing to share a flat. You know nothing about me!"
Sherlock turned. "I know you are an army doctor, recently retired due to an injury, though interestingly enough, not to your leg. That is psychosomatic. You have a brother named Harry who you can't live with, possibly because he's an alcoholic, more likely because you disapprove of the way he treats his wife. You also have post traumatic stress syndrome which makes you worry that you are unbearable for anyone else to live with. You fear that you are going to kill yourself, especially since you have the means at hand and the knowledge to do it right."
"How did you -?" said the soldier stunned.
"Really, the only question is, were you posted in Afghanistan or Iraq."
The man simply stared. He looked over to Stamford, who shrugged. "He's always like that."
"If you wish to know my methods, you'll meet me at 221 B, but I assure you there is nothing supernatural about them." Which wasn't actually a lie, even though Sherlock was supernatural. He liked the irony of that. He headed to the door feeling job very much accomplished.
"Wait a minute, you don't even know my name," said the soldier. "Nor I, yours. I don't know anything about you!"
Sherlock paused. The man was right. Part of him thought that it didn't matter, but it was important. If he weren't to hold this man under a glamour at all the time, he'd need to keep to his good side.
"My name is Sherlock Holmes," he said and held out his hand a bit awkwardly.
"John Watson.” The soldier shook hands with only the slightest hesitation. Lefty, Sherlock noted.
"And as for my bad habits, I keep very random hours, I'm horribly unsocial, I like doing experiments, I play the violin-"
"Poorly or well?" John interrupted.
"Well," assured Sherlock.
"Not a problem."
Sherlock smiled again. "Surely then, we are perfectly compatible. Now I really need to go. I left my riding crop in the mortuary and I'd hate to have it stolen."
With that he left.
John was stunned. He wasn't sure which amazed him more: the fact that, in the space of twenty minutes, he'd gone from first considering a flat-share to shaking on one, or the fact that he actually liked this Sherlock Holmes.
There were so many things about the man which by all rights he should have hated. John had little patience with arrogance. He was a practical man and big part of being in the real world was being somewhat careful of the people in it. He wasn't a huge fan of know-it-alls either, at least not normally. It went back to arrogance -- those types spouted b.s. as often as they did truth. The entitlement the man exuded also annoyed him. Sherlock had looked him up and down like someone about to take possession of a pet.
Yet, despite that, John liked him. Or maybe, to be more accurate, he felt a very strong fascination with him. In large part because he'd actually knew his stuff… though how?
"That was… astounding," John finally said. "I'm floored."
Mike Stamford was watching him with a smile plastered on his lips. "Yeah, he has that affect on people."
"I mean, is he for real? Or did I just hallucinate that up. Because, hallucination seems a bit less far fetched." John scratched his head. "And did I really just agree to share a flat with him?"
Mike laughed and put an arm around John's shoulders, leading him back out into the hall. "Oh, Sherlock's real, alright. I know what you mean, though. He's quite the charmer."
"Charmer?" John said, skeptically.
"Maybe that's the wrong word," admitted Mike, lolling his head with humour. "It's the oddest thing. Half the time I think, 'What a wanker!' but I still find myself doing everything he asks. It's," he snapped his fingers. "Charisma, yes. Whatever it is, he's got it in spades." Mike went thoughtful. "He's a good looking chap, too. Not that I'm inclined that way. But I think that might factor in as well."
John screwed up his lip. He'd noticed that Sherlock was handsome. It wasn't something he felt wholly comfortable admitting, more because of the disconcerting degree of the attraction than on principal. He'd prided himself on being secure in his sexuality. Sherlock made him question his assumptions.
"And there's the other thing with Sherlock," Mike went on, unaware of John's thoughts. "He has this way of sucking up your attention, like a sponge. He'll stop to visit for ten minutes and next thing you know half the morning is gone. Poof. And not a thing to show for it." They reached a door with a frosted glass window and Stamford’s name attached to a brass plate to one side.
"How did you two meet?" John asked as Mike unlocked his office. The door opened up on a messy, well lived in place, full of folders and papers. A collection of three-dimensional plastic models of each of the organs adorned the shelves behind his chair. Mike did look like a proper teacher.
"Uh, lets see. Five years ago, I think. Yes. Back in 2005. He knocked on the door of my office and started asking for questions about posthumous trauma. I told him I wasn't a forensic pathologist but I suppose I was able to answer enough of his questions. He came back a few days later and asked if he could use one of the labs for his studies." Mike touched his chin with his hand. "And see here's the odd bit, too, because he wasn't a student. I didn't know a thing about the man. But I let him use the facilities."
"That charm thing."
"Exactly. I trusted him. And I really shouldn't have. There's equipment in there worth a quarter million quid. Some of it is quite delicate. I didn't even know his name. I'd have lost my position if anything had gone awry."
"I take it that he didn't destroy anything."
"Oh no, of course not. Tell you what, I wish he were a student. He'd make an excellent physician, but the crime bug bit him a bit too hard for that. He doesn't have the patience to learn systematic anatomy."
"Crime bug?" John felt a twinge of alarm. "What has he to do with crime?"
"Not like that. He's a sleuth. A detective. That thing he does where he rattles off your life history, that's him being observant. Seeing clues."
"Ah," said John relieved. Well that sort of explained the eerie way Sherlock had picked up on John's life. "I suppose I won't have any secrets from him."
He laughed a bit, but Mike's smile had faded.
"No. No, you won't."
Sherlock's mobile rang while he was picking up his crop. The movers were ready to deliver his boxes. Sherlock let out a gusty sigh of annoyance and caught one of the cabs that always lingered outside Bart's back to Baker Street.
The new flat was somewhat smaller than his old loft, and separated into a plethora of rooms. He needed his chemistry set right away so he had that taken to the kitchen. The rest he let the movers put where they willed, cursing under his breath the fact that he couldn't use the attic bedroom as he'd initially planned.
With any luck the new roommate would make himself small and unobtrusive. He didn't seem to be the type to own a lot of stuff. Perhaps he'd even allow Sherlock to use his cupboard. Instinctively, Sherlock reached out his mind to test the subject, but found, of course, no thread to follow.
More and more he regretted not making John a thrall the moment he met him. There'd been a dozen reasons why he hadn't: he was busy, wasn't hungry, they weren't alone, there was no immediate danger. On and on. Still he had only the man's promise that he'd come by the following evening. And glamours, especially ones as offhanded as Sherlock had used, rarely lasted longer than a few minutes, even on the most susceptible. What if John came to his senses and chose not to come? What if Sherlock had to actually track the man down?
Sherlock found himself disconcerted. This was new. He'd never had such urgent feelings about a thrall before.
With a shake of his head, he dismissed the feeling. Mycroft, he thought to himself. It's his fault. He cut me off and upset my life. John provided an elegant solution. It's natural I wouldn't want my plans to be further complicated.
He then turned his attention back to the chemistry set. Reproducing the poison that had killed three people was a surprisingly difficult task. It wasn't just that the ingredients were difficult to obtain - one of them needed to be synthesised. Whoever was responsible for this either was a first class chemist himself, or had a confederate who was.
Why so overcomplicated? Why give the appearance of suicide at all if only to blow the whole thing out of the water with a custom drug? What did the killer gain by this?
Beyond the calling-card poison, the case was distressingly free of clues. Sherlock could find no connection between any of the victims. Not even tangentially. Even the places of their deaths weren't a help. From the lowly docks to a posh empty office in the financial district, the only thing in common was that they were untrafficked. This person was snatching people literally at random and taking them to random places.
The poison was a curious clue. The victims had taken it themselves, knowing full well that they were taking a drug. How the dickens had the killer induced them to do such a thing?
This was not a run of the mill sadistic killer. They typically preferred a more cathartic role, torturing or stabbing or bludgeoning. Poison was the preference of the weak or stealthy. Those who were more content in knowing that the person died than in watching the suffering take place. But yet suffering was an important ingredient. A dose of cyanide (far more easily obtainable) would render a victim unconscious in seconds. This nasty poison left a victim awake, helplessly and painfully convulsing for the better part of 20 minutes before suffocation finally took them. So definitely a sadist, but one who was playing to a bigger audience than just his victim.
This wasn't a terrorist, whose interest was less in the victims than in the fear their deaths would cause. It wasn't dramatic enough. The murderer had been waiting weeks for his uproar to come. Too patient. And yet there were elements of terrorism in this. Here was someone shouting to the world how oh-so-very clever he was. And London had been absolutely gripped by fear. There was a message in this. A demented one, but most definitely a message. Either this was a brilliant lunatic, or else someone up to something very subtle.
There was a buzz from Sherlock's mobile. About bloody time. He snatched it up and looked at it.
Back off.
The public is panicked enough.
You don't need to goad
the reporters -- GL
Sherlock sighed angrily. Lestrade had waited nearly an hour just to tell Sherlock off? He turned off the Bunsen burner, and then ran his thumbs over the keys.
Let me in.
You need me.
He's getting bolder -- SH
After this stunt you are
lucky I don't arrest you. -- GL
How many must die for your pride?-SH
There was a pause of almost a minute before there was a reply. Sherlock turned the burner back on.
If we get something new,
I promise I will tell you.
Leave the reporters out.
Discretion -- GL
Sherlock grinned smugly. The gambit had worked. Lestrade’s fear of bad publicity trumped his petty desire to prove himself. And about time. There'd been nine days between the first murder and the second, but only four between the second and the third. The murderer was gaining confidence. He'd take a fourth soon, and when he did Sherlock needed be on the scene to see the clues.
Sherlock turned off the burner again, and lifted the beaker. A white residue clung to the bottom of the glass. Back to Bart's to analyse it and make sure it was what he predicted it to be.
All thoughts of thralls, John, Mycroft, or even Lestrade had fled. He was in his element again.
Greg was late again, as he had been for going on three weeks. Damn suicides, thought Mycroft. Not really suicides, it was painfully obvious to even the public that they were murders. The poison was a peculiar, custom mix, a home-made stew of strychnine and a rare catalyst to speed the miserable reaction. Not exactly something a human could pick up at the corner chemist's. And yet, Greg was there on the telly spouting calming nonsense, and otherwise spinning his wheels, when he should damn well be home.
Mycroft ordinarily didn't poke his nose into Greg's work, not only because he had enough of his own to fill his time, but also Greg absolutely needed to have an area that wasn't overshadowed by his husband. It was the one thing he was most adamant about. Mycroft could dress him, house him, feed him, choose his daughter's schools, but he was not giving up his job. Mycroft tried to respect that, but some days he really wished Greg was a beloved thrall rather than a mate. It would be so much more convenient.
Then he could say things like, "Toss it over to Sherlock, I'm sure he's already bugging you for the chance to solve it," and Greg would actually do it.
But Greg had his pride, and he really wanted to do this without Sherlock's help. Mycroft sighed. Why were the men in his life so stubborn?
Mycroft hit the mute and continued to watch Greg silently mouth platitudes towards his skeptical audience. He felt a soft presence at the back of his mind, smiled and waited.
"Papa?" came a soft voice from the doorway. Elsie, the younger of his daughters, ducked her head into the sitting room. "Is uncle Sherlock moving in tonight?" Her curiosity was like a bright flower in the gloom, livening his spirits.
To Elsie and her sister, Emma, Uncle Sherlock was a mysterious creature, spoken of frequently about the dinner table, but rarely seen. Their few sightings of him were at Christmas, where he'd delight them by showing them spectacular, semi-destructive tricks that could be done with ordinary household chemicals. Thankfully the girls had their daddy's good sense not to ever repeat any of them.
"No sweetheart. He found a place he likes better. You'll see him next month at Christmas." Mycroft then frowned. Right now, Sherlock would be moving into his new Baker Street flat. Mycroft's attempt to get all the ones he cared about under one roof had failed.
Elsie looked disappointed.
"Is Daddy coming home soon?"
"That is ever my hope," he sighed. Mycroft reached out a hand towards her. The sweet little ten year old came running over towards his lap to give him a hug. Midway along her path, her eyes happened to look in the direction of the muted telly.
"Daddy!" she cried and she swerved to throw herself in front of the flickering screen. The reporters were all looking at their phones and Greg seemed nearly cross-eyed with irritation. Sherlock was obviously shooting his own foot trying to be clever again. Greg would never put up with this. And so much for hoping for an early resolution of this miserable affair.
Unaware of anything more than her daddy's image on the screen, Elsie watched delighted, until a few minutes later, the press conference ended and Mycroft switched off the machine.
"I think it will be another late night," said Mycroft.
Eliza sighed hugely, then got up and trudged back to her room with elaborate dejection.
Mycroft considered glamouring her back for that hug, but he knew she'd come on her own given time. And Greg, too. Perhaps even Sherlock.
In time. Patience.
That night John dreamed of Afghanistan. It wasn't the normal nightmare, the one where he crawled across the battlefield and tried vainly to stitch together soldiers blown to bits by IEDs. This was the one that came less often, that couldn't even be wholly classified as a nightmare, though it had nightmarish elements.
In the dream he was on a peacekeeping mission to the mountain villages east of Kandahar, bringing medicine and setting up temporary clinics in the hopes of winning over the hearts of the local population. This was a good dream for the most part, because the locals did largely greet them well. It never failed to give John hope that there was good to be done and he was doing it.
But then the dream soured, much as real life had.
Suddenly, mid triumph, he was back in that mud-brick house, his small band of support surrounded by armed insurgents. In front of him sat Aamir no-last-name, the local "elder". Even though all the other dream elements were foggy, and shifted when he focused on them, Aamir remained sharp and somehow permanent.
Aamir was a wiry man, much younger than John had expected. Younger than many of the men who surrounded him. His eyes were dark and unfathomable. His beard was a scraggly thing that extended to his breastbone. There was no humor or warmth in his expression.
John had disliked him on sight.
"What is your message?" Aamir said through a translator.
The sergeant tried to answer, but the Aamir waved him quiet and looked solely at John.
"Who do you belong to?"
And here is where John stumbled in the dream, coming up with many bland but true things to say to try stave off the inevitable. I'm a doctor, I'm British, I'm part of the Army, I'm a peacekeeper. But all the answers just seemed to make Aamir angrier.
In moments the bullets started to fly.
Then he woke up.
In reality, the debacle that inspired the dream hadn't been nearly that bad. It was little more than two hours worth of fruitless discussion, where John (and Aamir insisted that it be John who spoke) tried to reassure his suspicious host that he meant no harm, while Aamir asked questions that frankly bewildered the interpreter as much as they did John.
--Who are you married to?
--I'm not married?
--You won't find a spouse here.
--I wasn't looking for one, honestly.
--You are trying to trick me.
--I'm trying to help.
--I should kill you before you help my rival.
On and on in a paranoid manner. No matter how much John assured the man he wasn't after the village women and wasn't trying to spy for some neighbouring warlord, he couldn't seem to get through to him. All the while, the Sergeant worried that things were escalating in a dangerous direction and tried to organise a strategic retreat.
Eventually the warlord did let them go and no bullets were fired. They were escorted to the border of the village, without having dispensed so much as aspirin. It had been an unexpectedly hairy and disturbing end to what should have been an easy and rewarding mission.
Now, months later, staring at the rent-by-the-week hotel ceiling, John wondered what it was about that incident that resonated so strongly in his mind. As failures went, it wasn't nearly bad as others. And yet he couldn't get Aamir out of his mind. He remembered an odd repulsion that crawled under his skin far more than Aamir's inflammatory accusations.
Sherlock Holmes was the same. John blinked. Once he thought of it became obvious. That unreasoning attraction was in many ways akin to the repulsion he'd had for Aamir. John didn't believe in psychic auras or any of that new age mumbo-jumbo, but if he did he'd say that Sherlock's soul was magnetic, with the pole set the right direction this time.
I better watch myself with him, John thought.
Late next morning, Sherlock took the train to Cambridge and visited the Department of Chemistry for clues to the genius who'd synthesising the poison pills. It was a goose chase and not even a terribly interesting one. Lestrade had had the same idea a week before, and despite Sherlock's superior deductive skills, he ran up against the same walls. The professors gave him a less-than-polite run-around, and his poking about their labs and questioning students proved unfruitful as well.
Even so, he would have stayed longer if he hadn't agreed to meet with John at seven.
He returned to London, full of annoyance that he'd needed to deal with the flatmate situation now and not, say, next week when the case would hopefully be wrapped up. He reminded himself how useful it was having a second pair of hands, and that not keeping this appointment would certainly drive those hands away.
Sherlock loitered outside the building. Impatient to get this meeting over so he could get back to his case.
And then something unnerving happened.
Just the memory of the soldier and his ridiculous overabundance of vitality made Sherlock feel a sharp uptick in hunger. His teeth began to extend in anticipation of a meal, and not a simple courtesy nip to anchor a psychic connection. Fantasies of a full on, drain-til-he-staggers feast wracked his imagination. The thought of dapper, prim John lying ashen pale with blood loss, stripped and pinned and undone, both physically and psychically, wormed it's seductive way into his conscience. God help him. He was in lust with this man.
A stranger passing by on the street took one look at Sherlock and flinched away, giving him a wide berth. Sherlock startled then realized the man was disturbed by the predatory look on his features. Sherlock covered his mouth with his hand, appalled.
He'd not felt so wantonly gluttonous in over a century.
No. I won't feed on him. Sherlock schooled himself, tamping that undisciplined urge down. He impatiently pressed the errant teeth back into place with his tongue and forced his face to return to it's normal pleasant expression.
Dear, God, what was the matter with him? The last thing he needed was to oversate himself in the middle of a case. Hunger sharpened all his senses. The hunting instinct gave him the endurance, strength and energy to work day and night. And most of all, the act of feeding by itself provided a strong temporary bond with his prey. To waste his hunger on someone who wasn't connected to the crime would be idiotic.
He schooled his appetite back. Reluctantly his teeth retracted.
And just in time. John's cab pulled up and already his smell was wafting about the street like a succulent roast to the starving. If only there were a way to scrub that scent off of him. How had John managed to walk the streets of crowded London without being accosted by another vampire?
Never mind. Unimportant.
He moved in to handle his new flatmate in the normal human way. Sherlock held out his hand and John shook it, meeting his eyes with innocent pleasure.
“Glad you could come.”
John shrugged modestly, “I really didn't have anywhere else to go.” His smell grew if anything more delectable.
Sherlock suppressed a groan. The moment this case was over, he vowed to properly drain the man. If for no other reason but to make him less of a bloody siren. He'd be doing the vampire world a favor.
For now he settled for turning his back and knocking on the door. Mrs. Hudson opened up and introductions were made all around. She lead them upstairs and showed off the flat, explaining the costs and showing off the better features.
“Yes, this is lovely!” John's eyes were wide, taking in the view, the furniture, the atmosphere. Sherlock felt a wave of pride that his tastes and John's lined up. “With some cleaning up,” John continued, “This place could be very nice.”
Sherlock stiffened, self-consciously aware of the clutter. In his hurry to unpack his lab, he'd carelessly thrown open boxes and tossed the irrelevant contents on whatever horizontal surface was nearest. The chemistry lab itself was still out, unwashed, on the kitchen table. John's nose wrinkled a bit as he passed it.
“Hmmm.” Sherlock could sense disapproval. Army doctor. Of course, John would be used to everything being tidy.
Sherlock quickly moved to straighten up a stack of books and tossed a errant pair of pants out of sight behind one of the chairs. “I can be better.”
“It's okay,” said John, gently. “You've just moved in. It's always a disaster after a move, isn't it.”
“Yes.” Sherlock was at a loss. He wouldn't have called the clutter a disaster per se. More like mid-week normal. In his previous flats he'd hired maids to straighten things up. He'd gone through quite a number of them, in fact, before he found one stolid enough not to quit. But he couldn't afford her rates anymore, not with his funds cut off.
Dear god, he might have to pick up after himself. Regularly. He looked at Mrs. Hudson.
“I'm not your housekeeper,” she said quickly.
John, thankfully, hadn't seemed to notice. He was looking in the refrigerator. Uh-oh. “Say... that isn't...”
Sherlock spoke up quickly. “Research. I do research.”
“On human toes?”
“I'm a detective. Surely Mike told you this. Knowing how long it takes to mummify flesh at various temperatures is necessary for the job.”
“In the crisper drawer?”
“Well, I couldn't very well leave them on the counter. It'd be far too warm.”
“Hmm,” said John again.
“Will this be a problem?”
John squared himself to Sherlock and seemed to challenge him with his eyes. “Listen, I should tell you, I've screaming nightmares. Sometimes as many as three times a week. Will that be a problem?”
Mrs. Hudson frowned but Sherlock threw out a glamour to wipe the worry away.
“Not at all,” said Sherlock. Once John was a thrall, Sherlock could work on whatever mental problems were plaguing him. It would probably solve the excess vitality problem as well. Mycroft frequently diddled with his more damaged thralls to bring them back to pristine mental health.
That is if John stuck around that long.
“Then I think we'll be fine together,” John said. He seemed to have relaxed, as if he thought a bit of noise in the night would be more of a problem for Sherlock. “I'll forgive your eccentricities, if you'll forgive my more unpleasant quirks.”
“Deal,” said Sherlock, impulsively grabbing his hand to shake again. Relief was heady. He hadn't realized how frightened he'd been that John might call this off.
It's the smell, he reassured himself. It's far too distracting.
“Shall I show you the upstairs bedroom?” asked Mrs. Hudson. “Or,” she said looking from one to the other, “Will you not be needing a separate one.”
Sherlock looked at her surprised. Now where on Earth had she gotten that impression? He then considered his own behavior. He'd barely pulled his eyes away from John since he'd exited the cab twenty minutes ago. He hadn't put more than two seconds of thought toward the case. Sherlock touched his face. Had he really been grinning this entire time? Gah, no wonder he'd mistaken for being love-smitten.
John looked startled. “Of course, we'll be needing two bedrooms.”
Mrs. Hudson waved away the reaction. “Don't worry, there's all kinds around here.” She lead John up the stairs, and his smell retreated with him.
Sherlock stayed behind, thankful for an excuse to have a break from temptation. He'd cleared off a chair and sat. Almost immediately, he saw a blue light reflected in the curtains.
Yes! he thought. Finally! The right kind of distraction.
Mrs. Hudson and John staggered down the stairs again. Between her stiff hip and John's psychosomatic limp they managed to cover over the sound of Greg Lestrade knocking at the front door. Mrs. Hudson and John reached the living room just as Lestrade's grey head grew visible in the stairwell outside the flat's open door.
“Sherlock's been working on the suicide murders,” Mrs. Hudson was saying to John. “At least I expect that's what all the lab equipment is.”
“Really?” said John brightly. “I always suspected those three people didn't kill themselves.”
“Four,” corrected Sherlock, happily. “There's been another!”
“How'd you --”
Greg Lestrade stepped into the sitting room, and now there were two humans screaming to be fed upon. No wonder Mycroft had been so pissy the last few days. From the sheer volume of vitality Mycroft's mate was putting out, he must have been playing hard to get for at least a week.
Lestrade's scent wasn't quite as mouthwatering as John's, but all that excessive vitality, contained in a small room...
Sherlock impulsively opened a window.
“There you are, Sherlock! The front door was unlocked.” Greg looked around the place. “You know, could have texted me that you'd moved. I wouldn't have had to have asked around -”
“Where was the murder?” said Sherlock sharply, having no interest in Greg's chastisement. The faster he could get his brother's mate out of the room, the more likely he would be able to not make a ludicrously infantile scene. “When?”
“Some squatters found the body about an hour ago. It's in Lauristen Garden, an abandon building.”
“But there's something different,” said Sherlock excitedly. “A note?”
Greg narrowed his eyes. “God, I hate it when you do that. There's no way you could have guessed that.”
“No guessing, the look on your face makes it obvious it was something different. I merely mentioned the most likely possibility. Yes. The murderer's finally slipped!”
“Yes, I think so. Well then, come along,” said Greg tiredly. “Though don't get your hopes up too far.” He turned to head back down.
“Who is running forensics on the case.”
Greg winced. “Anderson I'm afraid.”
Scent or no scent, Sherlock actually forgot about his hunger for a second. “Oh god, no, I can't work with him. You know that!”
Greg let his head tilt and sighed. “I didn't put him on my team to antagonise you. He's been there from the start and I'm damn well not going to unassign him because you are now in. ”
Sherlock sighed angrily.
Anderson. Of all the people. Anderson. The man was like a psychic static generator. Worse than unglamourable, he actually sapped Sherlock's powers. 200 years ago his type carried around stakes and torches and hunted vampires down. In these less superstitious days, Anderson's relatives were no more dangerous than a particularly shrill car-alarm, but instinct wouldn't let Sherlock relax around him.
But some things couldn't be helped. Greg was reluctant enough bringing Sherlock on in the first place. Sherlock would simply have to do the forensics himself and simply try to block the other out.
“Oh, very well,” he said at last.
“Shall we get going?” asked Greg.
Sherlock shook his head. “Go ahead, I'm not going to be confined in a car with you smelling the way you are now. Dear, God, when was the last time you were home. You reek.”
Greg stiffened and sniffed at one of his armpits.
“Sherlock!” chastised Mrs. Hudson. “Don't you go saying rude things like that. She turned to Greg. “You smell perfectly fine, dearie. Don't let him put you off, he's just in a snit because of all the packing. He's absolutely thrilled you came calling.”
Sherlock rolled his eyes. Why did everyone have to be so stupid. Mrs. Hudson and John might have an excuse for their ignorance, but Greg shouldn't have mistaken his meaning.
Sherlock leaned in and breathed in Greg's ear, “Couldn't that lazy, pompous spouse of yours take half an hour of his time to meet you in a cleaning closet? How long has it been? A week?”
Greg's eyes widened. “I didn't realize that you could --”
“Of course, I can.” Louder he said. “I'll follow up in a cab.”
Greg nodded and headed back down the stairs. Sherlock relaxed.
“That was unbelievably rude,” John mentioned to him. His easy voice belied deep disapproval. “There was nothing at all wrong with his smell.”
Sherlock waved him off. What did it matter what this soon to be thrall thought of him. He threw out an encompassing glamour and Mrs. Hudson and John forgot all about his less than tactful comment on Greg's smell.
Meanwhile, there was a bloody case waiting for him in Lauriston gardens. Why on Earth was he messing about here? John would be just as delicious smelling when he returned. With a hop in his step he headed out the door.
He made it to the bottom of the steps before a belated realization brought him to a halt. He smacked his forehead and raced back up. I am not on my best game today, he thought.
He ducked his head back into the flat. John was sitting down in one of the chairs looking rather frustrated. He startled when he noticed Sherlock looking at him.
“Forget something?”
“Yes. You.”
“Me?”
“You are a doctor, aren't you? An Army doctor?”
“Yes.”
“Used to violence. Not terribly squeamish.”
“No, not squeamish at all.”
“Talented?”
“I'd like to think so. Yes, I'm quite good.”
Sherlock grinned. “Want to help catch a serial killer?”
John's face broke into a huge smile. “Yes. Yes, I would.”
If he hadn't been warned not to read too deeply into Sherlock's less conventional behaviour, John would have sworn the man was flirting with him.
Thankfully, Mike had given him the skinny. Sherlock had a rich relative who'd been providing for him for years, but apparently a falling out had left him stripped of income, except for what he garnered from his investigations. If John was desperate for a roommate for psychological reasons, Sherlock was desperate for sheer brokeness.
“He's not an easy man to get along with,” Mike had cautioned. “He's rude and his temper is famous.”
Sherlock had been anything but rude and ill tempered when he'd shown John the flat. His face had positively lit up every time John approved of something. And he'd been thrown into a tizzy at the least sign of disapproval. Everything down to the tone of his voice was thinly edged with need.
It was rather nice on the ego, John decided. He hadn't felt this wanted since he'd left Afghanistan. Nice to be the one chatted up rather than the one chatting for a change.
“You know,” he said casually in the cab, “Mike was right about you.”
Sherlock's eyes widened with sudden paranoia. “What did he say?” he asked with suspicion.
John laughed goodnaturedly, “Nothing terrible. Well okay, a few terrible things. He said you were a tactless, sarcastic bastard.” Sherlock's expression didn't change. Apparently he was okay with that part of his personality. “But he also said you had a way of making people fall in love with you despite that.”
“Did he mention I was brilliant?” Sherlock asked, seeming to dismiss what John said as if it were unimportant.
John clicked his tongue. “No he didn't. But I figured it out anyway.”
Sherlock grinned. “Good.”
John sighed. “You know I envy you. There's something about you. I bet you have all the women you could ask for.”
Sherlock's frown was back. “I do - but what would I want them for?”
Now it was John's turn to frown and grow flustered. “Or men, I suppose. If you prefer. Which is okay.” Perhaps Sherlock had been flirting with him.
Sherlock rolled his eyes. “You needn't worry, John. My heart has already been taken.”
“Oh?” asked John, genuinely curious. “By whom?”
“By what,” Sherlock corrected. “By my job. By this!” The cab had stopped some fifty feet shy of a police crime tape. “How could anything compete with this?” He flashed a disarming grin.
Their discussion halted as they entered the crime area. Sherlock's famed rude side came out. No sooner had he gotten close but Sherlock was engaging in verbal fisticuffs with the officer guarding the perimeter. John cringed with embarrassment. Deducing who was sleeping with whom? Snide remarks about infidelity? The dirty laundry came fast and furious, leaving everyone breathless.
Worst of all, John had the distinct feeling that Sherlock was doing it for his benefit, as though giving away other people's dirty secrets was supposed to impress him more than he already was impressed. John gritted his teeth and fought the urge to slap Sherlock.
“Oh what is it,” Sherlock growled as John fumbled into a proffered clean suit. “Out with it!”
“Did your mother teach you no manners?” he blurted.
“My mummy has impeccable manners.”
“Yes, that's very good for her, but what you did to those officers - and to the detective inspector earlier - that's - it's not on! It's just not on!”
“Do you think becoming my flatmate gives you the right to become the keeper of my conscience?” The syllables dripped with sarcasm. Sherlock was suddenly very close and his eyes very dark.
“No - I -“ John was flustered again. What the hell was he doing here? What did Sherlock want with him? Sherlock had his back turned and was climbing the steps far quicker than John could keep up.
Lestrade waited for them on the landing. The door was open and John could see a woman lying on the floor. “You have five minutes.”
“Ten,” Sherlock argued.
“Five,” repeated Lestrade. “Listen, it's irregular as hell having you here at all. Don't muck things up for me any more than you already have.”
John wondered what Sherlock had done. But then his questions were brought short by Lestrade’s lingering look at him.
“Saw you at the flat,” Lestrade said. “How do you know Sherlock?”
“I'm his new flatmate,” said John. Sherlock was kneeling over the corpse, staring and pawing in a deliberate, but not evident way.
“Know him long?”
John looked at his watch. “... Going on about an hour and a half all told. If you add in the three minutes yesterday when I met him for the first time.”
“Why'd he bring you along?” Lestrade asked, concerned.
John just shook his head. “I have no idea.”
“John,” said Sherlock sharply. “Come here.”
The next couple of minutes reminded John eerily of a recurring nightmare he had, where he was late to the final exam of a class he hadn't remembered to attend. His medical knowledge was good enough to state the obvious - the woman was dead, asphyxia was the cause, and there was no outward signs of fight or trauma. All the things that, frankly, John knew before he walked in the door, thanks to Sherlock's brief in the cab. The only thing different was the word she'd scratched into the floorboard with her fingernail and John had no clue what that meant.
Sherlock seemed impatient with his answers, Lestrade looked baffled, turning his eyes from Sherlock to him and and back. John knew he'd failed. Worse than failed - looked like an utter prat.
Sherlock then went through his schtick impressing them with all sorts of details that John had utterly missed. Lestrade's face lit up and he nodded. John slunk into a corner and tried to become invisible. Or he would have if Sherlock hadn't kept directing his answers at him, as though it were John who needed the information rather than Lestrade. Lestrade stared with bemusement.
Oh just shut up and let me die in the corner in peace. If there were a way to feel more awkward and useless than this, he had no idea.
“Leave Dr. Watson be,” Lestrade finally snapped. “What do you mean overnight bag. There was no overnight bag.”
“None? That's it!” Sherlock shouted. “Of course! The mistake!” Then abruptly, Sherlock ran past John, taking the stairs three at a time, like a teen.
John turned to Lestrade, “Where's he going?”
Lestrade shook his head. “No clue. Sorry. But you better hurry if you want to keep up.” And ended the conversation abruptly and finally by pulling out a mobile and stepped away, turning his back pointedly to him.
Well that was great, John thought to himself. This was just what he needed to get himself back on track.
John began stumbling down the stairs. Hurry wasn't something he was capable of, not with his leg aching the way it was. He passed Anderson, the real forensic's specialist, on the next landing. The derision on his face was impossible to miss. John didn't protest it. He'd been absolutely useless up there. The whole thing had just been another attempt on Sherlock's part to impress him with his stunning intellect and fascinating career.
The street outside was empty. There wasn't a sign of Sherlock anywhere.
Just great! Now that Sherlock had an actual lead, he'd ditched John without a second thought.
“If you know what's best for you,” said Lt. Donovan, joining him next to the police tape. “You'd stay away from him.”
John looked at her. She'd been one of the officers that Sherlock had insulted. “Why's that.”
“There's something wrong with him,” she said, gazing out with a thousand yard stare. “And by wrong, I mean really, really wrong. Unnaturally wrong. Stay away from him or he'll get into your head like Hannibal Lecter.”
Oh you're kidding. “Does he want to eat my liver?” John joked.
“I wouldn't laugh.” Anderson joined them “Trust me, we've known him for years. The crap talk coming out of his mouth is the least of your worries. I've seen him do things. He's not human.”
Oh, Christ, this was rich. John couldn't hold it in any more. He laughed. “Oh come on!” he looked at one then the other of them. “You don't mean that. He's not human? Hannibal Lecter? Bit melodramatic here.”
“Why are you here?” Donovan asked. “You wonder that?”
“I'm here because Sherlock asked me to be here.”
“You mean, you are here because he manipulated you here,” said Anderson. “Didn't that strike you as a bit odd, you wanting to come visit a crime scene?”
John considered. It hadn't seemed odd to him at all. He'd thought the idea, at the time, was an exciting one. But perhaps it had been more that Sherlock's enthusiasm was catching. He enjoyed any excuse to be near the man. It was a creepy realisation.
“You're here because he's got a use for you,” Donovan sneered. “He's going to use you, mate. Use you and use you. And the moment you stop being useful, he'll cast you aside. That's how he sees people. As tools.” She looked haughty.
“Well, I know that's not true,” John said bitterly.
“But we've seen through him,” Anderson added. “That's why he hates me so much. Because he can't pull that trick on me. I've seen it in his eyes. He's scared of me. He knows one of these days I'm going to catch him over the line.” He then turned around and walked back into the building.
Donovan nodded. “You best go,” she said. “He won't be coming back here, and we have better things to do than babysit you.”
“Fine,” said John, bowing under the police tape. “I'll just get out of your way.” He was rather inclined to agree with Sherlock's dislike of these two. Though it didn't excuse Sherlock's earlier rude behavior, it was clear that the antagonism went both ways. He'd long ago learned not to involve himself in other people's feuds.
As he made his way down the street in search of a cab (or barring that some clue was to where in London he was, this neighborhood was unfamiliar). One thing for certain, he was no investigator. Why was he here?
This whole evening had been madness. What had he involved himself in?
Chapter 2
PAIRING: Sherlock/John, Mycroft/Lestrade
RATING: NC-17 (eventually), this part PG-13.
WARNINGS: Some violence, non-con themes.
WORD COUNT: 39,000. This Chapter
SUMMARY: Vampire!Au, sequel to Mate. Sherlock is sober, but his life is still spiraling down hill. Despite this, he has resisted the notion of ever getting a mate. The very idea of having a human balancing his life is abhorrent. As Mycroft, a case, and a new flatmate all vie for his attention, he misses the most important clue of his life: that his mate has found him.
A/N: This is too long to fit as one chapter so I've broken it down into four.
Chapter 1
It began when Sherlock's landlord informed him, politely but firmly, that he had 30 days to vacate. He hadn't bothered to list a reason, so Sherlock went ahead and did it for him: noise past midnight, smells that seeped into the hallways, permanent damage to the counters, and, of course, the altercation with the woman in the flat just beneath.
The man's response was, "I suggest you start flat hunting soon."
Sherlock considered glamouring the idea out of him, but then shrugged. To make it stick he would need to turn the dolt into a largely useless thrall. It wasn't worth it. Sherlock was a vampire with standards. Instead, he began making arrangements.
That afternoon Mycroft paid a call. Sherlock reluctantly let him in. As usual his brother was dressed impeccably and showed no signs of having been anywhere near the natural world. He'd barely touched the soles of his immaculate shoes to the oil stained pavement outside. Sherlock almost missed the days when Mycroft trolled places like Bart's maternity ward for food. Domestic bliss had turned Mycroft positively dull.
No wait, cancel that: Mycroft had an air of insufferable smugness about him. Sherlock felt a prickle of suspicion.
"It's too bad," Mycroft said in his usual mild way, gazing about the breezy open loft. "This place was quite stylish. I'll miss it."
Sherlock didn't ask how he knew about the eviction. Giving himself a mental kick for being obtuse, he revised his list of reasons for why it happened down to one. He should have smelled Mycroft's influence. So what is the game this time, brother? he thought.
Out loud he said: "Is that all? You've come to pay last respects to my flat?"
"Actually, I've come to ask you to move back in."
Sherlock did a double take. "Have Lestrade's daughters decided to skip their dreary prepubescent years and go straight to independent living? Or did you finally convince your stubborn mate to let you put them in a boarding school."
"Don't be ridiculous," said Mycroft. "I had a tough enough time convincing Greg to let them go to proper private schools. No, I wasn't suggesting you go back to your old rooms, my daughters still require them. What I meant is that the next flat over has become vacant. You can move in there."
"I see, close enough for after-dinner chats? Or close enough for you to meddle with my experiments."
"You can't keep on destroying flats," said Mycroft, tutting. "And the potential for self-injury is not insubstantial. Especially given your poor diet. Not to mention Lestrade feels you are getting a bit out of control with your use of cadavers. It's all become rather unsanitary and disrespectful of the dead."
"Lestrade's always had a weakness for sentiment, but he doesn't argue with the results. My experiments have caught him criminal after criminal."
Mycroft's eyes drifted downward, almost demurely, as he conceded the point. "Nonetheless you need a place to live, and I have one."
"As happens," said Sherlock with a bright smile. "I already have a flat lined up. Lovely lady, client of mine, has recently bought some property on Baker Street - which is far more convenient to me than your St. James Street one."
"That was quick."
"I've had four hours - ample enough time. And you'll find that she's one of mine, so don't think you can glamour an eviction out of her."
Mycroft suddenly found his nails fascinating. "Ah, very well, you've caught me. Shall we lay our cards on the table? I want you back, Sherlock. This experiment in independent living has to end."
His eyes came up and caught Sherlock's. A moment later Sherlock could feel his brother's will latch onto his own, attempting to bully his thoughts and emotions into alignment.
Attempting to glamour me like a human, Sherlock thought, caught between shock and disgust. How trite. He wrenched away from the connection. "I'm not strung out, those methods won't work on me anymore."
Mycroft relaxed. "You can't blame me for trying."
"And why are you trying?" Sherlock asked. "Have you grown bored with Lestrade? Is his blood no longer rapturous enough to make up for his imbecilic prattle? Is that what you need me for -- to give you some mental stimulation? I should think your efforts to control international politics would keep you busy enough. Or is that getting too old, too little of a challenge for you?"
"Nothing of the sort," Mycroft levelled a flash of anger. "And I won't have you insulting my spouse, Sherlock. I do this purely out of concern for you. You are my brother, and while I appreciate your sobriety, you are still hopelessly out of control. Someone needs to balance you, Sherlock. Since you have no mate, that has to be me."
"I'm not a child. Nor your responsibility." He sat down on his sofa. "Dear God, you'd think that three centuries would be enough time for you to accept that I've no need to be swaddled."
"I really don't want to do this to you," said Mycroft. "But you force my hand. I've put a hold on your bank accounts. You are cut off. I won't fund your spiral towards destruction anymore."
Sherlock hissed. "Don't pretend this is about my self-destructiveness, Mycroft. You were perfectly content to fund that for years while I did nothing more than flop uselessly around your flat. This is about your possessiveness. This is about you waking up one day to realise that something you felt entitled to has escaped your grasp. Well, I’ll not play that game anymore. You don't own me."
"You are right, I don't own you." He smiled just a bit tightly. "Do enjoy your independence, Sherlock. Remember, my arms are always open, should you care to return to reason."
With that he left, trailing behind him an aura of confidence that made Sherlock want to kill something.
Sherlock considered his options. He had built up over the last five years a respectable number of thralls. He cursed himself a little each time he did so, vowing that he wouldn't devolve into Mycroft and use them as lackeys, but truthfully, thralls were so useful that way.
The bulk of his thralls were various homeless people, who served as his eyes and ears on the street. The blood bond of thralldom made it easy to contact them and summon them to him, even at distances. The rest of his thralls were former clients. People who already were bound to him through a debt of gratitude. People who had goods or services he found useful.
Mrs. Hudson had been different. Though a former client herself, she’d had (at the time he'd made her) nothing really to offer. Her vitality was low, as was normal for a human nearing the end of her natural life. Sherlock fed only rarely on her, and when he did, her blood held almost no nourishment. She had neither street contacts, nor influence, nor any particular skill he could put to use on investigating.
And yet, she was the one thrall he had no compunction at all in making. He'd taken her for one reason only: He liked her.
He liked her the way he liked very few people and for reasons he'd never been able to fully put his finger on. She was simply very pleasant to have around. Sherlock found himself often after a case coming by her flat and sitting at her table while she gave him cups of tea that he didn't drink and plates of biscuits that he couldn't eat. He'd regale her about whatever case he'd been on, and she'd listen, raptly.
Now that her husband was ensconced in an American prison, she had been able to gather up enough funds to purchase a set of flats. 221 Baker street, A, B and C. She'd taken A for herself, being that the ground floor was easier on her arthritic hip. C was too small, and dank and dark besides. B, however, was perfect. He'd intended, before Mycroft had cut off his bank account, to use the second bedroom as a lab. Now he could see another use: a flatmate.
He'd considered the idea before: having a human around to do the domestic chores, cleaning, perhaps even some assisting. There were many times in his experiments when he cursed that he only had two hands. But the problem had always come back to him: Who could he stand to have around him that much?
And there was the other, less comfortable side of the coin as well: Who could stand him?
John was miserable. To be honest he'd been miserable for months, but in Afghanistan he'd had reason to be miserable and somehow that made it easier to bear. Now he was exactly where he wanted to be, where he'd fantasised being with his mates while bunkered down in some mud-walled hut in the rocky, goat and poppy infested war zone. They'd all imagined obsessively what they'd do when they got back to Britain: the foods they'd eat, the movies they'd see, the girls they'd shag. And he'd been right there with them, saying: "I want to live in London. I want to be surrounded by interesting things and people who aren't trying to kill me."
He hated London. The problem was, he was pretty sure he'd hate everywhere else, too.
There was something missing in his life that just didn't seemed to be filled by anything, and God knew he'd tried. Gambling might have fit the bill, if he actually had the funds for it, which he didn't. Alcohol held a double thrill, in part because it got him recklessly drunk, in part because he knew alcoholism ran in his family. But in the sober, and painfully hung over light of day, he knew that it was neither a solution, nor a very satisfying way to play Russian Roulette.
He hadn't quite gotten to actual Russian Roulette, but probably only because you couldn't play it with a Sig.
It was random chance that he'd met up with Mike Stamford while walking wistfully down memory lane at Bart's campus. If weight gain was a sign of happiness, Stamford seemed to be a very happy man indeed.
"You shouldn't be living on your own," was the conclusion Mike came to after hearing John's rather pathetic account of his last months.
"Yes, yes. So says my therapist," John replied, dismissively "I can't go back to Harry, Mike. I already tried. I lasted two days and I consider that to be a minor miracle. We are oil and water."
"Actually, I wasn't thinking of Harry." There was an odd gleam in Stamford's eye. "I was thinking more along the lines of finding a flatmate."
"Who would have me?" John asked defeated. "I … haven't been that personable lately."
Stamford smiled. "Funny, friend of mine said the exact same thing this morning."
Sherlock felt Stamford out in the hall. There was even a slight sense of his mood (happy, eager). He sighed a bit impatiently. This was the problem with thralls, they were so inconveniently distracting. How Mycroft juggled hundreds of them, all thinking and feeling and wanting and pushing, Sherlock didn't know. It was hell for one's concentration.
Mike Stamford and Molly Hooper were necessary evils, he reminded himself. Stamford gave him access to Bart's classrooms and labs and free reign over the equipment. Molly gave him access to corpses, all under the administrative disguise of medical research. It had all worked out fine for years, but lately, though, Molly'd become increasingly romantically infatuated with him. He really had aught to do something about that.
The door opened up, and a smell that was deliciously and unexpectedly not Stamford, wafted in.
Sherlock looked up, suspicious. A short man, normally of stocky build but now hiding his thinness under a loose checked shirt and a heavy jacket, limped into the room. Soldier hair cut. Injured. Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome - still shedding vitality, willy-nilly like he expected his life to end any moment. Mouthwateringly eager to have some monster snatch him up and steal away his blood, take him to the brink.
Sherlock let out a breath. Mystery solved. Just a twitchy ex-soldier. For a second he'd been worried the man might be a mate or something.
Still, distracting. Sherlock put his pipette down, thankfully having finished the minor test before these two had interrupted.
"Bit different from my day," the soldier was murmuring to Stamford.
"You've no idea," said Stamford.
Sherlock ignored the niceties. "Mike, I need your phone," he said to his thrall. "Mine is out of battery," he said for the other's sake.
Mike winced a little at the tug. "Sorry, I left it in my jacket."
Sherlock threw out a thread of glamour at the soldier. Bring me your phone.
Instantly the man twitched, he looked down and pulled a slick expensive mobile from his pocket.
Come to me. The glamour was half hearted at best. A normal person could have brushed it off with a distracting thought, but Watson seemed tugged like he'd been put in chains.
"You can use mine," he said, limping dramatically across the linoleum.
Definitely not a mate, Sherlock thought, relieved. Mates were notorious for being able to throw off glamours. Infinitely annoying at times, though he and Lestrade had long ago come to a mutual understanding. No, this wasn't a mate. This man seemed unusually susceptible glamours.
That made him something infinitely better. Sherlock didn't suppress the smile. A potential second pair of hands. Perhaps even an extension of himself.
Sherlock took him in some more. His availability positively reeked like some aphrodisiac perfume. The state of his phone and his apparent need of a flatmate screamed that he was unattached. No pesky relatives to fend off. No close friends either to become concerned. And with that smell, the man positively begged to be made a thrall. If Sherlock didn't take him, Mycroft undoubtedly would.
No, that wasn't going to happen.
Sherlock had come to that conclusion in the time it took to rattle a quick text off to Lestrade and solve a case.
"I think you'll make an excellent flatmate," said Sherlock, handing the man back his phone. "Yes, you'll do nicely. Good eye, Mike.”
"Wait," said the soldier, turning to Stamford with confusion. "Did you tell him about me?"
"Not a word," said Stamford, smug that his master had praised him. "He just knows things like that."
"Pity I can't stay with you now," said Sherlock with a smile. "But you are far too distracting and I've business that needs attending. The address is 221B Baker street. I'll meet you there at seven tomorrow and we can see about getting you moved in."
"221 B- wait now. Hold up!" said the soldier completely consternated. "Listen, we've only just met, don't you think we should get to know each other before agreeing to share a flat. You know nothing about me!"
Sherlock turned. "I know you are an army doctor, recently retired due to an injury, though interestingly enough, not to your leg. That is psychosomatic. You have a brother named Harry who you can't live with, possibly because he's an alcoholic, more likely because you disapprove of the way he treats his wife. You also have post traumatic stress syndrome which makes you worry that you are unbearable for anyone else to live with. You fear that you are going to kill yourself, especially since you have the means at hand and the knowledge to do it right."
"How did you -?" said the soldier stunned.
"Really, the only question is, were you posted in Afghanistan or Iraq."
The man simply stared. He looked over to Stamford, who shrugged. "He's always like that."
"If you wish to know my methods, you'll meet me at 221 B, but I assure you there is nothing supernatural about them." Which wasn't actually a lie, even though Sherlock was supernatural. He liked the irony of that. He headed to the door feeling job very much accomplished.
"Wait a minute, you don't even know my name," said the soldier. "Nor I, yours. I don't know anything about you!"
Sherlock paused. The man was right. Part of him thought that it didn't matter, but it was important. If he weren't to hold this man under a glamour at all the time, he'd need to keep to his good side.
"My name is Sherlock Holmes," he said and held out his hand a bit awkwardly.
"John Watson.” The soldier shook hands with only the slightest hesitation. Lefty, Sherlock noted.
"And as for my bad habits, I keep very random hours, I'm horribly unsocial, I like doing experiments, I play the violin-"
"Poorly or well?" John interrupted.
"Well," assured Sherlock.
"Not a problem."
Sherlock smiled again. "Surely then, we are perfectly compatible. Now I really need to go. I left my riding crop in the mortuary and I'd hate to have it stolen."
With that he left.
John was stunned. He wasn't sure which amazed him more: the fact that, in the space of twenty minutes, he'd gone from first considering a flat-share to shaking on one, or the fact that he actually liked this Sherlock Holmes.
There were so many things about the man which by all rights he should have hated. John had little patience with arrogance. He was a practical man and big part of being in the real world was being somewhat careful of the people in it. He wasn't a huge fan of know-it-alls either, at least not normally. It went back to arrogance -- those types spouted b.s. as often as they did truth. The entitlement the man exuded also annoyed him. Sherlock had looked him up and down like someone about to take possession of a pet.
Yet, despite that, John liked him. Or maybe, to be more accurate, he felt a very strong fascination with him. In large part because he'd actually knew his stuff… though how?
"That was… astounding," John finally said. "I'm floored."
Mike Stamford was watching him with a smile plastered on his lips. "Yeah, he has that affect on people."
"I mean, is he for real? Or did I just hallucinate that up. Because, hallucination seems a bit less far fetched." John scratched his head. "And did I really just agree to share a flat with him?"
Mike laughed and put an arm around John's shoulders, leading him back out into the hall. "Oh, Sherlock's real, alright. I know what you mean, though. He's quite the charmer."
"Charmer?" John said, skeptically.
"Maybe that's the wrong word," admitted Mike, lolling his head with humour. "It's the oddest thing. Half the time I think, 'What a wanker!' but I still find myself doing everything he asks. It's," he snapped his fingers. "Charisma, yes. Whatever it is, he's got it in spades." Mike went thoughtful. "He's a good looking chap, too. Not that I'm inclined that way. But I think that might factor in as well."
John screwed up his lip. He'd noticed that Sherlock was handsome. It wasn't something he felt wholly comfortable admitting, more because of the disconcerting degree of the attraction than on principal. He'd prided himself on being secure in his sexuality. Sherlock made him question his assumptions.
"And there's the other thing with Sherlock," Mike went on, unaware of John's thoughts. "He has this way of sucking up your attention, like a sponge. He'll stop to visit for ten minutes and next thing you know half the morning is gone. Poof. And not a thing to show for it." They reached a door with a frosted glass window and Stamford’s name attached to a brass plate to one side.
"How did you two meet?" John asked as Mike unlocked his office. The door opened up on a messy, well lived in place, full of folders and papers. A collection of three-dimensional plastic models of each of the organs adorned the shelves behind his chair. Mike did look like a proper teacher.
"Uh, lets see. Five years ago, I think. Yes. Back in 2005. He knocked on the door of my office and started asking for questions about posthumous trauma. I told him I wasn't a forensic pathologist but I suppose I was able to answer enough of his questions. He came back a few days later and asked if he could use one of the labs for his studies." Mike touched his chin with his hand. "And see here's the odd bit, too, because he wasn't a student. I didn't know a thing about the man. But I let him use the facilities."
"That charm thing."
"Exactly. I trusted him. And I really shouldn't have. There's equipment in there worth a quarter million quid. Some of it is quite delicate. I didn't even know his name. I'd have lost my position if anything had gone awry."
"I take it that he didn't destroy anything."
"Oh no, of course not. Tell you what, I wish he were a student. He'd make an excellent physician, but the crime bug bit him a bit too hard for that. He doesn't have the patience to learn systematic anatomy."
"Crime bug?" John felt a twinge of alarm. "What has he to do with crime?"
"Not like that. He's a sleuth. A detective. That thing he does where he rattles off your life history, that's him being observant. Seeing clues."
"Ah," said John relieved. Well that sort of explained the eerie way Sherlock had picked up on John's life. "I suppose I won't have any secrets from him."
He laughed a bit, but Mike's smile had faded.
"No. No, you won't."
Sherlock's mobile rang while he was picking up his crop. The movers were ready to deliver his boxes. Sherlock let out a gusty sigh of annoyance and caught one of the cabs that always lingered outside Bart's back to Baker Street.
The new flat was somewhat smaller than his old loft, and separated into a plethora of rooms. He needed his chemistry set right away so he had that taken to the kitchen. The rest he let the movers put where they willed, cursing under his breath the fact that he couldn't use the attic bedroom as he'd initially planned.
With any luck the new roommate would make himself small and unobtrusive. He didn't seem to be the type to own a lot of stuff. Perhaps he'd even allow Sherlock to use his cupboard. Instinctively, Sherlock reached out his mind to test the subject, but found, of course, no thread to follow.
More and more he regretted not making John a thrall the moment he met him. There'd been a dozen reasons why he hadn't: he was busy, wasn't hungry, they weren't alone, there was no immediate danger. On and on. Still he had only the man's promise that he'd come by the following evening. And glamours, especially ones as offhanded as Sherlock had used, rarely lasted longer than a few minutes, even on the most susceptible. What if John came to his senses and chose not to come? What if Sherlock had to actually track the man down?
Sherlock found himself disconcerted. This was new. He'd never had such urgent feelings about a thrall before.
With a shake of his head, he dismissed the feeling. Mycroft, he thought to himself. It's his fault. He cut me off and upset my life. John provided an elegant solution. It's natural I wouldn't want my plans to be further complicated.
He then turned his attention back to the chemistry set. Reproducing the poison that had killed three people was a surprisingly difficult task. It wasn't just that the ingredients were difficult to obtain - one of them needed to be synthesised. Whoever was responsible for this either was a first class chemist himself, or had a confederate who was.
Why so overcomplicated? Why give the appearance of suicide at all if only to blow the whole thing out of the water with a custom drug? What did the killer gain by this?
Beyond the calling-card poison, the case was distressingly free of clues. Sherlock could find no connection between any of the victims. Not even tangentially. Even the places of their deaths weren't a help. From the lowly docks to a posh empty office in the financial district, the only thing in common was that they were untrafficked. This person was snatching people literally at random and taking them to random places.
The poison was a curious clue. The victims had taken it themselves, knowing full well that they were taking a drug. How the dickens had the killer induced them to do such a thing?
This was not a run of the mill sadistic killer. They typically preferred a more cathartic role, torturing or stabbing or bludgeoning. Poison was the preference of the weak or stealthy. Those who were more content in knowing that the person died than in watching the suffering take place. But yet suffering was an important ingredient. A dose of cyanide (far more easily obtainable) would render a victim unconscious in seconds. This nasty poison left a victim awake, helplessly and painfully convulsing for the better part of 20 minutes before suffocation finally took them. So definitely a sadist, but one who was playing to a bigger audience than just his victim.
This wasn't a terrorist, whose interest was less in the victims than in the fear their deaths would cause. It wasn't dramatic enough. The murderer had been waiting weeks for his uproar to come. Too patient. And yet there were elements of terrorism in this. Here was someone shouting to the world how oh-so-very clever he was. And London had been absolutely gripped by fear. There was a message in this. A demented one, but most definitely a message. Either this was a brilliant lunatic, or else someone up to something very subtle.
There was a buzz from Sherlock's mobile. About bloody time. He snatched it up and looked at it.
Back off.
The public is panicked enough.
You don't need to goad
the reporters -- GL
Sherlock sighed angrily. Lestrade had waited nearly an hour just to tell Sherlock off? He turned off the Bunsen burner, and then ran his thumbs over the keys.
Let me in.
You need me.
He's getting bolder -- SH
After this stunt you are
lucky I don't arrest you. -- GL
How many must die for your pride?-SH
There was a pause of almost a minute before there was a reply. Sherlock turned the burner back on.
If we get something new,
I promise I will tell you.
Leave the reporters out.
Discretion -- GL
Sherlock grinned smugly. The gambit had worked. Lestrade’s fear of bad publicity trumped his petty desire to prove himself. And about time. There'd been nine days between the first murder and the second, but only four between the second and the third. The murderer was gaining confidence. He'd take a fourth soon, and when he did Sherlock needed be on the scene to see the clues.
Sherlock turned off the burner again, and lifted the beaker. A white residue clung to the bottom of the glass. Back to Bart's to analyse it and make sure it was what he predicted it to be.
All thoughts of thralls, John, Mycroft, or even Lestrade had fled. He was in his element again.
Greg was late again, as he had been for going on three weeks. Damn suicides, thought Mycroft. Not really suicides, it was painfully obvious to even the public that they were murders. The poison was a peculiar, custom mix, a home-made stew of strychnine and a rare catalyst to speed the miserable reaction. Not exactly something a human could pick up at the corner chemist's. And yet, Greg was there on the telly spouting calming nonsense, and otherwise spinning his wheels, when he should damn well be home.
Mycroft ordinarily didn't poke his nose into Greg's work, not only because he had enough of his own to fill his time, but also Greg absolutely needed to have an area that wasn't overshadowed by his husband. It was the one thing he was most adamant about. Mycroft could dress him, house him, feed him, choose his daughter's schools, but he was not giving up his job. Mycroft tried to respect that, but some days he really wished Greg was a beloved thrall rather than a mate. It would be so much more convenient.
Then he could say things like, "Toss it over to Sherlock, I'm sure he's already bugging you for the chance to solve it," and Greg would actually do it.
But Greg had his pride, and he really wanted to do this without Sherlock's help. Mycroft sighed. Why were the men in his life so stubborn?
Mycroft hit the mute and continued to watch Greg silently mouth platitudes towards his skeptical audience. He felt a soft presence at the back of his mind, smiled and waited.
"Papa?" came a soft voice from the doorway. Elsie, the younger of his daughters, ducked her head into the sitting room. "Is uncle Sherlock moving in tonight?" Her curiosity was like a bright flower in the gloom, livening his spirits.
To Elsie and her sister, Emma, Uncle Sherlock was a mysterious creature, spoken of frequently about the dinner table, but rarely seen. Their few sightings of him were at Christmas, where he'd delight them by showing them spectacular, semi-destructive tricks that could be done with ordinary household chemicals. Thankfully the girls had their daddy's good sense not to ever repeat any of them.
"No sweetheart. He found a place he likes better. You'll see him next month at Christmas." Mycroft then frowned. Right now, Sherlock would be moving into his new Baker Street flat. Mycroft's attempt to get all the ones he cared about under one roof had failed.
Elsie looked disappointed.
"Is Daddy coming home soon?"
"That is ever my hope," he sighed. Mycroft reached out a hand towards her. The sweet little ten year old came running over towards his lap to give him a hug. Midway along her path, her eyes happened to look in the direction of the muted telly.
"Daddy!" she cried and she swerved to throw herself in front of the flickering screen. The reporters were all looking at their phones and Greg seemed nearly cross-eyed with irritation. Sherlock was obviously shooting his own foot trying to be clever again. Greg would never put up with this. And so much for hoping for an early resolution of this miserable affair.
Unaware of anything more than her daddy's image on the screen, Elsie watched delighted, until a few minutes later, the press conference ended and Mycroft switched off the machine.
"I think it will be another late night," said Mycroft.
Eliza sighed hugely, then got up and trudged back to her room with elaborate dejection.
Mycroft considered glamouring her back for that hug, but he knew she'd come on her own given time. And Greg, too. Perhaps even Sherlock.
In time. Patience.
That night John dreamed of Afghanistan. It wasn't the normal nightmare, the one where he crawled across the battlefield and tried vainly to stitch together soldiers blown to bits by IEDs. This was the one that came less often, that couldn't even be wholly classified as a nightmare, though it had nightmarish elements.
In the dream he was on a peacekeeping mission to the mountain villages east of Kandahar, bringing medicine and setting up temporary clinics in the hopes of winning over the hearts of the local population. This was a good dream for the most part, because the locals did largely greet them well. It never failed to give John hope that there was good to be done and he was doing it.
But then the dream soured, much as real life had.
Suddenly, mid triumph, he was back in that mud-brick house, his small band of support surrounded by armed insurgents. In front of him sat Aamir no-last-name, the local "elder". Even though all the other dream elements were foggy, and shifted when he focused on them, Aamir remained sharp and somehow permanent.
Aamir was a wiry man, much younger than John had expected. Younger than many of the men who surrounded him. His eyes were dark and unfathomable. His beard was a scraggly thing that extended to his breastbone. There was no humor or warmth in his expression.
John had disliked him on sight.
"What is your message?" Aamir said through a translator.
The sergeant tried to answer, but the Aamir waved him quiet and looked solely at John.
"Who do you belong to?"
And here is where John stumbled in the dream, coming up with many bland but true things to say to try stave off the inevitable. I'm a doctor, I'm British, I'm part of the Army, I'm a peacekeeper. But all the answers just seemed to make Aamir angrier.
In moments the bullets started to fly.
Then he woke up.
In reality, the debacle that inspired the dream hadn't been nearly that bad. It was little more than two hours worth of fruitless discussion, where John (and Aamir insisted that it be John who spoke) tried to reassure his suspicious host that he meant no harm, while Aamir asked questions that frankly bewildered the interpreter as much as they did John.
--Who are you married to?
--I'm not married?
--You won't find a spouse here.
--I wasn't looking for one, honestly.
--You are trying to trick me.
--I'm trying to help.
--I should kill you before you help my rival.
On and on in a paranoid manner. No matter how much John assured the man he wasn't after the village women and wasn't trying to spy for some neighbouring warlord, he couldn't seem to get through to him. All the while, the Sergeant worried that things were escalating in a dangerous direction and tried to organise a strategic retreat.
Eventually the warlord did let them go and no bullets were fired. They were escorted to the border of the village, without having dispensed so much as aspirin. It had been an unexpectedly hairy and disturbing end to what should have been an easy and rewarding mission.
Now, months later, staring at the rent-by-the-week hotel ceiling, John wondered what it was about that incident that resonated so strongly in his mind. As failures went, it wasn't nearly bad as others. And yet he couldn't get Aamir out of his mind. He remembered an odd repulsion that crawled under his skin far more than Aamir's inflammatory accusations.
Sherlock Holmes was the same. John blinked. Once he thought of it became obvious. That unreasoning attraction was in many ways akin to the repulsion he'd had for Aamir. John didn't believe in psychic auras or any of that new age mumbo-jumbo, but if he did he'd say that Sherlock's soul was magnetic, with the pole set the right direction this time.
I better watch myself with him, John thought.
Late next morning, Sherlock took the train to Cambridge and visited the Department of Chemistry for clues to the genius who'd synthesising the poison pills. It was a goose chase and not even a terribly interesting one. Lestrade had had the same idea a week before, and despite Sherlock's superior deductive skills, he ran up against the same walls. The professors gave him a less-than-polite run-around, and his poking about their labs and questioning students proved unfruitful as well.
Even so, he would have stayed longer if he hadn't agreed to meet with John at seven.
He returned to London, full of annoyance that he'd needed to deal with the flatmate situation now and not, say, next week when the case would hopefully be wrapped up. He reminded himself how useful it was having a second pair of hands, and that not keeping this appointment would certainly drive those hands away.
Sherlock loitered outside the building. Impatient to get this meeting over so he could get back to his case.
And then something unnerving happened.
Just the memory of the soldier and his ridiculous overabundance of vitality made Sherlock feel a sharp uptick in hunger. His teeth began to extend in anticipation of a meal, and not a simple courtesy nip to anchor a psychic connection. Fantasies of a full on, drain-til-he-staggers feast wracked his imagination. The thought of dapper, prim John lying ashen pale with blood loss, stripped and pinned and undone, both physically and psychically, wormed it's seductive way into his conscience. God help him. He was in lust with this man.
A stranger passing by on the street took one look at Sherlock and flinched away, giving him a wide berth. Sherlock startled then realized the man was disturbed by the predatory look on his features. Sherlock covered his mouth with his hand, appalled.
He'd not felt so wantonly gluttonous in over a century.
No. I won't feed on him. Sherlock schooled himself, tamping that undisciplined urge down. He impatiently pressed the errant teeth back into place with his tongue and forced his face to return to it's normal pleasant expression.
Dear, God, what was the matter with him? The last thing he needed was to oversate himself in the middle of a case. Hunger sharpened all his senses. The hunting instinct gave him the endurance, strength and energy to work day and night. And most of all, the act of feeding by itself provided a strong temporary bond with his prey. To waste his hunger on someone who wasn't connected to the crime would be idiotic.
He schooled his appetite back. Reluctantly his teeth retracted.
And just in time. John's cab pulled up and already his smell was wafting about the street like a succulent roast to the starving. If only there were a way to scrub that scent off of him. How had John managed to walk the streets of crowded London without being accosted by another vampire?
Never mind. Unimportant.
He moved in to handle his new flatmate in the normal human way. Sherlock held out his hand and John shook it, meeting his eyes with innocent pleasure.
“Glad you could come.”
John shrugged modestly, “I really didn't have anywhere else to go.” His smell grew if anything more delectable.
Sherlock suppressed a groan. The moment this case was over, he vowed to properly drain the man. If for no other reason but to make him less of a bloody siren. He'd be doing the vampire world a favor.
For now he settled for turning his back and knocking on the door. Mrs. Hudson opened up and introductions were made all around. She lead them upstairs and showed off the flat, explaining the costs and showing off the better features.
“Yes, this is lovely!” John's eyes were wide, taking in the view, the furniture, the atmosphere. Sherlock felt a wave of pride that his tastes and John's lined up. “With some cleaning up,” John continued, “This place could be very nice.”
Sherlock stiffened, self-consciously aware of the clutter. In his hurry to unpack his lab, he'd carelessly thrown open boxes and tossed the irrelevant contents on whatever horizontal surface was nearest. The chemistry lab itself was still out, unwashed, on the kitchen table. John's nose wrinkled a bit as he passed it.
“Hmmm.” Sherlock could sense disapproval. Army doctor. Of course, John would be used to everything being tidy.
Sherlock quickly moved to straighten up a stack of books and tossed a errant pair of pants out of sight behind one of the chairs. “I can be better.”
“It's okay,” said John, gently. “You've just moved in. It's always a disaster after a move, isn't it.”
“Yes.” Sherlock was at a loss. He wouldn't have called the clutter a disaster per se. More like mid-week normal. In his previous flats he'd hired maids to straighten things up. He'd gone through quite a number of them, in fact, before he found one stolid enough not to quit. But he couldn't afford her rates anymore, not with his funds cut off.
Dear god, he might have to pick up after himself. Regularly. He looked at Mrs. Hudson.
“I'm not your housekeeper,” she said quickly.
John, thankfully, hadn't seemed to notice. He was looking in the refrigerator. Uh-oh. “Say... that isn't...”
Sherlock spoke up quickly. “Research. I do research.”
“On human toes?”
“I'm a detective. Surely Mike told you this. Knowing how long it takes to mummify flesh at various temperatures is necessary for the job.”
“In the crisper drawer?”
“Well, I couldn't very well leave them on the counter. It'd be far too warm.”
“Hmm,” said John again.
“Will this be a problem?”
John squared himself to Sherlock and seemed to challenge him with his eyes. “Listen, I should tell you, I've screaming nightmares. Sometimes as many as three times a week. Will that be a problem?”
Mrs. Hudson frowned but Sherlock threw out a glamour to wipe the worry away.
“Not at all,” said Sherlock. Once John was a thrall, Sherlock could work on whatever mental problems were plaguing him. It would probably solve the excess vitality problem as well. Mycroft frequently diddled with his more damaged thralls to bring them back to pristine mental health.
That is if John stuck around that long.
“Then I think we'll be fine together,” John said. He seemed to have relaxed, as if he thought a bit of noise in the night would be more of a problem for Sherlock. “I'll forgive your eccentricities, if you'll forgive my more unpleasant quirks.”
“Deal,” said Sherlock, impulsively grabbing his hand to shake again. Relief was heady. He hadn't realized how frightened he'd been that John might call this off.
It's the smell, he reassured himself. It's far too distracting.
“Shall I show you the upstairs bedroom?” asked Mrs. Hudson. “Or,” she said looking from one to the other, “Will you not be needing a separate one.”
Sherlock looked at her surprised. Now where on Earth had she gotten that impression? He then considered his own behavior. He'd barely pulled his eyes away from John since he'd exited the cab twenty minutes ago. He hadn't put more than two seconds of thought toward the case. Sherlock touched his face. Had he really been grinning this entire time? Gah, no wonder he'd mistaken for being love-smitten.
John looked startled. “Of course, we'll be needing two bedrooms.”
Mrs. Hudson waved away the reaction. “Don't worry, there's all kinds around here.” She lead John up the stairs, and his smell retreated with him.
Sherlock stayed behind, thankful for an excuse to have a break from temptation. He'd cleared off a chair and sat. Almost immediately, he saw a blue light reflected in the curtains.
Yes! he thought. Finally! The right kind of distraction.
Mrs. Hudson and John staggered down the stairs again. Between her stiff hip and John's psychosomatic limp they managed to cover over the sound of Greg Lestrade knocking at the front door. Mrs. Hudson and John reached the living room just as Lestrade's grey head grew visible in the stairwell outside the flat's open door.
“Sherlock's been working on the suicide murders,” Mrs. Hudson was saying to John. “At least I expect that's what all the lab equipment is.”
“Really?” said John brightly. “I always suspected those three people didn't kill themselves.”
“Four,” corrected Sherlock, happily. “There's been another!”
“How'd you --”
Greg Lestrade stepped into the sitting room, and now there were two humans screaming to be fed upon. No wonder Mycroft had been so pissy the last few days. From the sheer volume of vitality Mycroft's mate was putting out, he must have been playing hard to get for at least a week.
Lestrade's scent wasn't quite as mouthwatering as John's, but all that excessive vitality, contained in a small room...
Sherlock impulsively opened a window.
“There you are, Sherlock! The front door was unlocked.” Greg looked around the place. “You know, could have texted me that you'd moved. I wouldn't have had to have asked around -”
“Where was the murder?” said Sherlock sharply, having no interest in Greg's chastisement. The faster he could get his brother's mate out of the room, the more likely he would be able to not make a ludicrously infantile scene. “When?”
“Some squatters found the body about an hour ago. It's in Lauristen Garden, an abandon building.”
“But there's something different,” said Sherlock excitedly. “A note?”
Greg narrowed his eyes. “God, I hate it when you do that. There's no way you could have guessed that.”
“No guessing, the look on your face makes it obvious it was something different. I merely mentioned the most likely possibility. Yes. The murderer's finally slipped!”
“Yes, I think so. Well then, come along,” said Greg tiredly. “Though don't get your hopes up too far.” He turned to head back down.
“Who is running forensics on the case.”
Greg winced. “Anderson I'm afraid.”
Scent or no scent, Sherlock actually forgot about his hunger for a second. “Oh god, no, I can't work with him. You know that!”
Greg let his head tilt and sighed. “I didn't put him on my team to antagonise you. He's been there from the start and I'm damn well not going to unassign him because you are now in. ”
Sherlock sighed angrily.
Anderson. Of all the people. Anderson. The man was like a psychic static generator. Worse than unglamourable, he actually sapped Sherlock's powers. 200 years ago his type carried around stakes and torches and hunted vampires down. In these less superstitious days, Anderson's relatives were no more dangerous than a particularly shrill car-alarm, but instinct wouldn't let Sherlock relax around him.
But some things couldn't be helped. Greg was reluctant enough bringing Sherlock on in the first place. Sherlock would simply have to do the forensics himself and simply try to block the other out.
“Oh, very well,” he said at last.
“Shall we get going?” asked Greg.
Sherlock shook his head. “Go ahead, I'm not going to be confined in a car with you smelling the way you are now. Dear, God, when was the last time you were home. You reek.”
Greg stiffened and sniffed at one of his armpits.
“Sherlock!” chastised Mrs. Hudson. “Don't you go saying rude things like that. She turned to Greg. “You smell perfectly fine, dearie. Don't let him put you off, he's just in a snit because of all the packing. He's absolutely thrilled you came calling.”
Sherlock rolled his eyes. Why did everyone have to be so stupid. Mrs. Hudson and John might have an excuse for their ignorance, but Greg shouldn't have mistaken his meaning.
Sherlock leaned in and breathed in Greg's ear, “Couldn't that lazy, pompous spouse of yours take half an hour of his time to meet you in a cleaning closet? How long has it been? A week?”
Greg's eyes widened. “I didn't realize that you could --”
“Of course, I can.” Louder he said. “I'll follow up in a cab.”
Greg nodded and headed back down the stairs. Sherlock relaxed.
“That was unbelievably rude,” John mentioned to him. His easy voice belied deep disapproval. “There was nothing at all wrong with his smell.”
Sherlock waved him off. What did it matter what this soon to be thrall thought of him. He threw out an encompassing glamour and Mrs. Hudson and John forgot all about his less than tactful comment on Greg's smell.
Meanwhile, there was a bloody case waiting for him in Lauriston gardens. Why on Earth was he messing about here? John would be just as delicious smelling when he returned. With a hop in his step he headed out the door.
He made it to the bottom of the steps before a belated realization brought him to a halt. He smacked his forehead and raced back up. I am not on my best game today, he thought.
He ducked his head back into the flat. John was sitting down in one of the chairs looking rather frustrated. He startled when he noticed Sherlock looking at him.
“Forget something?”
“Yes. You.”
“Me?”
“You are a doctor, aren't you? An Army doctor?”
“Yes.”
“Used to violence. Not terribly squeamish.”
“No, not squeamish at all.”
“Talented?”
“I'd like to think so. Yes, I'm quite good.”
Sherlock grinned. “Want to help catch a serial killer?”
John's face broke into a huge smile. “Yes. Yes, I would.”
If he hadn't been warned not to read too deeply into Sherlock's less conventional behaviour, John would have sworn the man was flirting with him.
Thankfully, Mike had given him the skinny. Sherlock had a rich relative who'd been providing for him for years, but apparently a falling out had left him stripped of income, except for what he garnered from his investigations. If John was desperate for a roommate for psychological reasons, Sherlock was desperate for sheer brokeness.
“He's not an easy man to get along with,” Mike had cautioned. “He's rude and his temper is famous.”
Sherlock had been anything but rude and ill tempered when he'd shown John the flat. His face had positively lit up every time John approved of something. And he'd been thrown into a tizzy at the least sign of disapproval. Everything down to the tone of his voice was thinly edged with need.
It was rather nice on the ego, John decided. He hadn't felt this wanted since he'd left Afghanistan. Nice to be the one chatted up rather than the one chatting for a change.
“You know,” he said casually in the cab, “Mike was right about you.”
Sherlock's eyes widened with sudden paranoia. “What did he say?” he asked with suspicion.
John laughed goodnaturedly, “Nothing terrible. Well okay, a few terrible things. He said you were a tactless, sarcastic bastard.” Sherlock's expression didn't change. Apparently he was okay with that part of his personality. “But he also said you had a way of making people fall in love with you despite that.”
“Did he mention I was brilliant?” Sherlock asked, seeming to dismiss what John said as if it were unimportant.
John clicked his tongue. “No he didn't. But I figured it out anyway.”
Sherlock grinned. “Good.”
John sighed. “You know I envy you. There's something about you. I bet you have all the women you could ask for.”
Sherlock's frown was back. “I do - but what would I want them for?”
Now it was John's turn to frown and grow flustered. “Or men, I suppose. If you prefer. Which is okay.” Perhaps Sherlock had been flirting with him.
Sherlock rolled his eyes. “You needn't worry, John. My heart has already been taken.”
“Oh?” asked John, genuinely curious. “By whom?”
“By what,” Sherlock corrected. “By my job. By this!” The cab had stopped some fifty feet shy of a police crime tape. “How could anything compete with this?” He flashed a disarming grin.
Their discussion halted as they entered the crime area. Sherlock's famed rude side came out. No sooner had he gotten close but Sherlock was engaging in verbal fisticuffs with the officer guarding the perimeter. John cringed with embarrassment. Deducing who was sleeping with whom? Snide remarks about infidelity? The dirty laundry came fast and furious, leaving everyone breathless.
Worst of all, John had the distinct feeling that Sherlock was doing it for his benefit, as though giving away other people's dirty secrets was supposed to impress him more than he already was impressed. John gritted his teeth and fought the urge to slap Sherlock.
“Oh what is it,” Sherlock growled as John fumbled into a proffered clean suit. “Out with it!”
“Did your mother teach you no manners?” he blurted.
“My mummy has impeccable manners.”
“Yes, that's very good for her, but what you did to those officers - and to the detective inspector earlier - that's - it's not on! It's just not on!”
“Do you think becoming my flatmate gives you the right to become the keeper of my conscience?” The syllables dripped with sarcasm. Sherlock was suddenly very close and his eyes very dark.
“No - I -“ John was flustered again. What the hell was he doing here? What did Sherlock want with him? Sherlock had his back turned and was climbing the steps far quicker than John could keep up.
Lestrade waited for them on the landing. The door was open and John could see a woman lying on the floor. “You have five minutes.”
“Ten,” Sherlock argued.
“Five,” repeated Lestrade. “Listen, it's irregular as hell having you here at all. Don't muck things up for me any more than you already have.”
John wondered what Sherlock had done. But then his questions were brought short by Lestrade’s lingering look at him.
“Saw you at the flat,” Lestrade said. “How do you know Sherlock?”
“I'm his new flatmate,” said John. Sherlock was kneeling over the corpse, staring and pawing in a deliberate, but not evident way.
“Know him long?”
John looked at his watch. “... Going on about an hour and a half all told. If you add in the three minutes yesterday when I met him for the first time.”
“Why'd he bring you along?” Lestrade asked, concerned.
John just shook his head. “I have no idea.”
“John,” said Sherlock sharply. “Come here.”
The next couple of minutes reminded John eerily of a recurring nightmare he had, where he was late to the final exam of a class he hadn't remembered to attend. His medical knowledge was good enough to state the obvious - the woman was dead, asphyxia was the cause, and there was no outward signs of fight or trauma. All the things that, frankly, John knew before he walked in the door, thanks to Sherlock's brief in the cab. The only thing different was the word she'd scratched into the floorboard with her fingernail and John had no clue what that meant.
Sherlock seemed impatient with his answers, Lestrade looked baffled, turning his eyes from Sherlock to him and and back. John knew he'd failed. Worse than failed - looked like an utter prat.
Sherlock then went through his schtick impressing them with all sorts of details that John had utterly missed. Lestrade's face lit up and he nodded. John slunk into a corner and tried to become invisible. Or he would have if Sherlock hadn't kept directing his answers at him, as though it were John who needed the information rather than Lestrade. Lestrade stared with bemusement.
Oh just shut up and let me die in the corner in peace. If there were a way to feel more awkward and useless than this, he had no idea.
“Leave Dr. Watson be,” Lestrade finally snapped. “What do you mean overnight bag. There was no overnight bag.”
“None? That's it!” Sherlock shouted. “Of course! The mistake!” Then abruptly, Sherlock ran past John, taking the stairs three at a time, like a teen.
John turned to Lestrade, “Where's he going?”
Lestrade shook his head. “No clue. Sorry. But you better hurry if you want to keep up.” And ended the conversation abruptly and finally by pulling out a mobile and stepped away, turning his back pointedly to him.
Well that was great, John thought to himself. This was just what he needed to get himself back on track.
John began stumbling down the stairs. Hurry wasn't something he was capable of, not with his leg aching the way it was. He passed Anderson, the real forensic's specialist, on the next landing. The derision on his face was impossible to miss. John didn't protest it. He'd been absolutely useless up there. The whole thing had just been another attempt on Sherlock's part to impress him with his stunning intellect and fascinating career.
The street outside was empty. There wasn't a sign of Sherlock anywhere.
Just great! Now that Sherlock had an actual lead, he'd ditched John without a second thought.
“If you know what's best for you,” said Lt. Donovan, joining him next to the police tape. “You'd stay away from him.”
John looked at her. She'd been one of the officers that Sherlock had insulted. “Why's that.”
“There's something wrong with him,” she said, gazing out with a thousand yard stare. “And by wrong, I mean really, really wrong. Unnaturally wrong. Stay away from him or he'll get into your head like Hannibal Lecter.”
Oh you're kidding. “Does he want to eat my liver?” John joked.
“I wouldn't laugh.” Anderson joined them “Trust me, we've known him for years. The crap talk coming out of his mouth is the least of your worries. I've seen him do things. He's not human.”
Oh, Christ, this was rich. John couldn't hold it in any more. He laughed. “Oh come on!” he looked at one then the other of them. “You don't mean that. He's not human? Hannibal Lecter? Bit melodramatic here.”
“Why are you here?” Donovan asked. “You wonder that?”
“I'm here because Sherlock asked me to be here.”
“You mean, you are here because he manipulated you here,” said Anderson. “Didn't that strike you as a bit odd, you wanting to come visit a crime scene?”
John considered. It hadn't seemed odd to him at all. He'd thought the idea, at the time, was an exciting one. But perhaps it had been more that Sherlock's enthusiasm was catching. He enjoyed any excuse to be near the man. It was a creepy realisation.
“You're here because he's got a use for you,” Donovan sneered. “He's going to use you, mate. Use you and use you. And the moment you stop being useful, he'll cast you aside. That's how he sees people. As tools.” She looked haughty.
“Well, I know that's not true,” John said bitterly.
“But we've seen through him,” Anderson added. “That's why he hates me so much. Because he can't pull that trick on me. I've seen it in his eyes. He's scared of me. He knows one of these days I'm going to catch him over the line.” He then turned around and walked back into the building.
Donovan nodded. “You best go,” she said. “He won't be coming back here, and we have better things to do than babysit you.”
“Fine,” said John, bowing under the police tape. “I'll just get out of your way.” He was rather inclined to agree with Sherlock's dislike of these two. Though it didn't excuse Sherlock's earlier rude behavior, it was clear that the antagonism went both ways. He'd long ago learned not to involve himself in other people's feuds.
As he made his way down the street in search of a cab (or barring that some clue was to where in London he was, this neighborhood was unfamiliar). One thing for certain, he was no investigator. Why was he here?
This whole evening had been madness. What had he involved himself in?
Chapter 2