Interview Room Seven
Title: Interview Room Seven
Fandom: Sherlock
Pairing: John/Sherlock
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3800
Disclaimer: In no way mine, or anything to do with me, I own nothing.
Summary: Was there anyone who wasn't under the impression they were sleeping together - except the slightly creepy, psychic pathologist at St. Barts?
AN: Challenge I'm doing with goldenusagi, to write a story every month where Sherlock is something not-human. This is my story, goldenUsagi's story is Seducing Under The Influence.
John never seems to get enough sleep any more. It's not so much of a problem when he's spending the nights trailing criminals and monsters through the streets of London. That part of the Consulting Detective job description is unsurprisingly good at keeping you awake and alert. In fact being awake and alert for those parts is something of a necessity.
No, it's the everyday monotony of police work that isn't quite as good of a distraction. It's four in the morning - four something in the morning, he last looked at his watch some point after they got to the station. He's currently sitting in an interview room, in one of two hastily dragged in chairs. Sherlock is being significantly more awake but no less bored beside him. Though it's harder to get his attention in general, even when sleep deprivation isn't a factor.
They're not currently the subject of the interview.
Lestrade is currently recording the names of one Ryan Crawley and Amanda Goddard. Both in their early twenties by John's estimate. Ryan is average height but heavy, though he carries it more in muscle than fat. Amanda is...John revises his estimate of her age down a bit when she tips her head into the unflattering overhead lights and shakes hair out of her face, probably not quite twenty. Blonde hair with dirty-blonde roots. She's thin but her clothes are too small, frayed and holing at the seams. Whatever make-up she'd been wearing looks as if it's been rubbed off by the night and tired fingers. They're both in t-shirts, though Amanda's wearing two, and neither of them are wearing coats, which isn't nearly enough clothes for an October night in London. John's pretty sure Amanda is the only one of them feeling it.
There are two officers in riot helmets behind the pair of them. It's a precautionary measure, and a sensible one considering. But they both look more bored than anything else. No one in the room wants to be there.
Lestrade flicks through the file he has on the table in front of him. It's late for him, rather than early, he should have been home hours ago and he looks it, his tie has clearly been working itself open all night and it's just about to give up completely.
"Where's your Progenitor, Mr. Crawley?"
Ryan's fingernails pick at the table, it might be an absent gesture but it isn't. They're dirty and there's a nicotine stain along one finger. He doesn't look like the sort of person you'd pick to turn into a vampire. But then John supposes ordinary people don't call so much attention. Maybe vampires are still clinging to old habits.
"I'm not a child." Ryan's voice is a grate, deeper than expected, and he sounds frustrated and angry. Though he's clearly making an effort to look calm. "I don't need a babysitter."
Lestrade doesn't look convinced, though he's been with the police long enough to play it carefully. The young ones never really understand that it's not just dying and coming back. The body isn't the only thing that changes. Vampirism also tends to burn away all those instincts that come from being a prey species. Which is why the ones that make them tend to keep them on a short leash, for the first fifty years or so.
"You should know the rules, you should have been told the rules, no solo trips until you're capable of control around the public."
Amanda tightens her grip on her boyfriend, and Ryan's arm twitches against hers, pressing and then pulling away, as if it doesn't know what to do with her warmth. Or with her fragile grip.
"It's not like that, he's not like that. He wouldn't hurt anyone."
"Amanda -"
She squeezes him when he tries to protest further, the movement makes him stiffen, and then slowly relax.
"No, you haven't done anything, they can't keep you here." The hand she has flattened on the table leaves a faint outline of condensation beneath it. But Ryan's arm is leaving the table clear.
"Now that's not entirely true," Lestrade tells her. It's close enough to sunrise that they can put him in the basement until his Progenitor is identified and found. The police are the one's who are going to be in trouble if they release him. But there's also still a grey area where taking vampires into custody is concerned. They tend to frown on being arrested without cause. They tend to frown on being arrested with cause, to tell the truth. "There have been some incidents recently, as I'm sure you're aware, concerning members of the public. We're being extra cautious, asking questions, making sure everyone is following the rules."
Ryan's fingers clench briefly, skin making a rubbing series of clicks.
"I haven't harmed anyone. I'm fine, better than fine. I can control myself just fine."
John thinks the fact that he's used the word 'fine' three times in one sentence might be suggesting the opposite.
Lestrade very carefully shuts the folder he'd been pretending to read.
"I'm finding that a little hard to believe. I don't even need to ask to know that you're barely ten years old."
Ryan twitches, and John knows Lestrade has hit a nerve, that Ryan's taken that as an insult. He honestly has to wonder how many baby vampires Lestrade has had to carefully prod, to see if they go off. To make sure they won't go off.
Though from what Sherlock has told him Ryan's Progenitor will do a damn sight more than prod if he finds out he was roaming London unsupervised.
"That's still pretty new considering. The fact that you're out on your own, that you think you can be out on your own, doesn't fill me with confidence, Mr Crawley."
"I'm not a child." That comes out with feeling behind it, probably something he's protested many times. Say for the last ten years or so. You'd think he'd be used to it by now.
"Some people might beg to differ." It's the first thing Sherlock's said since they entered the room, and it rolls out of him in a questioning, lazy sort of way. He'd been gradually slumping down in his chair, but his eyes and half his nose are still visible over the collar of his coat.
Ryan turns his head and glares at him, opens his mouth to speak - only to snap it shut when he gets a good look at Sherlock.
Lestrade frowns pointedly in Sherlock's direction, until he rolls his eyes and pretends to be bored again.
"You might feel that way now, but you're not going to have anything like the kind of control to be allowed to roam on your own until you're what, forty...fifty or more. Until then your Progenitor is liable for anything you -"
"This is taking too long," Sherlock declares, slips a hand inside his coat and draws out a metal flask. He gives Lestrade barely a few seconds to whisk his files and interview notes out of the way, and get out a garbled bark of protest, before he upends half a pint of blood on the interview desk.
What happens next is too fast for John to follow, he has to put it together after the fact. It's just a sudden burst of movement and crashing metal and then Sherlock has a shrieking stretch of limbs against the interview room wall. John only knows it's Ryan because of the t-shirt. His mouth is stretched open so wide his jaws have cracked apart at the sides, teeth long and white, all the flesh within pulled away. His eyes are a flare of burgundy, bleeding outwards into his skin. Amanda's on the floor screaming, scattered chairs beside her. The table is against the far wall, and the recorder is whirring somewhere. The helmeted police from the back of the room have their weapons out, poised in an uncertain attempt at readiness. While both managing to look frighteningly unprepared
Lestrade is shouting at everyone.
Sherlock squeezes until something clicks and Ryan goes quiet, limbs flailing and shortening until he's left panting against the wall, mouth streaking bloody saliva down his chin. He looks hollow-eyed and confused and there's blood spattered up both his arms, which twitch in oddly helpless ways, as if they want to get closer to his mouth.
"Fine is something of an exaggeration," Sherlock says mildly.
Amanda has stopped screaming but she's watching her boyfriend from a crumpled position on the floor. She's also making quiet noises into her own fingers, eyes watery wide.
"You will let them hold you, and you will give them the name of your Progenitor before you kill someone." Sherlock tells him, then drops him away from the blood, steps over him, and sweeps out of the room.
---
It's freezing cold outside, and though it's still dark John knows it's fast heading towards dawn. He stamps his feet and yawns, waits for Sherlock to glide his way down the stairs towards him. It seems unfair that Sherlock gets the huge coat and the fancy scarf and the stupidly expensive gloves when John is the only one of them who actually feels the cold. John is the one who's suffering in a jumper that some forgotten relative bought him about four Christmas's ago. It's not that he particularly wants expensive Winter clothing, it's just the general, ironic, unfairness of it all.
"Did you just empty your stash in interview room seven?" he asks, before Sherlock moves past him, in a wash of chilly air.
"It was taking forever, it always takes forever. I was bored." He's gesturing as if that might be a fate worse than death...which Sherlock would know, John supposes.
"You're always bored, and now Lestrade's going to be unbearable and everyone in the station will blame you for it. Because someone will have to clean that up, and the entire room is going to smell like blood and they won't be able to interview any juveniles in there without them...freaking out."
"Eloquent," Sherlock offers, pushing his hands into his gloves. "But we wouldn't want the Inspector to get lazy."
"Well we don't want him to get eaten either. They have safety rules for a reason." Safety rules which Sherlock enjoys breaking at every opportunity. "They won't let you play with their toys if you keep breaking them."
"They have UV lights in the ceiling in case of emergencies. Actual emergencies, not irresponsible children running away from home." Sherlock frowns to himself. "Which seems oddly specific considering the sheer volume of dangerous non-human entities they encounter on a daily basis. Perhaps I should be flattered."
John encourages him down the stairs, because it's cold and morning is somewhere in the not too distant future, and he'd rather get inside where it's warm than pose theatrically on the steps. Thankfully Sherlock has finished talking for the moment and lets himself be gently pushed.
"No, you probably shouldn't, and they're unlikely to deploy them with you in the room."
Sherlock looks at him, it's a look John's getting used to.
"That they're slightly less likely to deploy, with you in the room," he concedes. Sherlock is not always good at making friends. Acquaintances who hate him seem to pile up fairly quickly though.
"Lestrade of course wouldn't hesitate if you were imperilled, he likes you." Sherlock's voice sounds amused, but he shoots John a sideways look as if to suggest he may be complicit in that somehow.
"He likes me because I make you less difficult. He likes me because I limit your exposure to the public. He likes me because I tend not to make people cry. Though the odds of my being eaten are significantly higher since we became friends, by a variety of random supernatural creatures. Just so you know, I'm not blaming you, I'm just stating a fact."
Sherlock makes a rude noise, objecting to the opinion without actually admitting that it's not true.
"I wouldn't let anyone eat you - only I'm allowed to eat you, within reason, under extenuating circumstances, you promised."
A tired looking man in a fluorescent jacket that they pass gives then a very odd look.
"Yeah, I think that came out all wrong." John sighs, because he's really getting far too used to all of this. "I think you do it on purpose."
"No, I meant what I said, it's your fault if you want to imbue it with unintended sexual suggestiveness."
It does suddenly occur to John that it's the one line they haven't crossed yet, and there have been many strange, awkward lines that they've stumbled, tripped or walked blindly over in their friendship.
"You've never asked," John says. He's a doctor and he's seen vampire bites, both consensual and forced, and they're everything that a large mammal sinking its teeth into you would suggest. But he's always been aware, in the back of his head, that he runs around the streets of London trying to catch supernatural criminals with an unpredictable vampire. Who has something of a history with eating people. He's far from in denial about that.
"I've never needed to," Sherlock says, and there's a smile somewhere in the shadowed lower half of his face. "And I took that to be an emergency measure that you had given tacit permission for, rather than an offer of constant supply, with all the sexual connotations that entails when we share a flat."
John's a little offended by that.
"I'm pretty sure we went past 'flatmates' when I helped you stop a demon from possessing the prime minister, definitely that time with that evil witch that wanted to put the ghost of her dead boyfriend in your body."
Sherlock twitches inside his coat, something that wants to resemble a shudder when he no longer feels the cold.
"I don't think I actually thanked you for that."
Technically he still hadn't, but John was going to give him that.
"You were nice to me," he says into the cold, weaving around early morning pedestrians. "You made me breakfast. It was very disturbing. For all that he was a psychotic serial killer I think he'd gotten too used to pretending to be normal. And I think he was under the impression we were sleeping together." Was there anyone who wasn't under the impression they were sleeping together - except the slightly creepy, psychic pathologist at St. Barts?
"Suggesting that if he'd simply acted like a psychotic serial killer you would have been none the wiser?" Sherlock asks, and this time he's definitely smiling, John catches it in the brief glow of a street light.
He grunts agreement.
"Your normal serial killer charm you mean? Yep, he would have murdered me in my sleep and I'd have never known." John nods, because that does sound about right. "Not that I'm calling you a serial killer - not currently anyway, and perhaps you should leave me with the impression that it's not a pastime you've recently given up either."
"I got over my angry adolescence fairly quickly." Sherlock's face tips down into his collar, though John knows he can't feel the cold bite of the wind.
"Which was...?"
"I'm still not telling you how old I am." Sherlock's voice is muffled by wool and amusement.
"Your brother has a painting of you both from the sixteen hundreds. I have to say, it really wasn't a look you carried off very well. Either of you. Though you are forbidden from telling Mycroft I said that."
"Yes, I'm well aware that I look awful with long hair," Sherlock mutters. "Thankfully Mycroft looks significantly worse, like a constantly disappointed Spaniel."
John doesn't quite manage not to laugh at that.
"Besides, he could have painted that himself, at any point within the last three hundred years. " Sherlock stares down at him over the edge of his collar. "Why don't you ask Mycroft how old I am?"
"Your brother is terrifying." He knows it as well. John's never known anyone who could make friendly visits feel that sinister and threatening. He makes it worse by popping round for them at regular, though unpredictable, intervals.
"My brother is boring, he can't be bothered to be terrifying, he has other people do it for him. A whole entourage of humourless, faceless people to threaten and loom. It's tiresome."
"He doesn't need them, trust me on that."
"He likes you, John, he's no more likely to eat you than I am."
"Weirdly not comforting," John complains. "It's odd that you think I'd find that comforting."
"Well then, I suppose you'll have to keep on guessing."
John sighs a plume of warm air into the darkness. Because it's not even as if he gets any hints, or clues.
"Romans?" John offers. "Your opinion on Romans?" He can sort of imagine Sherlock as a Roman, smug, arrogant, ridiculously sensible hair, sense of superiority...weirdly unflattering little dresses?
"I'm six feet tall, do you really think I'm old enough to have been in ancient Rome?"
"Right," John says, giving himself a brief mental smack. "They were tiny, weren't they? You realise your extensive historical knowledge isn't helpful here. I can't base your age on stuff you know. What about the plague, were you around for that?"
Sherlock laughs and slips round him, he has the keys in his hand before John realises Sherlock had even been in his pocket. Or that they'd gotten home.
"You're getting lazy," Sherlock says.
"You don't exactly scream any era in particular. If you reminisced about the Napoleonic wars more often then this would be a lot easier. Though I think Stamford just liked the tight trousers, to be honest."
Sherlock laughs again, and takes the stairs three at a time. Which John has no hope of keeping up with, so he just follows at his own pace while Sherlock mutters things he's hoping he can ignore. When John gets his coat and shoes off, and gets out of the bathroom, he finds Sherlock making him tea.
"Its getting late - early." He takes the mug. "You should be in bed, I hate when you fall asleep on the sofa. I hate it even more when you fall asleep on the floor. Mrs. Hudson just hoovered round you last time. Talking about her friend's arthritis the whole time. It was very surreal."
Sherlock hums agreement - though to which part of his comment John has no idea - and pulls his scarf off in one long drag, then leaves it to fall off of the table.
John trails after him, drinking tea that's far too hot, while Sherlock also scatters his shoes, gloves and jacket across the living room in what he probably assumes are artistic places.
"This, if nothing else is proof that you grew up with servants." John attempts to pick things up after he's gone, then wonders why he's bothering and dumps it on the sofa. He's trying to decide if he's too tired to be hungry when Sherlock calls him from the depths of his room.
John groans and forces himself back towards Sherlock. His feet hurt and he's tired, and he wants nothing more than to go to sleep. Sherlock's spread out on his bed, one leg pulled up under the other, burgundy shirt sleeves shoved up. He looks like he expects someone to take a photograph of him at any moment. If John tried that his hair would stick up everywhere, and most of his jeans would be in his crotch.
"Tell me what Mr Harrington said today when you questioned him about his daughter's supposed suicide," Sherlock demands. "Only the pertinent parts, leave out all the boring stuff."
"You'll be asleep in five minutes, and I'm exhausted," John complains. "I'm going to drag myself to my room and then fall on my face until I wake up again. Or until you come and harass me for help, or a murder, or help with a murder. Please don't come and harass me for help with a murder - unless it's Moriarty, that nasty little necromancer needs his head chopping off. I will assist you with that."
Sherlock laughs, and seems far too pleased about that. Before he elegantly gestures at the other side of the bed. The side not currently full of vampire.
"Yes, because that's absolutely safe and not at all weird." John inhales steam and tries not to fall over where he stands.
"Of course it's safe. I don't wake up like something out of a horror movie."
"No, you wake up cranky, and freezing cold and dead," John reminds him. "Besides people will talk, more than they usually do, I think you like it."
"Let them," Sherlock grumbles.
John should definitely protest to that, but he's just too tired. He finds himself setting his mostly empty mug on the floor and flopping sideways onto the pillow. It smells like expensive shampoo and chalk.
Sherlock's bed is unfairly comfortable, considering he's most often too dead to enjoy it.
"Why is your bed so comfortable, it's not as if you're ever going to appreciate it?" His own bed is a single, and one of the legs is curiously shorter than the others. He's surprised he doesn't dream about falling constantly. "And I swear if you make one joke about breakfast in bed I will draw your curtains and give you an uncomfortable tan."
"Well I wasn't going to make one, but now I'm thinking about it." Sherlock mutters. "I'll be tempted now, you realise that?" His eyes are already half shut, twitching fingers settling.
"It would serve you right if I molested your dead body."
Sherlock's bare foot twitches, the last messages from a brain in shutdown, and John understands, just for a second, why Sherlock hates mornings so much.
"Far too perverse for you, more my sort of thing really. Though feel free if the mood strikes you." Sherlock's voice is a slow rumble of sound now. Not quite as sharp. John thinks there's another accent somewhere underneath, long-buried and unplaceable.
Against his better judgement John makes himself comfortable. He can hear birds in the distance and he thinks if he drew one of the heavy curtains he'd find light seeping through the darkness.
Sherlock has left one pale hand flung across his chest, fingers curled. The tips of them are ever so slightly blue. Without thinking about it too much John reaches a hand out, touches the length of them, where the warmth from Sherlock's gloves is already seeping away.
"Not asleep yet," Sherlock murmurs quietly.
"I know," John admits, he can feel the chill of him, fingertips pressed where the veins show through the skin. Where there should be a pulse but instead there's just...an absence.
He lets his fingers slide away. There's a complete and unnatural stillness to Sherlock now.
"Time of death...unknown," John says into the silence.
Fandom: Sherlock
Pairing: John/Sherlock
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3800
Disclaimer: In no way mine, or anything to do with me, I own nothing.
Summary: Was there anyone who wasn't under the impression they were sleeping together - except the slightly creepy, psychic pathologist at St. Barts?
AN: Challenge I'm doing with goldenusagi, to write a story every month where Sherlock is something not-human. This is my story, goldenUsagi's story is Seducing Under The Influence.
John never seems to get enough sleep any more. It's not so much of a problem when he's spending the nights trailing criminals and monsters through the streets of London. That part of the Consulting Detective job description is unsurprisingly good at keeping you awake and alert. In fact being awake and alert for those parts is something of a necessity.
No, it's the everyday monotony of police work that isn't quite as good of a distraction. It's four in the morning - four something in the morning, he last looked at his watch some point after they got to the station. He's currently sitting in an interview room, in one of two hastily dragged in chairs. Sherlock is being significantly more awake but no less bored beside him. Though it's harder to get his attention in general, even when sleep deprivation isn't a factor.
They're not currently the subject of the interview.
Lestrade is currently recording the names of one Ryan Crawley and Amanda Goddard. Both in their early twenties by John's estimate. Ryan is average height but heavy, though he carries it more in muscle than fat. Amanda is...John revises his estimate of her age down a bit when she tips her head into the unflattering overhead lights and shakes hair out of her face, probably not quite twenty. Blonde hair with dirty-blonde roots. She's thin but her clothes are too small, frayed and holing at the seams. Whatever make-up she'd been wearing looks as if it's been rubbed off by the night and tired fingers. They're both in t-shirts, though Amanda's wearing two, and neither of them are wearing coats, which isn't nearly enough clothes for an October night in London. John's pretty sure Amanda is the only one of them feeling it.
There are two officers in riot helmets behind the pair of them. It's a precautionary measure, and a sensible one considering. But they both look more bored than anything else. No one in the room wants to be there.
Lestrade flicks through the file he has on the table in front of him. It's late for him, rather than early, he should have been home hours ago and he looks it, his tie has clearly been working itself open all night and it's just about to give up completely.
"Where's your Progenitor, Mr. Crawley?"
Ryan's fingernails pick at the table, it might be an absent gesture but it isn't. They're dirty and there's a nicotine stain along one finger. He doesn't look like the sort of person you'd pick to turn into a vampire. But then John supposes ordinary people don't call so much attention. Maybe vampires are still clinging to old habits.
"I'm not a child." Ryan's voice is a grate, deeper than expected, and he sounds frustrated and angry. Though he's clearly making an effort to look calm. "I don't need a babysitter."
Lestrade doesn't look convinced, though he's been with the police long enough to play it carefully. The young ones never really understand that it's not just dying and coming back. The body isn't the only thing that changes. Vampirism also tends to burn away all those instincts that come from being a prey species. Which is why the ones that make them tend to keep them on a short leash, for the first fifty years or so.
"You should know the rules, you should have been told the rules, no solo trips until you're capable of control around the public."
Amanda tightens her grip on her boyfriend, and Ryan's arm twitches against hers, pressing and then pulling away, as if it doesn't know what to do with her warmth. Or with her fragile grip.
"It's not like that, he's not like that. He wouldn't hurt anyone."
"Amanda -"
She squeezes him when he tries to protest further, the movement makes him stiffen, and then slowly relax.
"No, you haven't done anything, they can't keep you here." The hand she has flattened on the table leaves a faint outline of condensation beneath it. But Ryan's arm is leaving the table clear.
"Now that's not entirely true," Lestrade tells her. It's close enough to sunrise that they can put him in the basement until his Progenitor is identified and found. The police are the one's who are going to be in trouble if they release him. But there's also still a grey area where taking vampires into custody is concerned. They tend to frown on being arrested without cause. They tend to frown on being arrested with cause, to tell the truth. "There have been some incidents recently, as I'm sure you're aware, concerning members of the public. We're being extra cautious, asking questions, making sure everyone is following the rules."
Ryan's fingers clench briefly, skin making a rubbing series of clicks.
"I haven't harmed anyone. I'm fine, better than fine. I can control myself just fine."
John thinks the fact that he's used the word 'fine' three times in one sentence might be suggesting the opposite.
Lestrade very carefully shuts the folder he'd been pretending to read.
"I'm finding that a little hard to believe. I don't even need to ask to know that you're barely ten years old."
Ryan twitches, and John knows Lestrade has hit a nerve, that Ryan's taken that as an insult. He honestly has to wonder how many baby vampires Lestrade has had to carefully prod, to see if they go off. To make sure they won't go off.
Though from what Sherlock has told him Ryan's Progenitor will do a damn sight more than prod if he finds out he was roaming London unsupervised.
"That's still pretty new considering. The fact that you're out on your own, that you think you can be out on your own, doesn't fill me with confidence, Mr Crawley."
"I'm not a child." That comes out with feeling behind it, probably something he's protested many times. Say for the last ten years or so. You'd think he'd be used to it by now.
"Some people might beg to differ." It's the first thing Sherlock's said since they entered the room, and it rolls out of him in a questioning, lazy sort of way. He'd been gradually slumping down in his chair, but his eyes and half his nose are still visible over the collar of his coat.
Ryan turns his head and glares at him, opens his mouth to speak - only to snap it shut when he gets a good look at Sherlock.
Lestrade frowns pointedly in Sherlock's direction, until he rolls his eyes and pretends to be bored again.
"You might feel that way now, but you're not going to have anything like the kind of control to be allowed to roam on your own until you're what, forty...fifty or more. Until then your Progenitor is liable for anything you -"
"This is taking too long," Sherlock declares, slips a hand inside his coat and draws out a metal flask. He gives Lestrade barely a few seconds to whisk his files and interview notes out of the way, and get out a garbled bark of protest, before he upends half a pint of blood on the interview desk.
What happens next is too fast for John to follow, he has to put it together after the fact. It's just a sudden burst of movement and crashing metal and then Sherlock has a shrieking stretch of limbs against the interview room wall. John only knows it's Ryan because of the t-shirt. His mouth is stretched open so wide his jaws have cracked apart at the sides, teeth long and white, all the flesh within pulled away. His eyes are a flare of burgundy, bleeding outwards into his skin. Amanda's on the floor screaming, scattered chairs beside her. The table is against the far wall, and the recorder is whirring somewhere. The helmeted police from the back of the room have their weapons out, poised in an uncertain attempt at readiness. While both managing to look frighteningly unprepared
Lestrade is shouting at everyone.
Sherlock squeezes until something clicks and Ryan goes quiet, limbs flailing and shortening until he's left panting against the wall, mouth streaking bloody saliva down his chin. He looks hollow-eyed and confused and there's blood spattered up both his arms, which twitch in oddly helpless ways, as if they want to get closer to his mouth.
"Fine is something of an exaggeration," Sherlock says mildly.
Amanda has stopped screaming but she's watching her boyfriend from a crumpled position on the floor. She's also making quiet noises into her own fingers, eyes watery wide.
"You will let them hold you, and you will give them the name of your Progenitor before you kill someone." Sherlock tells him, then drops him away from the blood, steps over him, and sweeps out of the room.
---
It's freezing cold outside, and though it's still dark John knows it's fast heading towards dawn. He stamps his feet and yawns, waits for Sherlock to glide his way down the stairs towards him. It seems unfair that Sherlock gets the huge coat and the fancy scarf and the stupidly expensive gloves when John is the only one of them who actually feels the cold. John is the one who's suffering in a jumper that some forgotten relative bought him about four Christmas's ago. It's not that he particularly wants expensive Winter clothing, it's just the general, ironic, unfairness of it all.
"Did you just empty your stash in interview room seven?" he asks, before Sherlock moves past him, in a wash of chilly air.
"It was taking forever, it always takes forever. I was bored." He's gesturing as if that might be a fate worse than death...which Sherlock would know, John supposes.
"You're always bored, and now Lestrade's going to be unbearable and everyone in the station will blame you for it. Because someone will have to clean that up, and the entire room is going to smell like blood and they won't be able to interview any juveniles in there without them...freaking out."
"Eloquent," Sherlock offers, pushing his hands into his gloves. "But we wouldn't want the Inspector to get lazy."
"Well we don't want him to get eaten either. They have safety rules for a reason." Safety rules which Sherlock enjoys breaking at every opportunity. "They won't let you play with their toys if you keep breaking them."
"They have UV lights in the ceiling in case of emergencies. Actual emergencies, not irresponsible children running away from home." Sherlock frowns to himself. "Which seems oddly specific considering the sheer volume of dangerous non-human entities they encounter on a daily basis. Perhaps I should be flattered."
John encourages him down the stairs, because it's cold and morning is somewhere in the not too distant future, and he'd rather get inside where it's warm than pose theatrically on the steps. Thankfully Sherlock has finished talking for the moment and lets himself be gently pushed.
"No, you probably shouldn't, and they're unlikely to deploy them with you in the room."
Sherlock looks at him, it's a look John's getting used to.
"That they're slightly less likely to deploy, with you in the room," he concedes. Sherlock is not always good at making friends. Acquaintances who hate him seem to pile up fairly quickly though.
"Lestrade of course wouldn't hesitate if you were imperilled, he likes you." Sherlock's voice sounds amused, but he shoots John a sideways look as if to suggest he may be complicit in that somehow.
"He likes me because I make you less difficult. He likes me because I limit your exposure to the public. He likes me because I tend not to make people cry. Though the odds of my being eaten are significantly higher since we became friends, by a variety of random supernatural creatures. Just so you know, I'm not blaming you, I'm just stating a fact."
Sherlock makes a rude noise, objecting to the opinion without actually admitting that it's not true.
"I wouldn't let anyone eat you - only I'm allowed to eat you, within reason, under extenuating circumstances, you promised."
A tired looking man in a fluorescent jacket that they pass gives then a very odd look.
"Yeah, I think that came out all wrong." John sighs, because he's really getting far too used to all of this. "I think you do it on purpose."
"No, I meant what I said, it's your fault if you want to imbue it with unintended sexual suggestiveness."
It does suddenly occur to John that it's the one line they haven't crossed yet, and there have been many strange, awkward lines that they've stumbled, tripped or walked blindly over in their friendship.
"You've never asked," John says. He's a doctor and he's seen vampire bites, both consensual and forced, and they're everything that a large mammal sinking its teeth into you would suggest. But he's always been aware, in the back of his head, that he runs around the streets of London trying to catch supernatural criminals with an unpredictable vampire. Who has something of a history with eating people. He's far from in denial about that.
"I've never needed to," Sherlock says, and there's a smile somewhere in the shadowed lower half of his face. "And I took that to be an emergency measure that you had given tacit permission for, rather than an offer of constant supply, with all the sexual connotations that entails when we share a flat."
John's a little offended by that.
"I'm pretty sure we went past 'flatmates' when I helped you stop a demon from possessing the prime minister, definitely that time with that evil witch that wanted to put the ghost of her dead boyfriend in your body."
Sherlock twitches inside his coat, something that wants to resemble a shudder when he no longer feels the cold.
"I don't think I actually thanked you for that."
Technically he still hadn't, but John was going to give him that.
"You were nice to me," he says into the cold, weaving around early morning pedestrians. "You made me breakfast. It was very disturbing. For all that he was a psychotic serial killer I think he'd gotten too used to pretending to be normal. And I think he was under the impression we were sleeping together." Was there anyone who wasn't under the impression they were sleeping together - except the slightly creepy, psychic pathologist at St. Barts?
"Suggesting that if he'd simply acted like a psychotic serial killer you would have been none the wiser?" Sherlock asks, and this time he's definitely smiling, John catches it in the brief glow of a street light.
He grunts agreement.
"Your normal serial killer charm you mean? Yep, he would have murdered me in my sleep and I'd have never known." John nods, because that does sound about right. "Not that I'm calling you a serial killer - not currently anyway, and perhaps you should leave me with the impression that it's not a pastime you've recently given up either."
"I got over my angry adolescence fairly quickly." Sherlock's face tips down into his collar, though John knows he can't feel the cold bite of the wind.
"Which was...?"
"I'm still not telling you how old I am." Sherlock's voice is muffled by wool and amusement.
"Your brother has a painting of you both from the sixteen hundreds. I have to say, it really wasn't a look you carried off very well. Either of you. Though you are forbidden from telling Mycroft I said that."
"Yes, I'm well aware that I look awful with long hair," Sherlock mutters. "Thankfully Mycroft looks significantly worse, like a constantly disappointed Spaniel."
John doesn't quite manage not to laugh at that.
"Besides, he could have painted that himself, at any point within the last three hundred years. " Sherlock stares down at him over the edge of his collar. "Why don't you ask Mycroft how old I am?"
"Your brother is terrifying." He knows it as well. John's never known anyone who could make friendly visits feel that sinister and threatening. He makes it worse by popping round for them at regular, though unpredictable, intervals.
"My brother is boring, he can't be bothered to be terrifying, he has other people do it for him. A whole entourage of humourless, faceless people to threaten and loom. It's tiresome."
"He doesn't need them, trust me on that."
"He likes you, John, he's no more likely to eat you than I am."
"Weirdly not comforting," John complains. "It's odd that you think I'd find that comforting."
"Well then, I suppose you'll have to keep on guessing."
John sighs a plume of warm air into the darkness. Because it's not even as if he gets any hints, or clues.
"Romans?" John offers. "Your opinion on Romans?" He can sort of imagine Sherlock as a Roman, smug, arrogant, ridiculously sensible hair, sense of superiority...weirdly unflattering little dresses?
"I'm six feet tall, do you really think I'm old enough to have been in ancient Rome?"
"Right," John says, giving himself a brief mental smack. "They were tiny, weren't they? You realise your extensive historical knowledge isn't helpful here. I can't base your age on stuff you know. What about the plague, were you around for that?"
Sherlock laughs and slips round him, he has the keys in his hand before John realises Sherlock had even been in his pocket. Or that they'd gotten home.
"You're getting lazy," Sherlock says.
"You don't exactly scream any era in particular. If you reminisced about the Napoleonic wars more often then this would be a lot easier. Though I think Stamford just liked the tight trousers, to be honest."
Sherlock laughs again, and takes the stairs three at a time. Which John has no hope of keeping up with, so he just follows at his own pace while Sherlock mutters things he's hoping he can ignore. When John gets his coat and shoes off, and gets out of the bathroom, he finds Sherlock making him tea.
"Its getting late - early." He takes the mug. "You should be in bed, I hate when you fall asleep on the sofa. I hate it even more when you fall asleep on the floor. Mrs. Hudson just hoovered round you last time. Talking about her friend's arthritis the whole time. It was very surreal."
Sherlock hums agreement - though to which part of his comment John has no idea - and pulls his scarf off in one long drag, then leaves it to fall off of the table.
John trails after him, drinking tea that's far too hot, while Sherlock also scatters his shoes, gloves and jacket across the living room in what he probably assumes are artistic places.
"This, if nothing else is proof that you grew up with servants." John attempts to pick things up after he's gone, then wonders why he's bothering and dumps it on the sofa. He's trying to decide if he's too tired to be hungry when Sherlock calls him from the depths of his room.
John groans and forces himself back towards Sherlock. His feet hurt and he's tired, and he wants nothing more than to go to sleep. Sherlock's spread out on his bed, one leg pulled up under the other, burgundy shirt sleeves shoved up. He looks like he expects someone to take a photograph of him at any moment. If John tried that his hair would stick up everywhere, and most of his jeans would be in his crotch.
"Tell me what Mr Harrington said today when you questioned him about his daughter's supposed suicide," Sherlock demands. "Only the pertinent parts, leave out all the boring stuff."
"You'll be asleep in five minutes, and I'm exhausted," John complains. "I'm going to drag myself to my room and then fall on my face until I wake up again. Or until you come and harass me for help, or a murder, or help with a murder. Please don't come and harass me for help with a murder - unless it's Moriarty, that nasty little necromancer needs his head chopping off. I will assist you with that."
Sherlock laughs, and seems far too pleased about that. Before he elegantly gestures at the other side of the bed. The side not currently full of vampire.
"Yes, because that's absolutely safe and not at all weird." John inhales steam and tries not to fall over where he stands.
"Of course it's safe. I don't wake up like something out of a horror movie."
"No, you wake up cranky, and freezing cold and dead," John reminds him. "Besides people will talk, more than they usually do, I think you like it."
"Let them," Sherlock grumbles.
John should definitely protest to that, but he's just too tired. He finds himself setting his mostly empty mug on the floor and flopping sideways onto the pillow. It smells like expensive shampoo and chalk.
Sherlock's bed is unfairly comfortable, considering he's most often too dead to enjoy it.
"Why is your bed so comfortable, it's not as if you're ever going to appreciate it?" His own bed is a single, and one of the legs is curiously shorter than the others. He's surprised he doesn't dream about falling constantly. "And I swear if you make one joke about breakfast in bed I will draw your curtains and give you an uncomfortable tan."
"Well I wasn't going to make one, but now I'm thinking about it." Sherlock mutters. "I'll be tempted now, you realise that?" His eyes are already half shut, twitching fingers settling.
"It would serve you right if I molested your dead body."
Sherlock's bare foot twitches, the last messages from a brain in shutdown, and John understands, just for a second, why Sherlock hates mornings so much.
"Far too perverse for you, more my sort of thing really. Though feel free if the mood strikes you." Sherlock's voice is a slow rumble of sound now. Not quite as sharp. John thinks there's another accent somewhere underneath, long-buried and unplaceable.
Against his better judgement John makes himself comfortable. He can hear birds in the distance and he thinks if he drew one of the heavy curtains he'd find light seeping through the darkness.
Sherlock has left one pale hand flung across his chest, fingers curled. The tips of them are ever so slightly blue. Without thinking about it too much John reaches a hand out, touches the length of them, where the warmth from Sherlock's gloves is already seeping away.
"Not asleep yet," Sherlock murmurs quietly.
"I know," John admits, he can feel the chill of him, fingertips pressed where the veins show through the skin. Where there should be a pulse but instead there's just...an absence.
He lets his fingers slide away. There's a complete and unnatural stillness to Sherlock now.
"Time of death...unknown," John says into the silence.