Fic: Read our futures in the rising steam 2/3
See Masterpost for full header
Part One
There’s a police car sitting conspicuously down at the far end of Baker Street. Sherlock sneaks into his own flat by going to the Volunteer pub just down the way, shimming up onto the roof, making his way over to 221B and climbing in through John’s window. It’s worryingly easy to jimmy open. He’ll need to fix that. Later.
Sherlock has had to hide his cocaine habit from Mycroft before; John ought not to be any sort of challenge. He tidies himself up - fifteen minutes in the bathroom is more than sufficient - and shoots up. The superior lateral genicular artery is starting to constrict, he’ll need to switch soon.
This time things go much better. He checks in the mirror. He is pale and a little red about the eyes, but he looks mostly composed. Not good enough to fool his brother, but more than enough for what he has planned.
John is in the sitting room, surrounded by half-drunk cups of tea, fretting over his mobile. “Where the hell have you been?” he demands, getting to his feet. “You disappear and I’m left explaining to the police how, no, I have no idea where the fuck you are when there’s another body-”
Well, that’s interesting.
“Don’t you dare look at me that way.” John is angry, really, truly angry. He’s breathing hard, feet planted, with that wonderful, deadly calm.
Sherlock is wracked with such feelings of magnanimity towards John. There’s so much he wants from him. Sherlock is selfish and greedy and he is used to getting his way but not getting what he wants. He didn’t even know for certain he could want this until recently.
“Shut up,” Sherlock says. His heart is going a hundred miles an hour (196bpm) and he feels invincible. He’s faced down gravity, and death, and he won and now he feels like he can fly. He is invincible.
“Sherlock?” John says, concerned now.
Sherlock loves his concern. He loves the creases on John’s brow, the worried curve of his mouth. Sherlock takes John’s wonderful face in his hands, and kisses him. “Shut up,” he says, “and come to bed.” John pushes him back, gently, but Sherlock holds on. “I didn’t kill those men,” he says and John takes hold of his wrists, holding on in turn.
“I know you didn’t,” John says, and he wants to be angry still, but he’s staring up at Sherlock. John’s straight, but his body is flooded with endorphins and adrenaline in the same way that Sherlock is riding on the cocaine, and it’s easy to mistake one sort of arousal for another. Sherlock intends to use that. He’ll take it for as long as he can have it. He wants this in the same way John does, at least for the moment. He’ll take that too.
“But what about the part where you don’t actually do...this?” John asks, which seems a reasonable question, but not one Sherlock really wants to answer in any great detail.
Sherlock kisses John again, biting at his mouth, pushing him backwards until John butts up against Sherlock’s bedroom door. “I want to try this with you,” he clarifies. “I’ve been thinking about it.”
“I swear you’re difficult on purpose,” John complains as Sherlock pulls back long enough to drag John’s cardigan off and open the door. “Is that what you’ve been off doing? Can’t you just process things like a human being once and a while?”
There’s a slightly hysterical laugh caught in Sherlock’s chest so he rips his own shirt off over his head to stifle it. It’s hot in the room, almost unbearably so. “Boring,” he says and John laughs. He hesitates for a moment by the lamp but leaves it off, hovering nervously. Good, it will help conceal Sherlock’s symptoms.
Sherlock unbuttons his flies - God, he’s actually hard, stomach flipping over pleasantly - as he follows John into the bedroom. He pushes John back down onto the bed, crawling up after. John’s pupils are blown; he’s wide-eyed, hands gripping at Sherlock’s hips. He’s staring at Sherlock with the same flattering look he gets when Sherlock says something he thinks is especially clever and when Sherlock strips out of his trousers John swallows audibly.
John is straight, Sherlock thinks, with a growing sense of joy. “You’ve not done this before,” he says and John shakes his head no.
“Good,” Sherlock says. He’s smiling, can feel it stretching his face, manic and intent. They can be first together. He’s truly, literally dizzy with everything he’s feeling, heart going so fast he thinks he’ll never catch his breath again. This is what people, ordinary people, talk about, then. Why they’re so stupid about a boring bodily urge. There aren’t bells ringing in his ears, just the sound of his heart and a rising tone. He feels like he’s burning up with it but he’s not sweating. Le petit mort, he thinks.
“Sherlock?” John says and suddenly he’s not exhibiting classic signs of arousal, he’s worried. “Sherlock…Jesus Christ.”
He rolls out from under Sherlock a handful of seconds before Sherlock collapses and Sherlock is aware of an intense pain in his chest, sees John kneel over him jamming the heels of his hands into Sherlock’s diaphragm, shouting for Mrs. Hudson to call 999.
X X X
Had a word; you’ll
have no trouble from the
doctors getting in.
MH
X X X
Sherlock is handcuffed to the metal railing of his hospital bed and his brother is in the room. This, embarrassingly enough, is not the first time this has happened.
When Mycroft was a child, so Sherlock has been told, he was a quiet, studious boy. Frighteningly smart, but well-mannered, seen but not heard. His brother likes routine and order and Sherlock suspects that his desire to control everything - his ‘helicopter parenting’ of Sherlock when they were both young, his silent club, his love affair with the CCTV of the city, his meddling - stems from his desire to control the overwhelming overload of information he processes every second he is awake.
Sherlock threw tantrums, destroyed things, occasionally bit people. His brother was his only friend and as the smartest person Sherlock knew (smarter than him, always so frustratingly smarter than him), wasn’t dull. He could end the tantrums, distract Sherlock from his black moods. Then, when Sherlock was eleven, Mycroft left him alone while he went off to seamlessly blend in at university and Sherlock has never quite forgiven him for that. He doesn’t think Mycroft really understands the vicious, deliberately cruel, unhappy teenager he became and that was the end of all that. From there Mycroft was a man in government with a sociopathic junkie brother. Sherlock became a problem; Mycroft became a thorn in Sherlock’s side. And then he told Moriarty things that he really, really shouldn’t have done.
Sherlock thinks he’s well within his rights to be angry and continue being angry until they’re both cold in the ground but Mycroft is down to his shirtsleeves, his hair is out of place, and he looks tired and older than he is; Sherlock has the sneaking suspicion that he’s frightened Mycroft. He is perfectly aware that he is the reason Mycroft knows caring is not an advantage.
Sherlock is unaccustomed to giving in, giving an inch, but he’s groggy from the benzos they’ve given him, he has a throbbing headache, and there’s something heavy in his guts that feels a little like shame. He doesn’t want to fight a war on so many fronts anymore. Maybe it’s time they got back on the same side.
“I killed six people,” Sherlock admits out loud for the first time. He thought he might tell John, eventually, but saying it to his brother, who is as unerringly cold as he himself runs hot, is liberating. Mycroft holds almost no value to individual human lives and Sherlock has wanted to kill people before, but not like that. Not in a way he actually meant.
Over in his chair Mycroft slumps fractionally. He looks so much like their mother in the harsh light. Hard, patrician angles softened by weight and age. He’s definitely gaining weight again. Sherlock manages to bite his tongue. “I won’t let them put you in prison,” Mycroft says, fingers of one hand pressed against his face, in the corner of one eye, “but you understand, don’t you Sherlock? You can’t live freely anymore.” He looks at Sherlock, all that attention and unending patience focused on him. “I will protect you.”
It would be unkind to point out that he’s already failed quite badly at that since it’s obvious and they both know it. Sherlock finds it in him not to be unkind.
“Prison,” Sherlock says with great distaste. “There’s nothing at all to link me to the deaths. I merely bring it up because the entire endeavour took significantly more cunning and patience than I thought it would and I will concede patience and the necessity of the web, of the long game, is not my preferred way to work. The cocaine helped and now…well.”
Mycroft manages not to say anything about how Sherlock has an addictive personality and nearly killed himself for no good reason at all. They are doing very well so far.
“Where’s John?”
Mycroft sighs. “Working through his minor emotional breakdown in the chapel. Sherlock, you know you can’t see him again.”
“Why not?” Sherlock demands, struggling to sit up. The monitors start to blip along at an elevated rate, as though Mycroft needed any more advantage over him. Sherlock rattles the cuff, fury rising up. “It’s one thing for the Met to behave like imbeciles, but I expect a little more from you.”
“I know you care for him,” Mycroft says, and is that hesitation in his voice? Genuine hesitation, not an affectation? “Perhaps when you are a little better, but Sherlock, to know what you did to those men…it’s going to upset him, no matter how you meant it.”
Sherlock scowls at his brother. “No matter how I- They were going to kill Lestrade, and Mrs. Hudson, and…” It’s not his fault it takes him so long to catch on. He’s sluggish with the valium and he wants John because he’s got an irrational fear that if he doesn’t do something amazing, very soon, to prove he’s not a total imbecile, John might disappear. “Not the other Johns,” Sherlock says through clenched teeth. “Moriarty’s men. I killed Moriarty’s men who were threatening to shoot the people I care about.” He’s starting to get loud.
Mycroft - and what’s his excuse for being so simple today? - actually has the gall to smile at him. It’s very nearly a laugh, and a relieved one at that. “Well that’s a horse of a rather different colour and one I suggest you keep to yourself.”
“Really? Is that what you suggest?” Sherlock says, viciously snide. “I can’t believe you thought I was the ‘Baker street butcher.’”
The years fall off Mycroft as he composes himself. “I’m informed you were found in a compromising position, near-fatally high, no alibi for the murders, and you were rambling deliriously about proper Johns and other Johns, and listing off minor physical differences even Watson wouldn’t notice which rather suggests you have spent altogether too much time cataloging your flatmate’s naked body - a body I highly doubt he knew you were staring at. Forgive me if I didn’t leap to the conclusion that you are exactly as fallible and stupid as everyone else about affairs of the heart.” Mycroft stands, sliding his jacket on, but then he puts a hand over Sherlock’s, careful of the cannula there. He leans over and presses a kiss to Sherlock’s hair. “I’m glad you’re not dead, little brother,” he says, “get off the cocaine,” and is gone before Sherlock can pick up his jaw from the floor.
His next visitor, a minute later, is not John. Sherlock bares his teeth in an expression somewhere between a grin and a snarl. “I want to go home,” he said, rattling the cuff again.
“Yeah,” DI Jenison says. “Not gonna happen, mate. You’re under arrest on suspicion of murder. Once the doc says you’re good to go, you’ll be coming with us.” He flips open a little notebook. “But while we’re both here, you can answer a few questions.”
Trust Mycroft to stop meddling at the least convenient times. If he wanted to, Sherlock assumes he could make the police go away. But Sherlock asked him to keep his nose out, and so now that there’s no doubt in Mycroft’s mind that Sherlock can get himself out of this mess, he’s going to leave him to it.
Sherlock narrows his eyes. “The thigh,” he says. “It wasn’t cut up this time, was it?” He heaves a massive sigh and turns his head to stare out the window. “Check your CCTV. I spent two days in New Scotland Yard solving cold cases. Until then, I want you to leave me alone. No, wait, get John, and then leave me alone.”
He gets neither of those things.
X X X
I’m in room 341
SH
This is Sherlock btw
I borrowed someones phone
SH
I say borrowed…
SH
They’re still banging on about arresting me
ought to make Lestrade happy
SH
Stop sulking it doesn’t suit you
SH
X X X
Sherlock is in hospital for two days and John does not come and visit Sherlock even once. He isn’t there to offer scathing commentary about NHS deficits and how he’s had to do more with less while being shot at. He isn’t there when the doctor releases him into the custody of the Met. He isn’t there at NSY when they walk Sherlock through the Serious Crimes division in handcuffs and lock him in an interrogation room.
Sherlock sees Lestrade on the way in. He’s watching Sherlock through the windows of his office with a helpless expression on his face. No doubt he’s being kept far, far away from this case, though it more than falls under his jurisdiction. Lestrade’s gaze flicks past Sherlock, checking for John; checking to see how pissed off John is and if he’s likely to punch anyone important again. Sherlock knows the instant Lestrade realizes he’s on his own again because Lestrade says the word “Fuck” so clearly that even someone without Sherlock’s ability to lip-read would know what he said.
Jenison leaves Sherlock in the interrogation room alone for an hour. It’s cold, more so than Jenison probably intended, but Sherlock’s lost weight since he went haring off around the world trying to kill seasoned assassins. He’s shivering when Jenison comes back in, his hands and feet are freezing and he’s uncomfortable enough to wish Jenison had brought him a cup of the revolting swill the Met likes to pretend is coffee. It’s been fifty-three hours since Sherlock last slept if you count passing out and nearly dying because of a cocaine binge as sleeping, and close to six days if you don’t. He is nearing the proverbial wall and sooner or later, he is going to hit it, and hard.
Jenison has an unpleasantly nasal voice and a stack of paperwork Sherlock hasn’t seen in a while. He fans it out knowing full well Sherlock will be able to read it, though it’s upside-down.
“You have the CCTV tapes,” Sherlock says because they wouldn’t have brought in the unfortunately myriad psych exams Sherlock suffered through in his younger days like they’re even worth the price of the paper they’ve been faxed over on if they hadn’t.
“Until there’s evidence to prove they haven’t been tampered with, you’re still on the hook for the murders,” Jenison says.
Trying to prove a negative. Genius. Sherlock sighs and shifts in his cold metal chair. It’s hurting his Ischial Tuberosity and he wants out of the handcuffs but he doesn’t have so much as a pin to work with. “Let me see the crime scene photos and I’ll tell you everything,” Sherlock says.
Jenison’s face twists into a sneer. “Not likely, mate. Not getting that in here so you can jerk off to it.”
Sherlock’s left knee is jittering near uncontrollably and Sherlock hasn’t got the energy to quit a behaviour that is clearly annoying Jenison. “All right,” he drawls. He is certain that in this battle of nerves he will outlast Jenison, which is just sad really.
“Let’s talk about your Antisocial Personality Disorder,” Jenison says with relish. “I know you prefer ‘sociopath’ though, I can use that if you like.” He taps one of the bits of paper meaningfully. “Says here you’ve got all the classic signs. Lack of social norms, deceitfulness, manipulative, impulsivity, irritability, reckless disregard for safety, consistent irresponsibility, lack of remorse…”
When Sherlock was fourteen he was sectioned. The records are sealed, but they’re not impossible to get to. After he was expelled from Eton and sent to Harrow, Sherlock was found performing an experiment on a dead dog. Though he hadn’t actually killed it himself he had brought it back to the school, stolen lab equipment and made a bit more of a mess than he’d thought. They didn’t believe he hadn’t killed the dog, but there was no proof either way. He was put on probation. Then there was the incident with the cholera strain he’d put in the water system in the sixth form dormitory. That he had done on purpose and the school reported him and he was taken away.
He lost nearly two years of his life to a closed-ward hospital. No matter how many times he escaped and made it home, they always brought him back. He knows Mycroft was never told, but how could he not have known? The medication dulled his mind and having it forced upon him made him furious and violent. A cycle that went around and around and around until he finally broke out one last time, hitchhiked to where Mycroft was doing his Masters and begged him to help. It was also the last time he asked Mycroft for anything more than ‘go away’ because Mycroft only frowned at him and said, “Really, Sherlock, you could have been released months ago if you would only behave yourself,” as though it was some kind of time-out chair he had been sent to. And then Sherlock was taken back to the ward.
Sherlock was released into an out-patient program shortly before his sixteenth birthday with a script for medication he didn’t take and therapy he lied his way through. The next time he saw Mycroft, his brother had simply said, “You do it to yourself,” to which Sherlock replied, “Apparently not. Apparently I’m a sociopath.”
Mycroft smiled thinly at him. “If you say so.”
And he did. Because Sherlock rather liked the freedom being a high-functioning sociopath gave him. Some days he’s even wished his diagnosis was just a little more true (if he’s honest he does fit enough criteria to get him the diagnosis, but it’s still wrong at its core) because his life would be a lot easier if he didn’t care about anyone but himself. Now though, now that he’s being threatened with another sectioning, Sherlock is beginning to wonder if he might want to get that diagnosis taken care of, no matter how much he enjoys throwing it at Anderson.
Sherlock manages not to shout at Jenison for a whole hour and thirteen minutes before his patience runs out. After he has finished informing Jenison that regardless of any diagnosis made over fifteen years ago, Sherlock has no interest in what is actually an extremely boring crime. He lets Jenison know that the only reason he is even helping is because John is involved. When Jenison questions his definition of ‘helping,’ Sherlock informs Jenison of the facts: he will be bald within three years, he has a lower IQ than most sixth-form students, and his wife is cheating on him with another woman and will likely leave him for her. He then requests his phone call since there’s no evidence that Jenison can be reasoned with.
No sooner has he made the request than two sharks in designer suits and expensive shoes appear, circling outside the room. Jenison has no choice but to let Mycroft’s lawyers in. They are condescending, ruthless, and very good at their jobs. Sherlock walks out of NSY in less than an hour once they get their teeth into Jenison.
It is because of John that Sherlock also accepts the lift from Mycroft’s P.A. whose nails click on her blackberry in an extremely irritating way. His reasoning is this: Mycroft wronged Sherlock when he told Moriarty even one thing about him; though it was Sherlock he wronged, it was John who suffered; therefore, Sherlock is calling in the debt on John’s behalf. He owes Mycroft nothing for the help. He might owe him something if he strangles his assistant though. She refuses to stop, even when he snaps at her; she doesn’t even look at him, just says, “Irritability, anxiety, insomnia…” before trailing off as though she’s forgotten he’s even there.
Sherlock is more than aware of the delights awaiting him for the next week while he comes out of the cocaine crash. He doesn’t bother to ask her if Mycroft’s had the flat cleaned, because the answer is yes and even if he hadn’t, John would have turned the whole place inside out by now. Instead he cracks the window for relatively fresh air and tries not to throw up.
John isn’t in the flat when he gets there, which is surprising and disappointing. Sherlock checks every one of the places where he hides his drugs and finds nothing. Mycroft’s people are certainly better at their job than Lestrade’s. There is a pack of cigarettes sitting on the coffee table and a note from Mycroft that tells him his sense of smell is going to be ruined if he keeps up the habit. Sherlock lights up because his brother is right, again, and being good is so tiring sometimes.
That, and John isn’t there to berate him.
He has a headache, he’s exhausted but he’s not going be able to sleep now, and John isn’t there to make him a pot of tea and fuss. Sherlock is too anxious to lie down; partially withdrawal and partially because there’s still someone out on the streets of London who wants to kidnap, assault, and kill John Watson. John, John, John. John who is decidedly Not In.
Sherlock snatches up his mobile and rings John.
“I’m at Harry’s. Do me a favour and give me a few days because I’m so mad at you I can’t…I just can’t right now. Please,” John says before Sherlock can even open his mouth. Then John hangs up.
He was expecting John to be mad at him. He had, however, grossly underestimated exactly how mad John was going to be. Furious, seemed the most apt description. Going to Harry’s to explain why John needs to come home seems very unlikely to be a sound plan in any sense of the word. Of course, he’s not exactly of sound mind so Sherlock puts his coat back on and catches the first cab that has the decency to stop for a man who looks more than half-crazed.
X X X
999 emergency, what service do you require? Ambulance, police, or fire?
Hello?
…Hello?
This call has been disconnected
X X X
It’s Harry who answers the door, not John. She’s approximately five-three, a hundred and fifty pounds, broad shouldered and wide hipped, hair bleached white-blonde and cut almost as short as John’s. She crosses her arms over her substantial chest and glowers at him. She works in digital media of some sort - graphic design judging by her calluses and the grooves on her fingers.
“He’s not in,” she says, bodily blocking the door. “Now do us all a favour and fuck off.”
John’s shoes, from what Sherlock can see, are not in the foyer, ergo he left after Sherlock called, correctly predicting Sherlock would ignore his request and come after him. He turns his attention on Harry.
Harry is sober, but she will start drinking the minute it’s five pm. She is binge drinking, but not drinking in the mornings anymore. Right now it’s wine because vodka just doesn’t do it the way it used to. The hangovers are vicious. She likes having John around, hates his quiet, doctor’s disapproval, hates his nightmares, hates his intermittent tremor, hates the war. She knows she’s his last resort and resents that, but if anyone knows about handling a gay crisis, she’s John’s best (only) option. She knows where John has gone.
“Someone is trying to kill him,” Sherlock says.
Harry, a Watson for all her flaws, holds her ground. “I know,” she says but her shoulders are a little less firm.
Sherlock doesn’t bother with a façade. He is cold and immovable, bigger than her, stronger, and dangerous. “He’ll be kidnapped,” Sherlock says bluntly. “He’ll be raped, tortured, and eventually killed.”
“He’s a soldier,” Harry counters. “He can take care of himself and doesn’t need some insane junkie fucking with his head. Now sod off or I’ll call the cops.” She takes two quick steps back and slams the door in his face. Touché.
Sherlock sits down on the front step and waits.
Three hours later, John hasn’t returned and Harry opens the door again. “He’s not answering his mobile,” she says, choked. “He went to the cinema, said he’d be back in under two hours but he’s been gone for four. I called the police but they say it’s not a missing persons until twenty-four hours have passed.” Her hands shake as she holds out a familiar, ugly, jumper. The weight is wrong, something is wrapped in it.
The Sig.
Sherlock tastes bile in the back of his throat. He pushes his way inside the flat, tearing off his coat and takes the bundle from Harry. The holster is too small in some places and too big in others. Sherlock sticks the gun in the pocket of his coat and has done with it. His heart is pounding again and for a moment Sherlock wishes insanely for cocaine. He feels paralysed.
“He said he was only going to the cinema,” she says, clenching her fists impotently.
“Which one?” he demands, noting that Harry used to beat up kids in the schoolyard for her little, little brother until those children started calling her cruel names, and then it was John’s turn. She used to have some asinine pet name for him, pit-bull, or bulldog, or something. It would explain the rather bizarre birthday gift she got John: a hideous picture of dogs playing poker that had made John laugh - an attempt to renew their camaraderie of their youth.
He knows this, he knows all this but he doesn’t know how this killer is finding his victims, can’t trace it back to the murderer.
Harry shrugs helplessly. “There’s an Odeon a few streets over. Probably that one.”
“Call Lestrade, he’s a DI at the Met, tell him to call Mycroft,” Sherlock says and takes off at a dead sprint, brain finally kicking in, slow though, too slow, as he maps out the fastest route there. He doesn’t have any useful identification on him. No police badges, or disguises, but he barges up to the front of the queue before he realizes there’s no way this bored, spotty teenager is going to remember John because she’s an idiot. He pushes back towards the door again and then stops in the middle of the room, tangled in the snaking queue.
Everyone in the lobby is staring at him like he’s lost his mind. Their stupid faces gaping at him and he knows everything about them, useless, irrelevant things. He’s missing something.
A couple of kids push past him, tucking their tickets into pockets and wallets, a later showing, probably going to the pub for a pint beforehand, if they can blag their way in. The bright flash of green paper is familiar though. John Five had been to the cinema in the two weeks before he died; still had the torn stub in his pile of discarded receipts.
It all cascades together, crashing down on him like water. The slips of bright green in wastepaper baskets in the flats, forgotten in coat pockets, run through the laundry in jeans. But all the Johns (all of them, even Sherlock’s, now) had been to different cinemas, different locations. No one member of the staff would have occasion to visit seven different theatres and hanging out in the lobby is suspicious, it would have drawn attention, the way he is doing.
A man walks up to him, hand out as though he means to touch Sherlock. He is blank, no face, no facts, as Sherlock turns all his attention on the possibilities. Who would have had access to all the locations? Who could have sat there for hours, watching for the right man? “You alright, mate?” the man says.
“Security,” Sherlock says, the word punched out of him. “Of course!”
“Yeah, I’m security…”
Sherlock grabs hold of the man. “Other than you, what sort of security do you have? Who monitors your CCTV?”
“Sir, if you’d like to report-”
Sherlock’s grip tightens. “Who monitors your CCTV?” he demands in a voice that’s far too calm for how he feels. Data: This man is afraid of him. He is hurting him.
Sherlock feels like a conduit right now; information streaming in - floor plans of the cinema, details about the films playing, the staff, the customers, the statistical odds of John choosing one film over another. Everything he knows about the case already is repeating through his head. Everything he learned about the murders through looking at the bodies of the first five Johns. What it would have been like for the victims. How long John Watson has before he’s past saving. He hears sirens in the distance.
Sherlock doesn’t have time for this. He shoves the man away, climbs up onto the ticket booth and rips the nearest camera off the wall. People are laughing now, calling their friends, getting out their phones. Sherlock sees the manufacturer of the cameras, the number of this particular one, notes the sticker that informs patrons they are being monitored, notes the company.
He drops the camera, still attached to the wall by a few wires. It smashes against the wall and drops to the floor, ripping out plaster, but Sherlock is already off the counter and out the door. There’s still time. There has to be time.
All the feeds from the local Odeons goes to a central security location, the internet provides. A central location in London. Anyone with access to those files and halfway decent face recognition software could track men who looked like John. Especially habitual cinema goers. Likely credit card information goes through there as well. He texts the information to Lestrade as the sirens become loud enough to drown out the excited murmuring of the growing crowd before they stop. Sally Donovan gets out of the panda and holds open a door for him. Three security cameras swivel to point at them. He looks at them, not at Sally. “Find him,” he says, and gets in the back of the car.
“Three hours,” he says tersely, clutching his head in his hands as the sirens start up again. He feels like his abused heart is about to pound out of his chest. He can barely catch his breath. “He’s had John for three hours.” It’s imprecise. A guess. Could be one hour, four, anywhere in between.
Sally, for once, doesn’t say anything but the car speeds up, just a little.
X X X
My brother is recently returned
from hospital. I would appreciate
it if you kept him from relapsing
MH
Oh Christ that means what i think
it does right>
L
X X X
Lestrade looks tired. He always looks tired and worried. He is a handsome man, by most standards, but the job wears on him. If John was going to, as people are apt to say, ‘go gay’ for anyone that they know, Sherlock would have bet on Lestrade. Sometimes he is pleased to be wrong.
“A call went in to the emergency services from John’s mobile,” Lestrade says, before Sherlock is entirely out of the black and white. “Standard procedure is to disconnect-”
“Yes, yes,” Sherlock says waspishly. “Obviously. He had time enough to dial but not enough to request aid. When was it made?” Lestrade tells him. The murderer has had John for two hours and thirteen minutes. They will be at the man’s kill room. Possibly he has already assaulted John. But then, John is the one he really wanted. He’ll take his time.
Sherlock’s hands are perfectly steady when Lestrade leads him into his office. Every surface is papered with the details of the security company; anyone who would have had access.
“We’ve narrowed it down by gender,” Lestrade says. There are a lot of employees left. “Donovan’s got a team ringing round to everyone here; see if we can knock off a few more with solid alibis. Figured your way might be faster.”
Sherlock is not a profiler. He is good with concrete fact, with data. He is not good with people. He needs an assistant to talk to. Lestrade stands next to him. He is too tall, but Sherlock has worked with a skull before, this will have to do.
Lestrade is silent, going over his own notes and stack of paper, while Sherlock talks his way through the suspects. Every so often a police officer will come in and remove one person from their list - a suspect with an alibi - but not as often as Sherlock would like. Names and faces, addresses, family connections run through his brain, processing too slowly. He desperately wants to shoot up.
Sherlock is so focused on his task that he startles when Mycroft clears his throat, somewhere behind him. His brother nods a greeting, sits down at the table with a laptop, and begins opening a cascade of programs. “I thought I might be able to offer my assistance,” Mycroft says into the heavy silence. “It’s the least I can do.”
Under any other circumstances it might be amusing to see Lestrade’s expression. “Mr. Holmes,” he says carefully.
Mycroft doesn’t look away from the streams of information in front of him and he doesn’t reply. Sherlock described Moriarty as a spider but he was working off a comparison. Where Moriarty sat alone in his web, Mycroft is an ant colony, a master computer with other computers slaved to it. He is many bodies and his tunnels of information extend far beyond the imagination. He works with economy, functionally ambidextrous as he scribbles notes on a pad of paper with his right and types with his left. He couldn’t create the programs with their information flowing in and at the far end of those programs are his drones, his worker-ants, feeding him the data, but Mycroft understands it all.
Lestrade leaves Sherlock’s side and pulls up a chair next to Mycroft, detailing all the information that Sherlock hadn’t been allowed to see. He listens with half an ear, most of it is useless to him without lab time and time is something he doesn’t have, and turns back to the profiles in front of him.
Mycroft is significantly better at his task than Lestrade’s people and with each quiet murmur Lestrade clears away another suspect; Mycroft’s network providing alibis for those that otherwise wouldn’t have them. This one was using a bank across town from one abduction site, that one was caught on CCTV stalking his ex-girlfriend during one of the body dumps. He could have done this from his office. He didn’t. Sherlock isn’t sure what to make of that.
He can’t make anything of it; he has to find John.
“No!” Sherlock exclaims, spinning around to look at all the data. “No, no, we’re seeing this all wrong. We’re looking for a serial killer whose victims are diverse and random as Hope’s or that irritating fellow with the pencil moustache. But that’s just a by-product. He’s been watching John, all this time, he’s been stalking John as well as the others.”
“We’re already trying to trace IP addresses,” Lestrade says. “But there’s a couple that are bounced, or whatever it is IP addresses do. We know the stalker’s been on John’s site, that’s-”
Sherlock leans over his brother’s shoulder. “Look at the footage around Baker street,” he demands. “Check for recurring people who aren’t from the area. He must have spent some time observing first-hand unless he hacked your security system.”
Mycroft doesn’t bother to dignify that with an answer.
“There’s no way to track all the people on one street and narrow it down that way,” Lestrade says reasonably.
“There is if you look for these people,” Sherlock waves an expansive hand at the suspects around them. “We use his own method against him.”
Mycroft is already running the facial recognition software and the CCTV footage; he simply brings it up so Sherlock can see it. “A pebble in a shoe, a smile, padding in the cheeks can render this useless,” Mycroft points out, “and the murderer knows who John lives with and his involvement with the police. He’ll have taken care to disguise himself or I believe the Met would have found him by now.”
It’s embarrassing how pleased Lestrade looks at this compliment. Now Sherlock will have to listen to yet another idiot regale him with how charming and polite his brother is, how unlike him.
“Him,” Donovan says, slapping a sheaf of paper down on the overcrowded desk. “It’s him.”
All three men turn to stare at her and she doesn’t flinch. “You’re not going to insist it’s me?” Sherlock asks snidely.
She rolls her eyes and ignores Sherlock. “He fits the profile, he’s strong enough to drag a man Doctor Watson’s size, he lives with an elderly mother, and his picture and Facebook profile make my skin crawl.”
“That’s hardly enough to go on,” Lestrade says, as Sherlock says, “I make your skin crawl.”
Donovan shakes her head. She’s got her hair scraped back - hasn’t washed it for a while now, with the murders and the overtime, she’s hoping no one will notice - and she looks just as tired as Lestrade. “Your brother makes my skin crawl, sorry Mr. Holmes, (“None taken,” Mycroft demurs) you’re just a run-of-the-mill Oxbridge arsehole who thinks he can get away with murder and who might actually be crazy enough to try it.” She stabs a finger at the man on the paper. “It’s not something you can deduce, Sherlock, it’s a learned survival skill and if this man was walking on the same street as me at night, I’d be worried.”
Lestrade picks up the photograph and Sherlock can barely contain his irritation. “You’re not taking this seriously are you?” he demands. The photograph is years old, useless data. There’s nothing that truly separates out this man from half a dozen others.
Donovan holds her ground. “His mum owns an old banger, not much but enough to stuff someone into for a short ride. Between his place of residence and work there’s a mess of buildings due for a demolition that’s been put off indefinitely because of the economy.”
“And you got all this from your what? woman's intuition,” Sherlock asks, but he takes the paper from Lestrade. It’s more of a lead than they’ve had.
“No,” Donovan says. “I got it from a lifetime of experience and three years in Vice. He’s a killer and a stalker, but he’s also a rapist. He’s got it written all over his failed relationships, dropped complaints from women he’s worked with, his menial job that gives him a sense of power… you can argue with me, or you can look for John.” She turns back to Lestrade. “Owners of the building don’t give a toss if we search the block and I’ve got Harris already on the paperwork. I’ve also got Julie Godwin in Vice looking to see if any of the boys know him. I’ll bet my eyeteeth he’s got a history of roughing up rent boys.”
“I’ll stay here and run the data in case the lead goes cold,” Mycroft says.
Lestrade is already pulling on his coat. “Staying or going, Sherlock?” he asks.
Sherlock opts to stay.
Donovan and Lestrade hurry across the office, talking about K-9 units and getting a medical team together. Mycroft raises his eyebrows at Sherlock. “You don’t think she’s wrong,” he says. Never a question from him. He thinks Sally’s right too.
“No,” Sherlock says. “I just didn’t want them to stop me.” He takes off running and no matter how smart Mycroft is he’ll never even try to beat Sherlock in a foot-race.
X X X
If my brother gets to the scene too
long before you I can’t swear there’ll
be a suspect to investigate
MH
Balls
L
Rather
MH
X X X
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part One
There’s a police car sitting conspicuously down at the far end of Baker Street. Sherlock sneaks into his own flat by going to the Volunteer pub just down the way, shimming up onto the roof, making his way over to 221B and climbing in through John’s window. It’s worryingly easy to jimmy open. He’ll need to fix that. Later.
Sherlock has had to hide his cocaine habit from Mycroft before; John ought not to be any sort of challenge. He tidies himself up - fifteen minutes in the bathroom is more than sufficient - and shoots up. The superior lateral genicular artery is starting to constrict, he’ll need to switch soon.
This time things go much better. He checks in the mirror. He is pale and a little red about the eyes, but he looks mostly composed. Not good enough to fool his brother, but more than enough for what he has planned.
John is in the sitting room, surrounded by half-drunk cups of tea, fretting over his mobile. “Where the hell have you been?” he demands, getting to his feet. “You disappear and I’m left explaining to the police how, no, I have no idea where the fuck you are when there’s another body-”
Well, that’s interesting.
“Don’t you dare look at me that way.” John is angry, really, truly angry. He’s breathing hard, feet planted, with that wonderful, deadly calm.
Sherlock is wracked with such feelings of magnanimity towards John. There’s so much he wants from him. Sherlock is selfish and greedy and he is used to getting his way but not getting what he wants. He didn’t even know for certain he could want this until recently.
“Shut up,” Sherlock says. His heart is going a hundred miles an hour (196bpm) and he feels invincible. He’s faced down gravity, and death, and he won and now he feels like he can fly. He is invincible.
“Sherlock?” John says, concerned now.
Sherlock loves his concern. He loves the creases on John’s brow, the worried curve of his mouth. Sherlock takes John’s wonderful face in his hands, and kisses him. “Shut up,” he says, “and come to bed.” John pushes him back, gently, but Sherlock holds on. “I didn’t kill those men,” he says and John takes hold of his wrists, holding on in turn.
“I know you didn’t,” John says, and he wants to be angry still, but he’s staring up at Sherlock. John’s straight, but his body is flooded with endorphins and adrenaline in the same way that Sherlock is riding on the cocaine, and it’s easy to mistake one sort of arousal for another. Sherlock intends to use that. He’ll take it for as long as he can have it. He wants this in the same way John does, at least for the moment. He’ll take that too.
“But what about the part where you don’t actually do...this?” John asks, which seems a reasonable question, but not one Sherlock really wants to answer in any great detail.
Sherlock kisses John again, biting at his mouth, pushing him backwards until John butts up against Sherlock’s bedroom door. “I want to try this with you,” he clarifies. “I’ve been thinking about it.”
“I swear you’re difficult on purpose,” John complains as Sherlock pulls back long enough to drag John’s cardigan off and open the door. “Is that what you’ve been off doing? Can’t you just process things like a human being once and a while?”
There’s a slightly hysterical laugh caught in Sherlock’s chest so he rips his own shirt off over his head to stifle it. It’s hot in the room, almost unbearably so. “Boring,” he says and John laughs. He hesitates for a moment by the lamp but leaves it off, hovering nervously. Good, it will help conceal Sherlock’s symptoms.
Sherlock unbuttons his flies - God, he’s actually hard, stomach flipping over pleasantly - as he follows John into the bedroom. He pushes John back down onto the bed, crawling up after. John’s pupils are blown; he’s wide-eyed, hands gripping at Sherlock’s hips. He’s staring at Sherlock with the same flattering look he gets when Sherlock says something he thinks is especially clever and when Sherlock strips out of his trousers John swallows audibly.
John is straight, Sherlock thinks, with a growing sense of joy. “You’ve not done this before,” he says and John shakes his head no.
“Good,” Sherlock says. He’s smiling, can feel it stretching his face, manic and intent. They can be first together. He’s truly, literally dizzy with everything he’s feeling, heart going so fast he thinks he’ll never catch his breath again. This is what people, ordinary people, talk about, then. Why they’re so stupid about a boring bodily urge. There aren’t bells ringing in his ears, just the sound of his heart and a rising tone. He feels like he’s burning up with it but he’s not sweating. Le petit mort, he thinks.
“Sherlock?” John says and suddenly he’s not exhibiting classic signs of arousal, he’s worried. “Sherlock…Jesus Christ.”
He rolls out from under Sherlock a handful of seconds before Sherlock collapses and Sherlock is aware of an intense pain in his chest, sees John kneel over him jamming the heels of his hands into Sherlock’s diaphragm, shouting for Mrs. Hudson to call 999.
X X X
Had a word; you’ll
have no trouble from the
doctors getting in.
MH
X X X
Sherlock is handcuffed to the metal railing of his hospital bed and his brother is in the room. This, embarrassingly enough, is not the first time this has happened.
When Mycroft was a child, so Sherlock has been told, he was a quiet, studious boy. Frighteningly smart, but well-mannered, seen but not heard. His brother likes routine and order and Sherlock suspects that his desire to control everything - his ‘helicopter parenting’ of Sherlock when they were both young, his silent club, his love affair with the CCTV of the city, his meddling - stems from his desire to control the overwhelming overload of information he processes every second he is awake.
Sherlock threw tantrums, destroyed things, occasionally bit people. His brother was his only friend and as the smartest person Sherlock knew (smarter than him, always so frustratingly smarter than him), wasn’t dull. He could end the tantrums, distract Sherlock from his black moods. Then, when Sherlock was eleven, Mycroft left him alone while he went off to seamlessly blend in at university and Sherlock has never quite forgiven him for that. He doesn’t think Mycroft really understands the vicious, deliberately cruel, unhappy teenager he became and that was the end of all that. From there Mycroft was a man in government with a sociopathic junkie brother. Sherlock became a problem; Mycroft became a thorn in Sherlock’s side. And then he told Moriarty things that he really, really shouldn’t have done.
Sherlock thinks he’s well within his rights to be angry and continue being angry until they’re both cold in the ground but Mycroft is down to his shirtsleeves, his hair is out of place, and he looks tired and older than he is; Sherlock has the sneaking suspicion that he’s frightened Mycroft. He is perfectly aware that he is the reason Mycroft knows caring is not an advantage.
Sherlock is unaccustomed to giving in, giving an inch, but he’s groggy from the benzos they’ve given him, he has a throbbing headache, and there’s something heavy in his guts that feels a little like shame. He doesn’t want to fight a war on so many fronts anymore. Maybe it’s time they got back on the same side.
“I killed six people,” Sherlock admits out loud for the first time. He thought he might tell John, eventually, but saying it to his brother, who is as unerringly cold as he himself runs hot, is liberating. Mycroft holds almost no value to individual human lives and Sherlock has wanted to kill people before, but not like that. Not in a way he actually meant.
Over in his chair Mycroft slumps fractionally. He looks so much like their mother in the harsh light. Hard, patrician angles softened by weight and age. He’s definitely gaining weight again. Sherlock manages to bite his tongue. “I won’t let them put you in prison,” Mycroft says, fingers of one hand pressed against his face, in the corner of one eye, “but you understand, don’t you Sherlock? You can’t live freely anymore.” He looks at Sherlock, all that attention and unending patience focused on him. “I will protect you.”
It would be unkind to point out that he’s already failed quite badly at that since it’s obvious and they both know it. Sherlock finds it in him not to be unkind.
“Prison,” Sherlock says with great distaste. “There’s nothing at all to link me to the deaths. I merely bring it up because the entire endeavour took significantly more cunning and patience than I thought it would and I will concede patience and the necessity of the web, of the long game, is not my preferred way to work. The cocaine helped and now…well.”
Mycroft manages not to say anything about how Sherlock has an addictive personality and nearly killed himself for no good reason at all. They are doing very well so far.
“Where’s John?”
Mycroft sighs. “Working through his minor emotional breakdown in the chapel. Sherlock, you know you can’t see him again.”
“Why not?” Sherlock demands, struggling to sit up. The monitors start to blip along at an elevated rate, as though Mycroft needed any more advantage over him. Sherlock rattles the cuff, fury rising up. “It’s one thing for the Met to behave like imbeciles, but I expect a little more from you.”
“I know you care for him,” Mycroft says, and is that hesitation in his voice? Genuine hesitation, not an affectation? “Perhaps when you are a little better, but Sherlock, to know what you did to those men…it’s going to upset him, no matter how you meant it.”
Sherlock scowls at his brother. “No matter how I- They were going to kill Lestrade, and Mrs. Hudson, and…” It’s not his fault it takes him so long to catch on. He’s sluggish with the valium and he wants John because he’s got an irrational fear that if he doesn’t do something amazing, very soon, to prove he’s not a total imbecile, John might disappear. “Not the other Johns,” Sherlock says through clenched teeth. “Moriarty’s men. I killed Moriarty’s men who were threatening to shoot the people I care about.” He’s starting to get loud.
Mycroft - and what’s his excuse for being so simple today? - actually has the gall to smile at him. It’s very nearly a laugh, and a relieved one at that. “Well that’s a horse of a rather different colour and one I suggest you keep to yourself.”
“Really? Is that what you suggest?” Sherlock says, viciously snide. “I can’t believe you thought I was the ‘Baker street butcher.’”
The years fall off Mycroft as he composes himself. “I’m informed you were found in a compromising position, near-fatally high, no alibi for the murders, and you were rambling deliriously about proper Johns and other Johns, and listing off minor physical differences even Watson wouldn’t notice which rather suggests you have spent altogether too much time cataloging your flatmate’s naked body - a body I highly doubt he knew you were staring at. Forgive me if I didn’t leap to the conclusion that you are exactly as fallible and stupid as everyone else about affairs of the heart.” Mycroft stands, sliding his jacket on, but then he puts a hand over Sherlock’s, careful of the cannula there. He leans over and presses a kiss to Sherlock’s hair. “I’m glad you’re not dead, little brother,” he says, “get off the cocaine,” and is gone before Sherlock can pick up his jaw from the floor.
His next visitor, a minute later, is not John. Sherlock bares his teeth in an expression somewhere between a grin and a snarl. “I want to go home,” he said, rattling the cuff again.
“Yeah,” DI Jenison says. “Not gonna happen, mate. You’re under arrest on suspicion of murder. Once the doc says you’re good to go, you’ll be coming with us.” He flips open a little notebook. “But while we’re both here, you can answer a few questions.”
Trust Mycroft to stop meddling at the least convenient times. If he wanted to, Sherlock assumes he could make the police go away. But Sherlock asked him to keep his nose out, and so now that there’s no doubt in Mycroft’s mind that Sherlock can get himself out of this mess, he’s going to leave him to it.
Sherlock narrows his eyes. “The thigh,” he says. “It wasn’t cut up this time, was it?” He heaves a massive sigh and turns his head to stare out the window. “Check your CCTV. I spent two days in New Scotland Yard solving cold cases. Until then, I want you to leave me alone. No, wait, get John, and then leave me alone.”
He gets neither of those things.
X X X
I’m in room 341
SH
This is Sherlock btw
I borrowed someones phone
SH
I say borrowed…
SH
They’re still banging on about arresting me
ought to make Lestrade happy
SH
Stop sulking it doesn’t suit you
SH
X X X
Sherlock is in hospital for two days and John does not come and visit Sherlock even once. He isn’t there to offer scathing commentary about NHS deficits and how he’s had to do more with less while being shot at. He isn’t there when the doctor releases him into the custody of the Met. He isn’t there at NSY when they walk Sherlock through the Serious Crimes division in handcuffs and lock him in an interrogation room.
Sherlock sees Lestrade on the way in. He’s watching Sherlock through the windows of his office with a helpless expression on his face. No doubt he’s being kept far, far away from this case, though it more than falls under his jurisdiction. Lestrade’s gaze flicks past Sherlock, checking for John; checking to see how pissed off John is and if he’s likely to punch anyone important again. Sherlock knows the instant Lestrade realizes he’s on his own again because Lestrade says the word “Fuck” so clearly that even someone without Sherlock’s ability to lip-read would know what he said.
Jenison leaves Sherlock in the interrogation room alone for an hour. It’s cold, more so than Jenison probably intended, but Sherlock’s lost weight since he went haring off around the world trying to kill seasoned assassins. He’s shivering when Jenison comes back in, his hands and feet are freezing and he’s uncomfortable enough to wish Jenison had brought him a cup of the revolting swill the Met likes to pretend is coffee. It’s been fifty-three hours since Sherlock last slept if you count passing out and nearly dying because of a cocaine binge as sleeping, and close to six days if you don’t. He is nearing the proverbial wall and sooner or later, he is going to hit it, and hard.
Jenison has an unpleasantly nasal voice and a stack of paperwork Sherlock hasn’t seen in a while. He fans it out knowing full well Sherlock will be able to read it, though it’s upside-down.
“You have the CCTV tapes,” Sherlock says because they wouldn’t have brought in the unfortunately myriad psych exams Sherlock suffered through in his younger days like they’re even worth the price of the paper they’ve been faxed over on if they hadn’t.
“Until there’s evidence to prove they haven’t been tampered with, you’re still on the hook for the murders,” Jenison says.
Trying to prove a negative. Genius. Sherlock sighs and shifts in his cold metal chair. It’s hurting his Ischial Tuberosity and he wants out of the handcuffs but he doesn’t have so much as a pin to work with. “Let me see the crime scene photos and I’ll tell you everything,” Sherlock says.
Jenison’s face twists into a sneer. “Not likely, mate. Not getting that in here so you can jerk off to it.”
Sherlock’s left knee is jittering near uncontrollably and Sherlock hasn’t got the energy to quit a behaviour that is clearly annoying Jenison. “All right,” he drawls. He is certain that in this battle of nerves he will outlast Jenison, which is just sad really.
“Let’s talk about your Antisocial Personality Disorder,” Jenison says with relish. “I know you prefer ‘sociopath’ though, I can use that if you like.” He taps one of the bits of paper meaningfully. “Says here you’ve got all the classic signs. Lack of social norms, deceitfulness, manipulative, impulsivity, irritability, reckless disregard for safety, consistent irresponsibility, lack of remorse…”
When Sherlock was fourteen he was sectioned. The records are sealed, but they’re not impossible to get to. After he was expelled from Eton and sent to Harrow, Sherlock was found performing an experiment on a dead dog. Though he hadn’t actually killed it himself he had brought it back to the school, stolen lab equipment and made a bit more of a mess than he’d thought. They didn’t believe he hadn’t killed the dog, but there was no proof either way. He was put on probation. Then there was the incident with the cholera strain he’d put in the water system in the sixth form dormitory. That he had done on purpose and the school reported him and he was taken away.
He lost nearly two years of his life to a closed-ward hospital. No matter how many times he escaped and made it home, they always brought him back. He knows Mycroft was never told, but how could he not have known? The medication dulled his mind and having it forced upon him made him furious and violent. A cycle that went around and around and around until he finally broke out one last time, hitchhiked to where Mycroft was doing his Masters and begged him to help. It was also the last time he asked Mycroft for anything more than ‘go away’ because Mycroft only frowned at him and said, “Really, Sherlock, you could have been released months ago if you would only behave yourself,” as though it was some kind of time-out chair he had been sent to. And then Sherlock was taken back to the ward.
Sherlock was released into an out-patient program shortly before his sixteenth birthday with a script for medication he didn’t take and therapy he lied his way through. The next time he saw Mycroft, his brother had simply said, “You do it to yourself,” to which Sherlock replied, “Apparently not. Apparently I’m a sociopath.”
Mycroft smiled thinly at him. “If you say so.”
And he did. Because Sherlock rather liked the freedom being a high-functioning sociopath gave him. Some days he’s even wished his diagnosis was just a little more true (if he’s honest he does fit enough criteria to get him the diagnosis, but it’s still wrong at its core) because his life would be a lot easier if he didn’t care about anyone but himself. Now though, now that he’s being threatened with another sectioning, Sherlock is beginning to wonder if he might want to get that diagnosis taken care of, no matter how much he enjoys throwing it at Anderson.
Sherlock manages not to shout at Jenison for a whole hour and thirteen minutes before his patience runs out. After he has finished informing Jenison that regardless of any diagnosis made over fifteen years ago, Sherlock has no interest in what is actually an extremely boring crime. He lets Jenison know that the only reason he is even helping is because John is involved. When Jenison questions his definition of ‘helping,’ Sherlock informs Jenison of the facts: he will be bald within three years, he has a lower IQ than most sixth-form students, and his wife is cheating on him with another woman and will likely leave him for her. He then requests his phone call since there’s no evidence that Jenison can be reasoned with.
No sooner has he made the request than two sharks in designer suits and expensive shoes appear, circling outside the room. Jenison has no choice but to let Mycroft’s lawyers in. They are condescending, ruthless, and very good at their jobs. Sherlock walks out of NSY in less than an hour once they get their teeth into Jenison.
It is because of John that Sherlock also accepts the lift from Mycroft’s P.A. whose nails click on her blackberry in an extremely irritating way. His reasoning is this: Mycroft wronged Sherlock when he told Moriarty even one thing about him; though it was Sherlock he wronged, it was John who suffered; therefore, Sherlock is calling in the debt on John’s behalf. He owes Mycroft nothing for the help. He might owe him something if he strangles his assistant though. She refuses to stop, even when he snaps at her; she doesn’t even look at him, just says, “Irritability, anxiety, insomnia…” before trailing off as though she’s forgotten he’s even there.
Sherlock is more than aware of the delights awaiting him for the next week while he comes out of the cocaine crash. He doesn’t bother to ask her if Mycroft’s had the flat cleaned, because the answer is yes and even if he hadn’t, John would have turned the whole place inside out by now. Instead he cracks the window for relatively fresh air and tries not to throw up.
John isn’t in the flat when he gets there, which is surprising and disappointing. Sherlock checks every one of the places where he hides his drugs and finds nothing. Mycroft’s people are certainly better at their job than Lestrade’s. There is a pack of cigarettes sitting on the coffee table and a note from Mycroft that tells him his sense of smell is going to be ruined if he keeps up the habit. Sherlock lights up because his brother is right, again, and being good is so tiring sometimes.
That, and John isn’t there to berate him.
He has a headache, he’s exhausted but he’s not going be able to sleep now, and John isn’t there to make him a pot of tea and fuss. Sherlock is too anxious to lie down; partially withdrawal and partially because there’s still someone out on the streets of London who wants to kidnap, assault, and kill John Watson. John, John, John. John who is decidedly Not In.
Sherlock snatches up his mobile and rings John.
“I’m at Harry’s. Do me a favour and give me a few days because I’m so mad at you I can’t…I just can’t right now. Please,” John says before Sherlock can even open his mouth. Then John hangs up.
He was expecting John to be mad at him. He had, however, grossly underestimated exactly how mad John was going to be. Furious, seemed the most apt description. Going to Harry’s to explain why John needs to come home seems very unlikely to be a sound plan in any sense of the word. Of course, he’s not exactly of sound mind so Sherlock puts his coat back on and catches the first cab that has the decency to stop for a man who looks more than half-crazed.
X X X
999 emergency, what service do you require? Ambulance, police, or fire?
Hello?
…Hello?
This call has been disconnected
X X X
It’s Harry who answers the door, not John. She’s approximately five-three, a hundred and fifty pounds, broad shouldered and wide hipped, hair bleached white-blonde and cut almost as short as John’s. She crosses her arms over her substantial chest and glowers at him. She works in digital media of some sort - graphic design judging by her calluses and the grooves on her fingers.
“He’s not in,” she says, bodily blocking the door. “Now do us all a favour and fuck off.”
John’s shoes, from what Sherlock can see, are not in the foyer, ergo he left after Sherlock called, correctly predicting Sherlock would ignore his request and come after him. He turns his attention on Harry.
Harry is sober, but she will start drinking the minute it’s five pm. She is binge drinking, but not drinking in the mornings anymore. Right now it’s wine because vodka just doesn’t do it the way it used to. The hangovers are vicious. She likes having John around, hates his quiet, doctor’s disapproval, hates his nightmares, hates his intermittent tremor, hates the war. She knows she’s his last resort and resents that, but if anyone knows about handling a gay crisis, she’s John’s best (only) option. She knows where John has gone.
“Someone is trying to kill him,” Sherlock says.
Harry, a Watson for all her flaws, holds her ground. “I know,” she says but her shoulders are a little less firm.
Sherlock doesn’t bother with a façade. He is cold and immovable, bigger than her, stronger, and dangerous. “He’ll be kidnapped,” Sherlock says bluntly. “He’ll be raped, tortured, and eventually killed.”
“He’s a soldier,” Harry counters. “He can take care of himself and doesn’t need some insane junkie fucking with his head. Now sod off or I’ll call the cops.” She takes two quick steps back and slams the door in his face. Touché.
Sherlock sits down on the front step and waits.
Three hours later, John hasn’t returned and Harry opens the door again. “He’s not answering his mobile,” she says, choked. “He went to the cinema, said he’d be back in under two hours but he’s been gone for four. I called the police but they say it’s not a missing persons until twenty-four hours have passed.” Her hands shake as she holds out a familiar, ugly, jumper. The weight is wrong, something is wrapped in it.
The Sig.
Sherlock tastes bile in the back of his throat. He pushes his way inside the flat, tearing off his coat and takes the bundle from Harry. The holster is too small in some places and too big in others. Sherlock sticks the gun in the pocket of his coat and has done with it. His heart is pounding again and for a moment Sherlock wishes insanely for cocaine. He feels paralysed.
“He said he was only going to the cinema,” she says, clenching her fists impotently.
“Which one?” he demands, noting that Harry used to beat up kids in the schoolyard for her little, little brother until those children started calling her cruel names, and then it was John’s turn. She used to have some asinine pet name for him, pit-bull, or bulldog, or something. It would explain the rather bizarre birthday gift she got John: a hideous picture of dogs playing poker that had made John laugh - an attempt to renew their camaraderie of their youth.
He knows this, he knows all this but he doesn’t know how this killer is finding his victims, can’t trace it back to the murderer.
Harry shrugs helplessly. “There’s an Odeon a few streets over. Probably that one.”
“Call Lestrade, he’s a DI at the Met, tell him to call Mycroft,” Sherlock says and takes off at a dead sprint, brain finally kicking in, slow though, too slow, as he maps out the fastest route there. He doesn’t have any useful identification on him. No police badges, or disguises, but he barges up to the front of the queue before he realizes there’s no way this bored, spotty teenager is going to remember John because she’s an idiot. He pushes back towards the door again and then stops in the middle of the room, tangled in the snaking queue.
Everyone in the lobby is staring at him like he’s lost his mind. Their stupid faces gaping at him and he knows everything about them, useless, irrelevant things. He’s missing something.
A couple of kids push past him, tucking their tickets into pockets and wallets, a later showing, probably going to the pub for a pint beforehand, if they can blag their way in. The bright flash of green paper is familiar though. John Five had been to the cinema in the two weeks before he died; still had the torn stub in his pile of discarded receipts.
It all cascades together, crashing down on him like water. The slips of bright green in wastepaper baskets in the flats, forgotten in coat pockets, run through the laundry in jeans. But all the Johns (all of them, even Sherlock’s, now) had been to different cinemas, different locations. No one member of the staff would have occasion to visit seven different theatres and hanging out in the lobby is suspicious, it would have drawn attention, the way he is doing.
A man walks up to him, hand out as though he means to touch Sherlock. He is blank, no face, no facts, as Sherlock turns all his attention on the possibilities. Who would have had access to all the locations? Who could have sat there for hours, watching for the right man? “You alright, mate?” the man says.
“Security,” Sherlock says, the word punched out of him. “Of course!”
“Yeah, I’m security…”
Sherlock grabs hold of the man. “Other than you, what sort of security do you have? Who monitors your CCTV?”
“Sir, if you’d like to report-”
Sherlock’s grip tightens. “Who monitors your CCTV?” he demands in a voice that’s far too calm for how he feels. Data: This man is afraid of him. He is hurting him.
Sherlock feels like a conduit right now; information streaming in - floor plans of the cinema, details about the films playing, the staff, the customers, the statistical odds of John choosing one film over another. Everything he knows about the case already is repeating through his head. Everything he learned about the murders through looking at the bodies of the first five Johns. What it would have been like for the victims. How long John Watson has before he’s past saving. He hears sirens in the distance.
Sherlock doesn’t have time for this. He shoves the man away, climbs up onto the ticket booth and rips the nearest camera off the wall. People are laughing now, calling their friends, getting out their phones. Sherlock sees the manufacturer of the cameras, the number of this particular one, notes the sticker that informs patrons they are being monitored, notes the company.
He drops the camera, still attached to the wall by a few wires. It smashes against the wall and drops to the floor, ripping out plaster, but Sherlock is already off the counter and out the door. There’s still time. There has to be time.
All the feeds from the local Odeons goes to a central security location, the internet provides. A central location in London. Anyone with access to those files and halfway decent face recognition software could track men who looked like John. Especially habitual cinema goers. Likely credit card information goes through there as well. He texts the information to Lestrade as the sirens become loud enough to drown out the excited murmuring of the growing crowd before they stop. Sally Donovan gets out of the panda and holds open a door for him. Three security cameras swivel to point at them. He looks at them, not at Sally. “Find him,” he says, and gets in the back of the car.
“Three hours,” he says tersely, clutching his head in his hands as the sirens start up again. He feels like his abused heart is about to pound out of his chest. He can barely catch his breath. “He’s had John for three hours.” It’s imprecise. A guess. Could be one hour, four, anywhere in between.
Sally, for once, doesn’t say anything but the car speeds up, just a little.
X X X
My brother is recently returned
from hospital. I would appreciate
it if you kept him from relapsing
MH
Oh Christ that means what i think
it does right>
L
X X X
Lestrade looks tired. He always looks tired and worried. He is a handsome man, by most standards, but the job wears on him. If John was going to, as people are apt to say, ‘go gay’ for anyone that they know, Sherlock would have bet on Lestrade. Sometimes he is pleased to be wrong.
“A call went in to the emergency services from John’s mobile,” Lestrade says, before Sherlock is entirely out of the black and white. “Standard procedure is to disconnect-”
“Yes, yes,” Sherlock says waspishly. “Obviously. He had time enough to dial but not enough to request aid. When was it made?” Lestrade tells him. The murderer has had John for two hours and thirteen minutes. They will be at the man’s kill room. Possibly he has already assaulted John. But then, John is the one he really wanted. He’ll take his time.
Sherlock’s hands are perfectly steady when Lestrade leads him into his office. Every surface is papered with the details of the security company; anyone who would have had access.
“We’ve narrowed it down by gender,” Lestrade says. There are a lot of employees left. “Donovan’s got a team ringing round to everyone here; see if we can knock off a few more with solid alibis. Figured your way might be faster.”
Sherlock is not a profiler. He is good with concrete fact, with data. He is not good with people. He needs an assistant to talk to. Lestrade stands next to him. He is too tall, but Sherlock has worked with a skull before, this will have to do.
Lestrade is silent, going over his own notes and stack of paper, while Sherlock talks his way through the suspects. Every so often a police officer will come in and remove one person from their list - a suspect with an alibi - but not as often as Sherlock would like. Names and faces, addresses, family connections run through his brain, processing too slowly. He desperately wants to shoot up.
Sherlock is so focused on his task that he startles when Mycroft clears his throat, somewhere behind him. His brother nods a greeting, sits down at the table with a laptop, and begins opening a cascade of programs. “I thought I might be able to offer my assistance,” Mycroft says into the heavy silence. “It’s the least I can do.”
Under any other circumstances it might be amusing to see Lestrade’s expression. “Mr. Holmes,” he says carefully.
Mycroft doesn’t look away from the streams of information in front of him and he doesn’t reply. Sherlock described Moriarty as a spider but he was working off a comparison. Where Moriarty sat alone in his web, Mycroft is an ant colony, a master computer with other computers slaved to it. He is many bodies and his tunnels of information extend far beyond the imagination. He works with economy, functionally ambidextrous as he scribbles notes on a pad of paper with his right and types with his left. He couldn’t create the programs with their information flowing in and at the far end of those programs are his drones, his worker-ants, feeding him the data, but Mycroft understands it all.
Lestrade leaves Sherlock’s side and pulls up a chair next to Mycroft, detailing all the information that Sherlock hadn’t been allowed to see. He listens with half an ear, most of it is useless to him without lab time and time is something he doesn’t have, and turns back to the profiles in front of him.
Mycroft is significantly better at his task than Lestrade’s people and with each quiet murmur Lestrade clears away another suspect; Mycroft’s network providing alibis for those that otherwise wouldn’t have them. This one was using a bank across town from one abduction site, that one was caught on CCTV stalking his ex-girlfriend during one of the body dumps. He could have done this from his office. He didn’t. Sherlock isn’t sure what to make of that.
He can’t make anything of it; he has to find John.
“No!” Sherlock exclaims, spinning around to look at all the data. “No, no, we’re seeing this all wrong. We’re looking for a serial killer whose victims are diverse and random as Hope’s or that irritating fellow with the pencil moustache. But that’s just a by-product. He’s been watching John, all this time, he’s been stalking John as well as the others.”
“We’re already trying to trace IP addresses,” Lestrade says. “But there’s a couple that are bounced, or whatever it is IP addresses do. We know the stalker’s been on John’s site, that’s-”
Sherlock leans over his brother’s shoulder. “Look at the footage around Baker street,” he demands. “Check for recurring people who aren’t from the area. He must have spent some time observing first-hand unless he hacked your security system.”
Mycroft doesn’t bother to dignify that with an answer.
“There’s no way to track all the people on one street and narrow it down that way,” Lestrade says reasonably.
“There is if you look for these people,” Sherlock waves an expansive hand at the suspects around them. “We use his own method against him.”
Mycroft is already running the facial recognition software and the CCTV footage; he simply brings it up so Sherlock can see it. “A pebble in a shoe, a smile, padding in the cheeks can render this useless,” Mycroft points out, “and the murderer knows who John lives with and his involvement with the police. He’ll have taken care to disguise himself or I believe the Met would have found him by now.”
It’s embarrassing how pleased Lestrade looks at this compliment. Now Sherlock will have to listen to yet another idiot regale him with how charming and polite his brother is, how unlike him.
“Him,” Donovan says, slapping a sheaf of paper down on the overcrowded desk. “It’s him.”
All three men turn to stare at her and she doesn’t flinch. “You’re not going to insist it’s me?” Sherlock asks snidely.
She rolls her eyes and ignores Sherlock. “He fits the profile, he’s strong enough to drag a man Doctor Watson’s size, he lives with an elderly mother, and his picture and Facebook profile make my skin crawl.”
“That’s hardly enough to go on,” Lestrade says, as Sherlock says, “I make your skin crawl.”
Donovan shakes her head. She’s got her hair scraped back - hasn’t washed it for a while now, with the murders and the overtime, she’s hoping no one will notice - and she looks just as tired as Lestrade. “Your brother makes my skin crawl, sorry Mr. Holmes, (“None taken,” Mycroft demurs) you’re just a run-of-the-mill Oxbridge arsehole who thinks he can get away with murder and who might actually be crazy enough to try it.” She stabs a finger at the man on the paper. “It’s not something you can deduce, Sherlock, it’s a learned survival skill and if this man was walking on the same street as me at night, I’d be worried.”
Lestrade picks up the photograph and Sherlock can barely contain his irritation. “You’re not taking this seriously are you?” he demands. The photograph is years old, useless data. There’s nothing that truly separates out this man from half a dozen others.
Donovan holds her ground. “His mum owns an old banger, not much but enough to stuff someone into for a short ride. Between his place of residence and work there’s a mess of buildings due for a demolition that’s been put off indefinitely because of the economy.”
“And you got all this from your what? woman's intuition,” Sherlock asks, but he takes the paper from Lestrade. It’s more of a lead than they’ve had.
“No,” Donovan says. “I got it from a lifetime of experience and three years in Vice. He’s a killer and a stalker, but he’s also a rapist. He’s got it written all over his failed relationships, dropped complaints from women he’s worked with, his menial job that gives him a sense of power… you can argue with me, or you can look for John.” She turns back to Lestrade. “Owners of the building don’t give a toss if we search the block and I’ve got Harris already on the paperwork. I’ve also got Julie Godwin in Vice looking to see if any of the boys know him. I’ll bet my eyeteeth he’s got a history of roughing up rent boys.”
“I’ll stay here and run the data in case the lead goes cold,” Mycroft says.
Lestrade is already pulling on his coat. “Staying or going, Sherlock?” he asks.
Sherlock opts to stay.
Donovan and Lestrade hurry across the office, talking about K-9 units and getting a medical team together. Mycroft raises his eyebrows at Sherlock. “You don’t think she’s wrong,” he says. Never a question from him. He thinks Sally’s right too.
“No,” Sherlock says. “I just didn’t want them to stop me.” He takes off running and no matter how smart Mycroft is he’ll never even try to beat Sherlock in a foot-race.
X X X
If my brother gets to the scene too
long before you I can’t swear there’ll
be a suspect to investigate
MH
Balls
L
Rather
MH
X X X
Part One
Part Two
Part Three