On the tenth day of Sherlockmas... "Best Left Alone," a gift for alafaye (Part 2 of 2)
Author: [redacted]
Title: Best Left Alone
A gift for: alafaye
Characters/Pairing: Sherlock/John, OCs a-plenty
Category: Slash
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Murder (nothing explicit), briefest of allusions to domestic violence
Summary: A case where all the suspects are dead means John finally gets to meet the family. He very quickly begins to regret this.
Author's Notes: This could easily have been twice the length. For reasons of time and space, you are spared.
Go to Part One
In the end, he finds Sherlock not in the mansion at all, but out in the grounds.
He’s rather annoyed that he never thought to go check the corpses.
“Surprised they didn’t move him,” he comments, not needing to announce himself because no doubt Sherlock knew the moment he left the house. “Crime scene tape ruins the look of the place.”
Sherlock says nothing.
John squats down next to him, and tilts his head to examine the body. The cause of death is pretty obvious, at least to either of them: necks generally aren’t supposed to look that way. It’s positioned at the bottom of a fairly sharp drop that makes John wince just looking at it. Apparently this garden (more like a field and forest attachment) was designed for the more adventurous sort. There’s no sign of the man’s bag - evidence, presumably, or Mycroft eager to restore the silver to its rightful place - but John remembers Mycroft’s brief mention of an unlucky burglar. (God, it was brief, as well. This man barely merited a footnote.) (Edward, he forces himself to remember. Edward Davies.)
“Hit Ms McCreedy in the back of the head,” Sherlock offers. “People are so fragile.”
“Did he shoot Jaime?”
Sherlock snorts. “Hardly. No residue, no powder burns, and no reason to switch weapons if his aim was stealth.” He offers a piece of paper to John.
“A map?”
“Yes,” Sherlock says, in that particular tone which somehow turns it into a ‘no’, “except the grounds don’t look like this.”
Despite the dead body - not to mention dead bodies plural - John can’t help but take a moment to roll the word ‘grounds’ around his brain. He can’t help it: he hasn’t heard the word outside of ITV dramas since early secondary school field trips.
“Somebody gave him the wrong map?”
“No.”
“No?”
“That suggests it was an accident.”
John waits to let that sink in a little. As if this wasn’t already getting pretty convoluted. Now they have some sort of mastermind? (Although that might actually help tie it all together.)
After a while of watching Sherlock do what he does best - namely act like a madman and stare at corpses - John recalls the end of his previous conversation.
“Something for you from Mycroft, by the way.”
“Not interested,” is the unsurprising response, yet Sherlock still turns at the sound of rustling plastic to look at the evidence bag John’s holding out to him.
“Apparently this is as far as he let the police get,” John tells him. “Didn’t think it was possible for him to think any less of them.”
“He thinks less of the ones here.” Sherlock doesn’t take the bag, instead apparently preferring to peer in at its contents. “They make Anderson look positively competent.”
“You’re lying.”
“Then you obviously don’t know me as well as you think.” Sherlock narrows his eyes, tilting his head like, yes, the cat that John is probably never going to stop mentally comparing him to. “I am not a cat.”
Not for the first time, John tests Sherlock’s telepathy by thinking You are a twat as hard as possible. Not only is his faith in the natural order of things restored, but he also has a soothing sense of satisfaction.
“Honey,” Sherlock observes, in the appalled tone of voice that signals yet another drop in his opinion of humanity. “They were going to convict a beekeeper because there was honey.”
“Also the ‘spurned lover’ thing, Sherlock.”
Sherlock doesn’t even bother to label that comment as ‘dull’; the dismissive gesture works perfectly well as shorthand for them.
“He did spill honey - apparently Ms McCreedy used to complain all the time about him smashing jars and getting it over everything.”
“If you suggest that Ms McCreedy was some sort of criminal mastermind, you are sleeping alone. Forever.”
While John is highly doubtful that Sherlock will follow through on ‘forever’, he decides to just stop talking for now.
He sees the slight furrow in Sherlock’s brow a second before the bag is snatched out of his hand and key evidence emptied out onto the ground. At least, he thinks, it hasn’t rained lately.
Sherlock raises the gun to eye level; sniffs it suspiciously; licks at the honey.
“Very sanitary,” John comments.
“Shut up.”
John fancies he can hear Sherlock’s brain working: humming, ticking, whirring, running the input through databank after databank of tastes, textures, cross-referencing and extrapolating, constantly racing towards the conclusion. Most people find it unnerving; he thinks it’s one of the most incredible things he’s been allowed to witness. But then, most people think Sherlock’s a freak, and John, well, John has already said his piece on that opinion far too many times. (Still not enough, though; never enough.)
Finally - in real-time, maybe ten seconds later - Sherlock’s eyes light up and he jumps to his feet. He grins - the full deduction grin, the one that makes him look like the madman John knows he is - and declares, “Wrong honey!”
Normally Sherlock’s enthusiasm is more than enough to carry him along, regardless of what he’s actually saying. This time, though, while he does smile, it’s slightly incredulous (not to mention already anticipating the explanation). “Wrong honey,” he repeats.
“Yes, the honey, didn’t you hear me?” Sherlock says irritably, as if being deaf is preferable to being slow. (For Sherlock, it probably is.) “It’s from too far north!” When John still looks at him blankly, he goes on, “Oh, come on now. What flowers are nearby--within a one hundred mile radius--affects the taste and make up of the honey. So. Looking at this honey--what do we deduce?"
"This it was made further north?"
"Exactly."
"Exactly what?" There’s a faint inkling of an idea at the back of John’s mind, but apparently it’s determined to stay put. This would be the inevitable part of every case: the moment(s) John finds himself trailing behind.
“The honey!”
“Sherlock, you can’t keep saying that and make it a clue!”
“Slater wouldn’t have this honey on his hands, so somebody planted it, and whoever it was, they came from the north!”
“Why not Tesco’s?”
Sherlock scoffs at that. “I can taste where it’s from, John, that’s hardly Tesco’s standard.”
“Yes, mind telling me how you can do that?”
“You know my methods.”
“Not the honey ones. Also, bees?”
Sherlock straightens his spine, the better to look down on John, who doesn’t mind as much as usual because pettiness is something he’s fairly immune to these days. “Bees,” he informs him, “are fascinating creatures.”
John thinks he should say something witty. Instead, he tries to convey ‘incredulous’ and ‘exasperated’ and ‘unimpressed’ and ‘this explains a depressing amount’ entirely through his facial expression. Normally it wouldn’t be worth the effort, but in the same way that some boyfriends might memorise, say, eating habits, Sherlock has an entire catalogue of John’s expressions in his mind, since he never seems arrive at the wrong conclusion when John says nothing at all. It’s flattering, to say the least.
“So,” he finally says, as drily as possible, “not Tesco’s. Does that rule out the boyfriend as well?”
“No access, no means. A distraction.” And as he says that word, he frowns slightly, as if a thought has circled back around to find him again.
Unfortunately, whatever it is, it’s headed off by John’s phone going off.
“Oh God.”
“What?”
“We’re supposed to sit through dinner.” John looks up at Sherlock. “When this is all over, I never want to see your family again.”
Sherlock smiles at him - suddnely warm and genuine - and John at least has the satisfaction of having said the right thing.
----------
The next few hours pass by in a blur of ridiculous names and improbable professions. Apparently nobody in this family is called James or Steve, nor are any of them anything less than ridiculously successful, either presently or in the past. That is, apart from Algernon, but John only knows this from the rest of the family. According to the Sackvilles - quite singularly unlikable, but then it’s possible John has been biased ever since that particular introduction - Algernon was some sort of Greek god with a poet’s heart (“bloody useless lump, used to coasting on his looks right until he got dumped out of uni,” Agatha informs him, and John loves her). They all act as if he was struck dead by some sort of lightning bolt the moment he entered these unhealthy grounds, which, John is fairly certain, is not how heart attacks work.
“Perhaps not,” Laetitia sniffs, when he tries to tell her this (because for some reason they are not sitting at opposite ends of the table and hence John can’t help but react to everything she says), hand tightening around his glass until it’s a bloody marvel it doesn’t snap in two, “but unsolved deaths are hardly unheard of in this house.”
The focus of attention is a little different this time, at least (‘this time’ because Laetitia has an incredibly focused mind, capable of steering any conversation towards Sherlock’s father with uncanny precision). This time, John’s eyes aren’t on Sherlock, but on the woman sitting at the head of the table.
She at least gives the impression of calm, to the point of regal, even, with faded red hair but a glare John can feel the force of from here. Even Laetitia seems to falter for a moment, although that might just be wishful thinking. Besides the eyes, however, the rest of her projects an impression of polite benevolence Mycroft would be proud of.
“I would thank you, Letty,” the woman says - colder than Sherlock or Mycroft - “not to bring your accusations into this house.”
Her faded grey-streaked red hair tells him her heritage; her arched brows and unruly curls her descendants.
This woman, it turns out, is Arabella Holmes.
Sherlock’s mother.
Unfortunately, rather than being able to talk to the woman, John has had to gather everything from a series of backhanded insults and carefully targeted verbal sniping between her and her sister. If nothing else, at least John is gaining some insight into what the Holmes brothers consider to be normal sibling relationships.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Laetitia pantomimes, with a smile of pure malice aimed at her sister, “have I said something out of line? It’s just that, what with another rush of corpses, one can’t help but recall the old days around here.”
Next to him, Sherlock is uncharacteristically silent. (More characteristically, he isn’t eating a thing, and John finds he’s too focused on the sibling sniping to even try arguing.) For the entire meal - in fact, before they sat down, proudly and at the very moment Laetitia would see them as clearly as possible - John has had one hand firmly closed around Sherlock’s. Sherlock hasn’t acknowledged it, but then, he hasn’t let go either.
“I do hope you’re not over-straining yourself, Bella,” Laetitia says later. “I do hate to think of you all alone in this house.”
“Don’t worry, Letty, it’s the company that makes it unbearable.”
And later still, as dessert sits there on all of their plates, “Shame about your sons, Bella, but what can you do?”
Without a word, Sherlock stands and sweeps out of the room; John thinks he’s taken his appetite with him.
When he’s gone, Arabella says, quite calmly and clearly, “Neither of them has disappointed me yet, Letty.”
----------
Mycroft informs him that the two of them -
“Together?”
“I think it best not to leave you loose and separate in this house.”
- are staying in ‘the Blue Room’.
“Not Sherlock’s room?” John asks quietly. Not that he wants to see it - alright, that’s a bloody lie, it’s more that he doesn’t necessarily want to sleep in it. It’s just that it’s happened sooner or later with most of his exes, and, well, Sherlock isn’t most people. John wants to see everything about him. Or at least that’s what he thinks, most of the time.
Mycroft allows him the courtesy of a subtle shake of the head. “I’m afraid he rather despises the place now,” he informs, with a sort of detached regret - were Mycroft capable of such a thing. “Psychological reason, you understand: former addicts rarely relish returning to their rehabilitation lodgings, and in this respect I think you’ll find my brother to be unusually normal.”
Christ.
John just wants this day to be over. Multiple corpses he can handle, but however much he’ll admit that he wanted to pry, he wasn’t ready for this house, or its inhabitants. Its corridors are wide and unfriendly; its rooms are haunted by ghosts of the past, a bad dream lingering on. He’s always wanted to know a bit more of Sherlock’s past - the facets the man won’t let him get to, for all that it’s seemed so very important, as if he can’t properly love him without knowing.
Be careful what you wish for indeed.
John doesn’t want to know anymore.
More than anything, he wants to wake up tomorrow in Baker Street, as if none of this had ever happened.
Unfortunately, there is a dead woman on the ground floor, another in the morgue, and three men besides. (As Sherlock had commented over dinner, murmured into John’s ear for the clear purpose of aggravating those across the table, Algernon’s death is little comfort - and naturally even less so to John.) For their own differing reasons, neither John nor Sherlock will leave until this case is over.
Mycroft nods and leaves him there.
Christ, let it be over.
----------
There’s one more surprise waiting for him before he can hide in the relative safety of the bedroom.
“Hello, John.”
He spins around to see Arabella standing opposite the door, clearly waiting.
For a moment, he’s too awed to say anything. It’s incredible, despite having already spent (too much) time with that number of relatives in the room, to see the likenesses shining through - right down to the small twitch of a smile directed at him.
“Um,” he says intelligently, creating the fantastic first impression he’d always planned. “Ma’am.”
“Oh good Lord,” she laughs, breaking the spell, “don’t worry about that. Arabella, please.”
There’s another ‘um’ fighting its way out. John wishes he could shoot the bastard. “John,” he says instead.
“Yes, I know who you are,” she reassures him with an amused smile. “We did just eat dinner together, you might recall.”
“Wish I could forget,” he says, then starts and goes on, “God, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean - ”
“Ssh,” she interrupts. “We won’t get anywhere if you’re too scared to talk to me. Listen, my sister is a poisonous cow, her family are bastards and bitches the lot of them, and the day I married into the Holmeses was the proudest of my life. So don’t be afraid to speak your mind, John.”
He blinks. Then he smiles, because the bluntness of her words is a bloody relief.
However, rather than seize the opportunity, he feels the need to apologise, since the sight of her has reminded him of Gabriel’s words earlier.
“I’m sorry, I hadn’t realised,” he admits, “this is your home more than anybody else’s. And to have two people die - ”
“Gossips, the lot of them,” she says, suggesting that a certain lack of respect for the dead for being dead isn’t an uncommon trait in the family. “Ms McCreedy heard everything that happened in this house - or at least she liked to think so - and that girl eavesdropped on her, always hoping for something to use to her advantage. Useful for keeping track of things, but a little annoying at times.”
Before he can stop himself, he wonders, “So they might have heard something that meant they had to be killed?”
Arabella chuckled. “Tell me, is this my son rubbing off on you?”
“You get used to it, after a while.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I understand completely. The Holmes men are like that. If Mycroft ever makes his move, the lucky man - or woman - ” she adds, as if she’s covering something up “will soon find they’re thinking in terms of politics or diplomacy. Their father had a rather similar effect on me.”
John hesitates. Arabella’s eyes narrow.
“Something wrong?” she asks. Quickly John shakes his head.
“Sorry, no, it’s just your sister - ”
“My sister says a great deal of things, John,” she says coolly. “Believe me, if you’ll believe nobody else: it does not do to listen to them.”
Her eyes dare him to release the question filling his brain, louder and louder until there’s nothing he can think besides that and the simple word ‘no’. He doesn’t trust himself to so much as open his mouth; knows that the question is right there, lying in wait.
As the army taught him so well, he straightens his back and bites his tongue and just waits.
Eventually, after masterfully letting the silence stretch out, she nods approvingly. John has the strangest sense that he’s passed some sort of test.
“Holmes men,” she says, “always do better with somebody to hold them in place.
“Thankyou, John.”
One more similarity: apparently Sherlock inherited his dramatic exits from his mother.
---------
One of the more useful aspects of this relationship is that these days John can actually get Sherlock to go to sleep.
Unfortunately, now he has to deal with the nightmares.
Sherlock sleeps like the dead: still, terrifyingly silent, almost not breathing at all. The first few nights when he’d crashed out in their shared bed, sheer fear had led John to risk breaking the miracle by checking Sherlock’s pulse. Now they’ve adapted, at least a little: when they’re both in bed, John sleeps with his head resting on Sherlock’s chest, soothed and lulled by the steady sound of heartbeats.
It means that he hears the moment they start to accelerate; the only warning he’ll get to take cover.
He’s always careful to hide the bruises from an unexpected backhand or a belatedly noticed kick. The last thing he needs is to make the Yarders think Sherlock’s an abusive boyfriend. (Laughable, incidentally, for all that people might assume otherwise.)
In the moments afterwards, though, once he’s reoriented himself, John fights his way in: takes the hits he must in order to get his arms around Sherlock and hold him still. “Sherlock,” he says, again and again. “Sherlock, it’s just a dream!” Hopefully, he thinks, because if he’s right, then Sherlock’s nightmares are filled with falling. Falling and failing.
When Sherlock finally comes round, he blinks up at John, looking oddly young. (Occasionally John is reminded that he’s the older one in this relationship. It’s unexpected, to say the least.)
“It’s okay,” John says. “Look at me.”
“But - ”
“Focus on me.”
“John - ”
John seizes a hand; drags it up to trace over the scar on his shoulder, the reason he’s here at all. “What made this?”
Sherlock’s still too distant. He hates it.
“Sherlock. Look at it. What made it?”
“Bullet.”
“Obviously,” he says with a laugh, reassuring but pressing at the same time. “Look at it, Sherlock. What kind of bullet?”
“Sniper. Several houses away; two floors up.” Sherlock pauses. “Three.” Fingers and eyes both trace the webbing of scar tissue. “Clean shot. Less clean recovery.”
“I remember.” John pulls the hand across, Sherlock’s fingers tracing across to the wound lower, just above his hip. “This one?”
Sherlock’s starting to come back now; he doesn’t hesitate. “Knife,” he says, then looks closer. “Bowie knife. Army issue.” He frowns, fingers circling the wound. “Deliberate, but messy: not a soldier, but a soldier’s weapon. Somebody stole it.”
“Right,” John agrees, and doesn’t give details, because that’s not the point. “This one?”
“Fell off your bicycle,” and Sherlock smiles softly - the way he never does when he’s fully awake - presumably at the cliché of it.
And they go from there, time unimportant, minutes bleeding into each other as John slowly brings Sherlock home.
John's body was a a monument to the battles he'd fought and moments he lived when he could have teetered, fell over the edge. Sherlock's eyes memorized every line, touched them. Gave John an excellent reason to have survived. Gave John a reward for having survived.
----------
When he wakes up again, John is alone, straightened out again to avoid the cold of the other side of the bed.
And this, too, is normal.
----------
Tea in hand - he’d found somebody in the kitchen already brewing a pot, squinted at them to see if he could remember their name, received it anyway, and is now thinking Leopold over and over until he can not only match name to face but also stop wanting to both laugh and cry at the same time - he goes Sherlock hunting.
The corpse-check bears fruit: Sherlock is back with Jaime, half of the room emptied into the other half, and now looking carefully between her body and a mobile he’s produced from somewhere. (John notes that the mess includes an empty, crumpled evidence bag, and with a sigh amends that ‘something’).
“Found anything?”
A distracted hum.
“What time did you get up?”
“Before you.”
John wishes Sherlock didn’t act like such a child sometimes. It makes the whole ‘incredible and inescapable attraction’ thing rather awkward.
He sits himself down on the chair and waits. Even before Sherlock, he was good at waiting, and now he’s used to a man who announces himself as someone who doesn’t talk for days on end (only to deliver with interest all at once).
“Whose mobile?” he finally prompts, as Sherlock sighs in exasperation.
“Boyfriend’s,” he’s told, before it lands in his surprised hands. “She invited him here.”
John frowns down at the open text. “I thought she poisoned him?”
“Time of death is being estimated approximately two hours before that message was received.” John takes a moment to work out if the death in question is the girl’s or the boyfriend’s. There are far too many bodies in this case. “He received a invitation from her after his death, John.”
Trying to follow all this, John asks, “So somebody tried to set him up?”
Sherlock smiles, and it takes a moment for John to realise he hadn’t said ‘she’. “Precisely. A scapegoat. Much like Slater.” John looks up in enough time to catch another phone, fumbling this one. “Informed that she was in danger from her lover, but ready and waiting for him all the same. Chose to kill himself at the news.” Sherlock is clearly confused by the motive there. “They weren’t counting on that. Given the gun, he was supposed to live; supposed to run.”
“So we’re looking for somebody else to send all these texts…and want to frame the beekeeper?”
“I doubt it was a grudge. Too arbitrary. Nothing to tie him directly besides the girl. We’re looking for whoever else she was sleeping with.”
“Somebody else?”
Sherlock looks at him, with the clear and familiar expression that says he can’t believe he has to explain this. “The make-up, John. Why was she wearing it? Who was she waiting for?”
“The boyfriend…?” John starts, already knowing as he says it that it’s wrong, not needing to see Sherlock’s frustrated roll of the eyes.
“He wanted to kill her; he was poisoned; he wasn’t supposed to come, John.”
“Slater?”
“Killed himself when told she was with another man. No, there’s a third party in this.”
“You mean the burglar?”
“No, not the burglar, John; forget the burglar. He’s nonsense, a distraction, he - ”
And there it was. The moment in every case when Sherlock’s mind won out, a solution burning through so clearly that it practically shone out of his eyes. Truth be told, John would happily endure every insult and every childish tantrum just to see these moments, when Sherlock was quite simply the most incredible person in the room - any room.
“A distraction,” Sherlock repeats, as if he needs to confirm the word to himself, looking rather stunned by his realisation. He looks at John. “That’s what it is.”
“What?”
“All of it.” His fingers come together under his chin, pause, and then snap out again, nervous twitches, all the facts coming together in front of him, conducted into position. “Whoever did this, they knew about me.”
“Not much of a revelation there.”
“No, John, they knew me. Think: what would be the best way to keep me out of a case?”
“Besides your family?”
“Yes, besides that. You’re not thinking. Domestic abuse, spurned lovers, eavesdroppers: what does that sound like?”
It sounds like an awful lot of things, to be honest. Mental, for one; depressing as well. Neither of which are anything like Sherlock, so John thinks harder.
And, not for the first time, he feels the world tip a little as he aligns his thoughts with Sherlock’s and appreciates all over again just who it is he’s in love with. It’s not just the thrill; there’s the terror as well.
“They’re boring.”
Sherlock smiles in acknowledgement.
“John, I was never supposed to be here. Somebody tried too hard to make sure I wouldn’t come.”
“Who then?” It’s the obvious question, and one John will never get tired of asking. It’s not about pandering to Sherlock’s whims; it’s about needing to know as much as he does. “Who’d orchestrate all of that?”
“Somebody,” Sherlock says, voice suddenly turning dark, “who wanted to be cleverer than they were.”
----------
There’s something very unfair about trying to keep up with Sherlock once his mind’ set on a chase. Despite what people assume, pursuits across rooftops are fine: it’s all about running as fast as you can. Striding with purpose, though; that’s a little bit harder. If nothing else, there’s the fact that John absolutely outright refuses to run to keep up.
When there’s an abrupt turn into the library, something falls into place in John’s mind.
“Algernon?”
“Algernon.”
Sherlock ascends the wide sweeping stairs to the second level, for the first time looking properly at home here.
“Wealthy and well-bred enough to attract the girl’s attention, and he wanted it: wanted to prove he was just as good as the rest of his family.”
John recalls Arabella’s weary words of yesterday. “She knew something. Something he couldn’t get out of Ms McCreedy.”
He fancies he can hear a smile in Sherlock’s voice; otherwise there’s no acknowledgement of John’s own data acquisition (or whatever Sherlock’s calling it today). “Definitely an easier target. Whatever it was, though, he had to make sure neither of them would talk. Hence the murders.”
“Which ones?”
Sherlock tilts his head to the side, not looking around but still conceding the point. “The women. The thief as well - Algernon always did fall over in the grounds, he must have seen a sort of justice in that death.”
“So the boyfriend was, what? Unlucky timing?”
Sherlock hates the idea of coincidence. “Perhaps he said the wrong thing; perhaps her new consort gave her ideas.” John doesn’t even laugh at the word ‘consort’, he’s so enthralled by the revelations now coming thick and fast. “John, she did it. Before she left for good - not, I think, in the way she’d intended - she made sure he wouldn’t come after her.”
“The beekeeper?”
“Was never even in the picture.”
The truth, as ever, hurts more than a little. “He knew that.”
“Yes, I suppose he did.”
“No, Sherlock, he knew that. That’s why he killed himself.”
Sherlock pauses and looks at him, suddenly seeming uncomfortable. In fact, he must be, because a moment later he pushes on regardless. “It doesn’t matter why he killed himself, only that he did. Two unplanned deaths of scapegoats, coupled with the disposal of the thief - not as necessary as he thought, he just didn’t have to say anything, but he thought he was so clever.”
“Maybe that’s what gave Jaime the idea.”
“What?”
“To poison her boyfriend.”
“Yes, perhaps,” Sherlock dismisses, waving off the point like a wasp. “With the women, it becomes too unwieldy. Anything breaks under that strain.”
John frowns, trying to follow the words. “So, that’s why he had a heart attack?” When Sherlock looks at him in a brief flash of confusion, as if John hasn’t so much headed off his train of thought as smashed right into it, John realises that, as ever, he’d been speaking rather more metaphorically.
“A rather conveniently timed one,” Sherlock judges. “It’s been bothering me since I heard.”
“One death is an accident, a sixth is pure carelessness?” John jokes, if only for the brief pleasure in watching the reference go whistling over Sherlock’s head.
“Something like that.” His eyes narrow, the classic sign of Sherlock Holmes in deep thought. “Weak, weedy, uninspired, unfit, unworthy in everyone’s eyes,” Sherlock muses. “Think: what would he want more than anything?”
“Respect?”
“Which he would get by…?”
Sherlock’s family is ridiculous.
“Five people are dead because he thought he could get the house?”
“You always seem surprised by the worst in people,” Sherlock observes, scanning his surroundings. “It’s rather touching.”
John scowls at him. He could say something about how it’s better to try to see the best than the worst; that not everybody leaps to the worst conclusion; that it’s called not making assumptions, and trying to keep some sort of grasp on reality.
Knowing it would all only fall on the same deaf ears as ever, though, he decides not to comment.
Instead, he asks, “What are you looking for?”
“Whatever he was looking for.”
“What would he need, anyway? I thought your father made sure none of the Sackvilles are getting the house.” As it leaves his lips, he winces. He’s been trying so very hard not to mention Sherlock’s father. And, sure enough, John sees him go still.
“He needed to invalidate my father’s words.” Sherlock turns to look at him. “Say, by proving that he was a murderer.”
Proof. Sherlock’s holy grail.
John doesn’t want to look at Sherlock’s face. He doesn’t think he’ll like what he sees.
“If the Sackvilles hadn’t been so eager to capitalise on the mourning period, they’d have seen it. Cardiac arrest, but not a heart attack. More than one person was poisoned in this case.” He pauses, and when John doesn’t jump in, he makes an exasperated sound and says, “Cyanide, John.”
“Bloody hell.” John tries to picture it; wishes he hadn’t. “How?”
“Compressed gas. No signs of ingestion or injection, according to the report.” John doesn’t ask how Sherlock got hold of any report of the kind; reminds himself that Mycroft is right there, on hand.
“You think it happened here?”
“I think my father was rather careful about what was overheard.” Sherlock runs a gloved finger along the shelf, beneath the books, ignoring John’s intake of breath at just how idiotic a thing it is to do. “One key for entering; one key for those trying to break in.” A pause; a twist of a smile. “It’s what I would do.”
“You’re not - ” John starts, only to let the sentence trail away again when he realises he doesn’t know how it was going to end. Not what? His father? A murderer?
“Sometimes I wonder,” Sherlock says softly, as if to himself - as if he hasn’t heard John at all, caught now in the mystery of the past. “It would hardly be difficult.”
“You know how to get inside?”
“I can.” Sherlock doesn’t move, but continues to softly trace first the dark wood, and then the individual leather spines of each book, as if searching for something. More than anything, John wants to drag him away - away from this room, this house, everything. He recognises Sherlock’s expression all too well. He remembers all too well every case with Moriarty.
“Sherlock,” he says quietly, when he sees those fingers pause, and then retrace their steps. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Risk it?”
“Don’t look.”
Sherlock looks at him as if he’s gone insane. “John, do you really think I can? Do you really think I could leave this?”
“You don’t have to know.”
“Yes, I do!” Sherlock’s eyes are burning with something. It’s too similar to scenting Moriarty for comfort - one of the reasons why John wants to back away right now. This is too much; this is too personal. This is everything Sherlock hasn’t wanted to come back to, and frankly, John thinks he can see why. “This case has hung over me my entire life, John, and I finally have an answer, right here!”
“And after you know for sure? What if they’re right, and he did kill those people: what then? Who do you tell? Mycroft? Your mother?”
“John, the thought that I could have known and I walked away - it will eat away at me, every single night.”
“And knowing your father’s a killer, that won’t?”
“No.” Because to Sherlock, nothing is more important than not knowing. “John, it would stay a secret.”
No, it wouldn’t. That’s the thing: secrets have a way of getting out. “Then you don’t know me very well. Because if you know for sure, and you say nothing, I very well might. If you lie there every night and you’re happy just knowing, then no, Sherlock, I won’t put up with it.” He hesitates, then says, “I won’t stay.”
It’s a low blow, so John probably deserves the reponse:
“Then you don’t have to know.”
Nevertheless, the words hurt; cut deep, and John hopes it’s deeper than Sherlock intended.
But he won’t let it show. If he fell down every time Sherlock did this - chose to be alone, insisted he didn’t need John, tried to walk away - well, they could have both died a long time ago.
So instead, he says, “It’s been a secret all these years, Sherlock. I think it can stay that way.”
And then he turns and walks away: to the stairs, down, and out of the room.
As he passes out of Sherlock’s sight, the strength finally leaves him, and he collapses against the wall.
“Thankyou,” a voice says to his left, making him jump.
“Does your entire family just wait around waiting for dramatic entrances?”
Arabella smiles. “I understand,” she says, “that Sherlock has a solution to the case?”
John can’t say it. Not exactly. He thinks of Arabella alone in this house; remembers Gabriel complaining about her refusal to go exploring. He wonders if Arabella knows the truth, or has tried to avoid it. He wonders what the truth even is.
In the end, all he says is, “Algernon.”
“I thought as much.” There’s a twinkle in her eye, but it’s not at all clear whether that shows confirmation or a lie. Things get so confused around here.
“I know we can seem a little odd - ” she’s kind enough not to acknowledge John’s involuntary snort “ - but John, I believe I speak for every member worth knowing that you are more than welcome into this family.”
She pauses, before adding, “But you are also welcome to leave this house. Nobody would blame you.”
----------
A few minutes later, Sherlock emerges.
John looks up at him, but no. No, he can’t tell. Sherlock just looks like Sherlock - a carefully studied form, nothing but neutrality and a blank surface, practised indifference and not a hint of mental conflict either way. John might call him a machine again, except unless he’s mistaken this is just as much for his benefit as anything else. Punishment, perhaps - John will never know what the answer was - but also a blessing in a different guise.
The first thing Sherlock does is turn to his mother and nod in a slightly stiff way. Again, John can’t tell anything from that - he doesn’t think he’s actually seen them alone together before.
Apparently it’s nothing awful from her perspective, since Arabella just smiles, albeit slightly sadly.
If he’s reading the situation right, John reckons this is the point when anybody else would, oh, hug, maybe. (Although admittedly his own mum hugs at every available opportunity, all huge theatrical gestures and feigned concern.) Instead there seems to be an entire conversation taking place through eye contact, and truth be told, John’s not wholly convinced his being there makes any difference in that.
Arabella nods, barely perceptibly, and then reaches out and touches Sherlock’s cheek lightly. John still sees Sherlock stiffen slightly, although he does relax a moment later, abruptly looking almost uncertain, and John thinks he isn’t supposed to see any of this.
Finally, she sweeps away, leaving only a faint wisp of her perfume in the air.
John looks back at Sherlock; their eyes meet, and if nothing else, John knows that they will never have to speak of this.
“Come on,” he says, standing and holding out his hand. “Let’s go home.”
Title: Best Left Alone
A gift for: alafaye
Characters/Pairing: Sherlock/John, OCs a-plenty
Category: Slash
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Murder (nothing explicit), briefest of allusions to domestic violence
Summary: A case where all the suspects are dead means John finally gets to meet the family. He very quickly begins to regret this.
Author's Notes: This could easily have been twice the length. For reasons of time and space, you are spared.
Go to Part One
In the end, he finds Sherlock not in the mansion at all, but out in the grounds.
He’s rather annoyed that he never thought to go check the corpses.
“Surprised they didn’t move him,” he comments, not needing to announce himself because no doubt Sherlock knew the moment he left the house. “Crime scene tape ruins the look of the place.”
Sherlock says nothing.
John squats down next to him, and tilts his head to examine the body. The cause of death is pretty obvious, at least to either of them: necks generally aren’t supposed to look that way. It’s positioned at the bottom of a fairly sharp drop that makes John wince just looking at it. Apparently this garden (more like a field and forest attachment) was designed for the more adventurous sort. There’s no sign of the man’s bag - evidence, presumably, or Mycroft eager to restore the silver to its rightful place - but John remembers Mycroft’s brief mention of an unlucky burglar. (God, it was brief, as well. This man barely merited a footnote.) (Edward, he forces himself to remember. Edward Davies.)
“Hit Ms McCreedy in the back of the head,” Sherlock offers. “People are so fragile.”
“Did he shoot Jaime?”
Sherlock snorts. “Hardly. No residue, no powder burns, and no reason to switch weapons if his aim was stealth.” He offers a piece of paper to John.
“A map?”
“Yes,” Sherlock says, in that particular tone which somehow turns it into a ‘no’, “except the grounds don’t look like this.”
Despite the dead body - not to mention dead bodies plural - John can’t help but take a moment to roll the word ‘grounds’ around his brain. He can’t help it: he hasn’t heard the word outside of ITV dramas since early secondary school field trips.
“Somebody gave him the wrong map?”
“No.”
“No?”
“That suggests it was an accident.”
John waits to let that sink in a little. As if this wasn’t already getting pretty convoluted. Now they have some sort of mastermind? (Although that might actually help tie it all together.)
After a while of watching Sherlock do what he does best - namely act like a madman and stare at corpses - John recalls the end of his previous conversation.
“Something for you from Mycroft, by the way.”
“Not interested,” is the unsurprising response, yet Sherlock still turns at the sound of rustling plastic to look at the evidence bag John’s holding out to him.
“Apparently this is as far as he let the police get,” John tells him. “Didn’t think it was possible for him to think any less of them.”
“He thinks less of the ones here.” Sherlock doesn’t take the bag, instead apparently preferring to peer in at its contents. “They make Anderson look positively competent.”
“You’re lying.”
“Then you obviously don’t know me as well as you think.” Sherlock narrows his eyes, tilting his head like, yes, the cat that John is probably never going to stop mentally comparing him to. “I am not a cat.”
Not for the first time, John tests Sherlock’s telepathy by thinking You are a twat as hard as possible. Not only is his faith in the natural order of things restored, but he also has a soothing sense of satisfaction.
“Honey,” Sherlock observes, in the appalled tone of voice that signals yet another drop in his opinion of humanity. “They were going to convict a beekeeper because there was honey.”
“Also the ‘spurned lover’ thing, Sherlock.”
Sherlock doesn’t even bother to label that comment as ‘dull’; the dismissive gesture works perfectly well as shorthand for them.
“He did spill honey - apparently Ms McCreedy used to complain all the time about him smashing jars and getting it over everything.”
“If you suggest that Ms McCreedy was some sort of criminal mastermind, you are sleeping alone. Forever.”
While John is highly doubtful that Sherlock will follow through on ‘forever’, he decides to just stop talking for now.
He sees the slight furrow in Sherlock’s brow a second before the bag is snatched out of his hand and key evidence emptied out onto the ground. At least, he thinks, it hasn’t rained lately.
Sherlock raises the gun to eye level; sniffs it suspiciously; licks at the honey.
“Very sanitary,” John comments.
“Shut up.”
John fancies he can hear Sherlock’s brain working: humming, ticking, whirring, running the input through databank after databank of tastes, textures, cross-referencing and extrapolating, constantly racing towards the conclusion. Most people find it unnerving; he thinks it’s one of the most incredible things he’s been allowed to witness. But then, most people think Sherlock’s a freak, and John, well, John has already said his piece on that opinion far too many times. (Still not enough, though; never enough.)
Finally - in real-time, maybe ten seconds later - Sherlock’s eyes light up and he jumps to his feet. He grins - the full deduction grin, the one that makes him look like the madman John knows he is - and declares, “Wrong honey!”
Normally Sherlock’s enthusiasm is more than enough to carry him along, regardless of what he’s actually saying. This time, though, while he does smile, it’s slightly incredulous (not to mention already anticipating the explanation). “Wrong honey,” he repeats.
“Yes, the honey, didn’t you hear me?” Sherlock says irritably, as if being deaf is preferable to being slow. (For Sherlock, it probably is.) “It’s from too far north!” When John still looks at him blankly, he goes on, “Oh, come on now. What flowers are nearby--within a one hundred mile radius--affects the taste and make up of the honey. So. Looking at this honey--what do we deduce?"
"This it was made further north?"
"Exactly."
"Exactly what?" There’s a faint inkling of an idea at the back of John’s mind, but apparently it’s determined to stay put. This would be the inevitable part of every case: the moment(s) John finds himself trailing behind.
“The honey!”
“Sherlock, you can’t keep saying that and make it a clue!”
“Slater wouldn’t have this honey on his hands, so somebody planted it, and whoever it was, they came from the north!”
“Why not Tesco’s?”
Sherlock scoffs at that. “I can taste where it’s from, John, that’s hardly Tesco’s standard.”
“Yes, mind telling me how you can do that?”
“You know my methods.”
“Not the honey ones. Also, bees?”
Sherlock straightens his spine, the better to look down on John, who doesn’t mind as much as usual because pettiness is something he’s fairly immune to these days. “Bees,” he informs him, “are fascinating creatures.”
John thinks he should say something witty. Instead, he tries to convey ‘incredulous’ and ‘exasperated’ and ‘unimpressed’ and ‘this explains a depressing amount’ entirely through his facial expression. Normally it wouldn’t be worth the effort, but in the same way that some boyfriends might memorise, say, eating habits, Sherlock has an entire catalogue of John’s expressions in his mind, since he never seems arrive at the wrong conclusion when John says nothing at all. It’s flattering, to say the least.
“So,” he finally says, as drily as possible, “not Tesco’s. Does that rule out the boyfriend as well?”
“No access, no means. A distraction.” And as he says that word, he frowns slightly, as if a thought has circled back around to find him again.
Unfortunately, whatever it is, it’s headed off by John’s phone going off.
“Oh God.”
“What?”
“We’re supposed to sit through dinner.” John looks up at Sherlock. “When this is all over, I never want to see your family again.”
Sherlock smiles at him - suddnely warm and genuine - and John at least has the satisfaction of having said the right thing.
----------
The next few hours pass by in a blur of ridiculous names and improbable professions. Apparently nobody in this family is called James or Steve, nor are any of them anything less than ridiculously successful, either presently or in the past. That is, apart from Algernon, but John only knows this from the rest of the family. According to the Sackvilles - quite singularly unlikable, but then it’s possible John has been biased ever since that particular introduction - Algernon was some sort of Greek god with a poet’s heart (“bloody useless lump, used to coasting on his looks right until he got dumped out of uni,” Agatha informs him, and John loves her). They all act as if he was struck dead by some sort of lightning bolt the moment he entered these unhealthy grounds, which, John is fairly certain, is not how heart attacks work.
“Perhaps not,” Laetitia sniffs, when he tries to tell her this (because for some reason they are not sitting at opposite ends of the table and hence John can’t help but react to everything she says), hand tightening around his glass until it’s a bloody marvel it doesn’t snap in two, “but unsolved deaths are hardly unheard of in this house.”
The focus of attention is a little different this time, at least (‘this time’ because Laetitia has an incredibly focused mind, capable of steering any conversation towards Sherlock’s father with uncanny precision). This time, John’s eyes aren’t on Sherlock, but on the woman sitting at the head of the table.
She at least gives the impression of calm, to the point of regal, even, with faded red hair but a glare John can feel the force of from here. Even Laetitia seems to falter for a moment, although that might just be wishful thinking. Besides the eyes, however, the rest of her projects an impression of polite benevolence Mycroft would be proud of.
“I would thank you, Letty,” the woman says - colder than Sherlock or Mycroft - “not to bring your accusations into this house.”
Her faded grey-streaked red hair tells him her heritage; her arched brows and unruly curls her descendants.
This woman, it turns out, is Arabella Holmes.
Sherlock’s mother.
Unfortunately, rather than being able to talk to the woman, John has had to gather everything from a series of backhanded insults and carefully targeted verbal sniping between her and her sister. If nothing else, at least John is gaining some insight into what the Holmes brothers consider to be normal sibling relationships.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Laetitia pantomimes, with a smile of pure malice aimed at her sister, “have I said something out of line? It’s just that, what with another rush of corpses, one can’t help but recall the old days around here.”
Next to him, Sherlock is uncharacteristically silent. (More characteristically, he isn’t eating a thing, and John finds he’s too focused on the sibling sniping to even try arguing.) For the entire meal - in fact, before they sat down, proudly and at the very moment Laetitia would see them as clearly as possible - John has had one hand firmly closed around Sherlock’s. Sherlock hasn’t acknowledged it, but then, he hasn’t let go either.
“I do hope you’re not over-straining yourself, Bella,” Laetitia says later. “I do hate to think of you all alone in this house.”
“Don’t worry, Letty, it’s the company that makes it unbearable.”
And later still, as dessert sits there on all of their plates, “Shame about your sons, Bella, but what can you do?”
Without a word, Sherlock stands and sweeps out of the room; John thinks he’s taken his appetite with him.
When he’s gone, Arabella says, quite calmly and clearly, “Neither of them has disappointed me yet, Letty.”
----------
Mycroft informs him that the two of them -
“Together?”
“I think it best not to leave you loose and separate in this house.”
- are staying in ‘the Blue Room’.
“Not Sherlock’s room?” John asks quietly. Not that he wants to see it - alright, that’s a bloody lie, it’s more that he doesn’t necessarily want to sleep in it. It’s just that it’s happened sooner or later with most of his exes, and, well, Sherlock isn’t most people. John wants to see everything about him. Or at least that’s what he thinks, most of the time.
Mycroft allows him the courtesy of a subtle shake of the head. “I’m afraid he rather despises the place now,” he informs, with a sort of detached regret - were Mycroft capable of such a thing. “Psychological reason, you understand: former addicts rarely relish returning to their rehabilitation lodgings, and in this respect I think you’ll find my brother to be unusually normal.”
Christ.
John just wants this day to be over. Multiple corpses he can handle, but however much he’ll admit that he wanted to pry, he wasn’t ready for this house, or its inhabitants. Its corridors are wide and unfriendly; its rooms are haunted by ghosts of the past, a bad dream lingering on. He’s always wanted to know a bit more of Sherlock’s past - the facets the man won’t let him get to, for all that it’s seemed so very important, as if he can’t properly love him without knowing.
Be careful what you wish for indeed.
John doesn’t want to know anymore.
More than anything, he wants to wake up tomorrow in Baker Street, as if none of this had ever happened.
Unfortunately, there is a dead woman on the ground floor, another in the morgue, and three men besides. (As Sherlock had commented over dinner, murmured into John’s ear for the clear purpose of aggravating those across the table, Algernon’s death is little comfort - and naturally even less so to John.) For their own differing reasons, neither John nor Sherlock will leave until this case is over.
Mycroft nods and leaves him there.
Christ, let it be over.
----------
There’s one more surprise waiting for him before he can hide in the relative safety of the bedroom.
“Hello, John.”
He spins around to see Arabella standing opposite the door, clearly waiting.
For a moment, he’s too awed to say anything. It’s incredible, despite having already spent (too much) time with that number of relatives in the room, to see the likenesses shining through - right down to the small twitch of a smile directed at him.
“Um,” he says intelligently, creating the fantastic first impression he’d always planned. “Ma’am.”
“Oh good Lord,” she laughs, breaking the spell, “don’t worry about that. Arabella, please.”
There’s another ‘um’ fighting its way out. John wishes he could shoot the bastard. “John,” he says instead.
“Yes, I know who you are,” she reassures him with an amused smile. “We did just eat dinner together, you might recall.”
“Wish I could forget,” he says, then starts and goes on, “God, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean - ”
“Ssh,” she interrupts. “We won’t get anywhere if you’re too scared to talk to me. Listen, my sister is a poisonous cow, her family are bastards and bitches the lot of them, and the day I married into the Holmeses was the proudest of my life. So don’t be afraid to speak your mind, John.”
He blinks. Then he smiles, because the bluntness of her words is a bloody relief.
However, rather than seize the opportunity, he feels the need to apologise, since the sight of her has reminded him of Gabriel’s words earlier.
“I’m sorry, I hadn’t realised,” he admits, “this is your home more than anybody else’s. And to have two people die - ”
“Gossips, the lot of them,” she says, suggesting that a certain lack of respect for the dead for being dead isn’t an uncommon trait in the family. “Ms McCreedy heard everything that happened in this house - or at least she liked to think so - and that girl eavesdropped on her, always hoping for something to use to her advantage. Useful for keeping track of things, but a little annoying at times.”
Before he can stop himself, he wonders, “So they might have heard something that meant they had to be killed?”
Arabella chuckled. “Tell me, is this my son rubbing off on you?”
“You get used to it, after a while.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I understand completely. The Holmes men are like that. If Mycroft ever makes his move, the lucky man - or woman - ” she adds, as if she’s covering something up “will soon find they’re thinking in terms of politics or diplomacy. Their father had a rather similar effect on me.”
John hesitates. Arabella’s eyes narrow.
“Something wrong?” she asks. Quickly John shakes his head.
“Sorry, no, it’s just your sister - ”
“My sister says a great deal of things, John,” she says coolly. “Believe me, if you’ll believe nobody else: it does not do to listen to them.”
Her eyes dare him to release the question filling his brain, louder and louder until there’s nothing he can think besides that and the simple word ‘no’. He doesn’t trust himself to so much as open his mouth; knows that the question is right there, lying in wait.
As the army taught him so well, he straightens his back and bites his tongue and just waits.
Eventually, after masterfully letting the silence stretch out, she nods approvingly. John has the strangest sense that he’s passed some sort of test.
“Holmes men,” she says, “always do better with somebody to hold them in place.
“Thankyou, John.”
One more similarity: apparently Sherlock inherited his dramatic exits from his mother.
---------
One of the more useful aspects of this relationship is that these days John can actually get Sherlock to go to sleep.
Unfortunately, now he has to deal with the nightmares.
Sherlock sleeps like the dead: still, terrifyingly silent, almost not breathing at all. The first few nights when he’d crashed out in their shared bed, sheer fear had led John to risk breaking the miracle by checking Sherlock’s pulse. Now they’ve adapted, at least a little: when they’re both in bed, John sleeps with his head resting on Sherlock’s chest, soothed and lulled by the steady sound of heartbeats.
It means that he hears the moment they start to accelerate; the only warning he’ll get to take cover.
He’s always careful to hide the bruises from an unexpected backhand or a belatedly noticed kick. The last thing he needs is to make the Yarders think Sherlock’s an abusive boyfriend. (Laughable, incidentally, for all that people might assume otherwise.)
In the moments afterwards, though, once he’s reoriented himself, John fights his way in: takes the hits he must in order to get his arms around Sherlock and hold him still. “Sherlock,” he says, again and again. “Sherlock, it’s just a dream!” Hopefully, he thinks, because if he’s right, then Sherlock’s nightmares are filled with falling. Falling and failing.
When Sherlock finally comes round, he blinks up at John, looking oddly young. (Occasionally John is reminded that he’s the older one in this relationship. It’s unexpected, to say the least.)
“It’s okay,” John says. “Look at me.”
“But - ”
“Focus on me.”
“John - ”
John seizes a hand; drags it up to trace over the scar on his shoulder, the reason he’s here at all. “What made this?”
Sherlock’s still too distant. He hates it.
“Sherlock. Look at it. What made it?”
“Bullet.”
“Obviously,” he says with a laugh, reassuring but pressing at the same time. “Look at it, Sherlock. What kind of bullet?”
“Sniper. Several houses away; two floors up.” Sherlock pauses. “Three.” Fingers and eyes both trace the webbing of scar tissue. “Clean shot. Less clean recovery.”
“I remember.” John pulls the hand across, Sherlock’s fingers tracing across to the wound lower, just above his hip. “This one?”
Sherlock’s starting to come back now; he doesn’t hesitate. “Knife,” he says, then looks closer. “Bowie knife. Army issue.” He frowns, fingers circling the wound. “Deliberate, but messy: not a soldier, but a soldier’s weapon. Somebody stole it.”
“Right,” John agrees, and doesn’t give details, because that’s not the point. “This one?”
“Fell off your bicycle,” and Sherlock smiles softly - the way he never does when he’s fully awake - presumably at the cliché of it.
And they go from there, time unimportant, minutes bleeding into each other as John slowly brings Sherlock home.
John's body was a a monument to the battles he'd fought and moments he lived when he could have teetered, fell over the edge. Sherlock's eyes memorized every line, touched them. Gave John an excellent reason to have survived. Gave John a reward for having survived.
----------
When he wakes up again, John is alone, straightened out again to avoid the cold of the other side of the bed.
And this, too, is normal.
----------
Tea in hand - he’d found somebody in the kitchen already brewing a pot, squinted at them to see if he could remember their name, received it anyway, and is now thinking Leopold over and over until he can not only match name to face but also stop wanting to both laugh and cry at the same time - he goes Sherlock hunting.
The corpse-check bears fruit: Sherlock is back with Jaime, half of the room emptied into the other half, and now looking carefully between her body and a mobile he’s produced from somewhere. (John notes that the mess includes an empty, crumpled evidence bag, and with a sigh amends that ‘something’).
“Found anything?”
A distracted hum.
“What time did you get up?”
“Before you.”
John wishes Sherlock didn’t act like such a child sometimes. It makes the whole ‘incredible and inescapable attraction’ thing rather awkward.
He sits himself down on the chair and waits. Even before Sherlock, he was good at waiting, and now he’s used to a man who announces himself as someone who doesn’t talk for days on end (only to deliver with interest all at once).
“Whose mobile?” he finally prompts, as Sherlock sighs in exasperation.
“Boyfriend’s,” he’s told, before it lands in his surprised hands. “She invited him here.”
John frowns down at the open text. “I thought she poisoned him?”
“Time of death is being estimated approximately two hours before that message was received.” John takes a moment to work out if the death in question is the girl’s or the boyfriend’s. There are far too many bodies in this case. “He received a invitation from her after his death, John.”
Trying to follow all this, John asks, “So somebody tried to set him up?”
Sherlock smiles, and it takes a moment for John to realise he hadn’t said ‘she’. “Precisely. A scapegoat. Much like Slater.” John looks up in enough time to catch another phone, fumbling this one. “Informed that she was in danger from her lover, but ready and waiting for him all the same. Chose to kill himself at the news.” Sherlock is clearly confused by the motive there. “They weren’t counting on that. Given the gun, he was supposed to live; supposed to run.”
“So we’re looking for somebody else to send all these texts…and want to frame the beekeeper?”
“I doubt it was a grudge. Too arbitrary. Nothing to tie him directly besides the girl. We’re looking for whoever else she was sleeping with.”
“Somebody else?”
Sherlock looks at him, with the clear and familiar expression that says he can’t believe he has to explain this. “The make-up, John. Why was she wearing it? Who was she waiting for?”
“The boyfriend…?” John starts, already knowing as he says it that it’s wrong, not needing to see Sherlock’s frustrated roll of the eyes.
“He wanted to kill her; he was poisoned; he wasn’t supposed to come, John.”
“Slater?”
“Killed himself when told she was with another man. No, there’s a third party in this.”
“You mean the burglar?”
“No, not the burglar, John; forget the burglar. He’s nonsense, a distraction, he - ”
And there it was. The moment in every case when Sherlock’s mind won out, a solution burning through so clearly that it practically shone out of his eyes. Truth be told, John would happily endure every insult and every childish tantrum just to see these moments, when Sherlock was quite simply the most incredible person in the room - any room.
“A distraction,” Sherlock repeats, as if he needs to confirm the word to himself, looking rather stunned by his realisation. He looks at John. “That’s what it is.”
“What?”
“All of it.” His fingers come together under his chin, pause, and then snap out again, nervous twitches, all the facts coming together in front of him, conducted into position. “Whoever did this, they knew about me.”
“Not much of a revelation there.”
“No, John, they knew me. Think: what would be the best way to keep me out of a case?”
“Besides your family?”
“Yes, besides that. You’re not thinking. Domestic abuse, spurned lovers, eavesdroppers: what does that sound like?”
It sounds like an awful lot of things, to be honest. Mental, for one; depressing as well. Neither of which are anything like Sherlock, so John thinks harder.
And, not for the first time, he feels the world tip a little as he aligns his thoughts with Sherlock’s and appreciates all over again just who it is he’s in love with. It’s not just the thrill; there’s the terror as well.
“They’re boring.”
Sherlock smiles in acknowledgement.
“John, I was never supposed to be here. Somebody tried too hard to make sure I wouldn’t come.”
“Who then?” It’s the obvious question, and one John will never get tired of asking. It’s not about pandering to Sherlock’s whims; it’s about needing to know as much as he does. “Who’d orchestrate all of that?”
“Somebody,” Sherlock says, voice suddenly turning dark, “who wanted to be cleverer than they were.”
----------
There’s something very unfair about trying to keep up with Sherlock once his mind’ set on a chase. Despite what people assume, pursuits across rooftops are fine: it’s all about running as fast as you can. Striding with purpose, though; that’s a little bit harder. If nothing else, there’s the fact that John absolutely outright refuses to run to keep up.
When there’s an abrupt turn into the library, something falls into place in John’s mind.
“Algernon?”
“Algernon.”
Sherlock ascends the wide sweeping stairs to the second level, for the first time looking properly at home here.
“Wealthy and well-bred enough to attract the girl’s attention, and he wanted it: wanted to prove he was just as good as the rest of his family.”
John recalls Arabella’s weary words of yesterday. “She knew something. Something he couldn’t get out of Ms McCreedy.”
He fancies he can hear a smile in Sherlock’s voice; otherwise there’s no acknowledgement of John’s own data acquisition (or whatever Sherlock’s calling it today). “Definitely an easier target. Whatever it was, though, he had to make sure neither of them would talk. Hence the murders.”
“Which ones?”
Sherlock tilts his head to the side, not looking around but still conceding the point. “The women. The thief as well - Algernon always did fall over in the grounds, he must have seen a sort of justice in that death.”
“So the boyfriend was, what? Unlucky timing?”
Sherlock hates the idea of coincidence. “Perhaps he said the wrong thing; perhaps her new consort gave her ideas.” John doesn’t even laugh at the word ‘consort’, he’s so enthralled by the revelations now coming thick and fast. “John, she did it. Before she left for good - not, I think, in the way she’d intended - she made sure he wouldn’t come after her.”
“The beekeeper?”
“Was never even in the picture.”
The truth, as ever, hurts more than a little. “He knew that.”
“Yes, I suppose he did.”
“No, Sherlock, he knew that. That’s why he killed himself.”
Sherlock pauses and looks at him, suddenly seeming uncomfortable. In fact, he must be, because a moment later he pushes on regardless. “It doesn’t matter why he killed himself, only that he did. Two unplanned deaths of scapegoats, coupled with the disposal of the thief - not as necessary as he thought, he just didn’t have to say anything, but he thought he was so clever.”
“Maybe that’s what gave Jaime the idea.”
“What?”
“To poison her boyfriend.”
“Yes, perhaps,” Sherlock dismisses, waving off the point like a wasp. “With the women, it becomes too unwieldy. Anything breaks under that strain.”
John frowns, trying to follow the words. “So, that’s why he had a heart attack?” When Sherlock looks at him in a brief flash of confusion, as if John hasn’t so much headed off his train of thought as smashed right into it, John realises that, as ever, he’d been speaking rather more metaphorically.
“A rather conveniently timed one,” Sherlock judges. “It’s been bothering me since I heard.”
“One death is an accident, a sixth is pure carelessness?” John jokes, if only for the brief pleasure in watching the reference go whistling over Sherlock’s head.
“Something like that.” His eyes narrow, the classic sign of Sherlock Holmes in deep thought. “Weak, weedy, uninspired, unfit, unworthy in everyone’s eyes,” Sherlock muses. “Think: what would he want more than anything?”
“Respect?”
“Which he would get by…?”
Sherlock’s family is ridiculous.
“Five people are dead because he thought he could get the house?”
“You always seem surprised by the worst in people,” Sherlock observes, scanning his surroundings. “It’s rather touching.”
John scowls at him. He could say something about how it’s better to try to see the best than the worst; that not everybody leaps to the worst conclusion; that it’s called not making assumptions, and trying to keep some sort of grasp on reality.
Knowing it would all only fall on the same deaf ears as ever, though, he decides not to comment.
Instead, he asks, “What are you looking for?”
“Whatever he was looking for.”
“What would he need, anyway? I thought your father made sure none of the Sackvilles are getting the house.” As it leaves his lips, he winces. He’s been trying so very hard not to mention Sherlock’s father. And, sure enough, John sees him go still.
“He needed to invalidate my father’s words.” Sherlock turns to look at him. “Say, by proving that he was a murderer.”
Proof. Sherlock’s holy grail.
John doesn’t want to look at Sherlock’s face. He doesn’t think he’ll like what he sees.
“If the Sackvilles hadn’t been so eager to capitalise on the mourning period, they’d have seen it. Cardiac arrest, but not a heart attack. More than one person was poisoned in this case.” He pauses, and when John doesn’t jump in, he makes an exasperated sound and says, “Cyanide, John.”
“Bloody hell.” John tries to picture it; wishes he hadn’t. “How?”
“Compressed gas. No signs of ingestion or injection, according to the report.” John doesn’t ask how Sherlock got hold of any report of the kind; reminds himself that Mycroft is right there, on hand.
“You think it happened here?”
“I think my father was rather careful about what was overheard.” Sherlock runs a gloved finger along the shelf, beneath the books, ignoring John’s intake of breath at just how idiotic a thing it is to do. “One key for entering; one key for those trying to break in.” A pause; a twist of a smile. “It’s what I would do.”
“You’re not - ” John starts, only to let the sentence trail away again when he realises he doesn’t know how it was going to end. Not what? His father? A murderer?
“Sometimes I wonder,” Sherlock says softly, as if to himself - as if he hasn’t heard John at all, caught now in the mystery of the past. “It would hardly be difficult.”
“You know how to get inside?”
“I can.” Sherlock doesn’t move, but continues to softly trace first the dark wood, and then the individual leather spines of each book, as if searching for something. More than anything, John wants to drag him away - away from this room, this house, everything. He recognises Sherlock’s expression all too well. He remembers all too well every case with Moriarty.
“Sherlock,” he says quietly, when he sees those fingers pause, and then retrace their steps. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Risk it?”
“Don’t look.”
Sherlock looks at him as if he’s gone insane. “John, do you really think I can? Do you really think I could leave this?”
“You don’t have to know.”
“Yes, I do!” Sherlock’s eyes are burning with something. It’s too similar to scenting Moriarty for comfort - one of the reasons why John wants to back away right now. This is too much; this is too personal. This is everything Sherlock hasn’t wanted to come back to, and frankly, John thinks he can see why. “This case has hung over me my entire life, John, and I finally have an answer, right here!”
“And after you know for sure? What if they’re right, and he did kill those people: what then? Who do you tell? Mycroft? Your mother?”
“John, the thought that I could have known and I walked away - it will eat away at me, every single night.”
“And knowing your father’s a killer, that won’t?”
“No.” Because to Sherlock, nothing is more important than not knowing. “John, it would stay a secret.”
No, it wouldn’t. That’s the thing: secrets have a way of getting out. “Then you don’t know me very well. Because if you know for sure, and you say nothing, I very well might. If you lie there every night and you’re happy just knowing, then no, Sherlock, I won’t put up with it.” He hesitates, then says, “I won’t stay.”
It’s a low blow, so John probably deserves the reponse:
“Then you don’t have to know.”
Nevertheless, the words hurt; cut deep, and John hopes it’s deeper than Sherlock intended.
But he won’t let it show. If he fell down every time Sherlock did this - chose to be alone, insisted he didn’t need John, tried to walk away - well, they could have both died a long time ago.
So instead, he says, “It’s been a secret all these years, Sherlock. I think it can stay that way.”
And then he turns and walks away: to the stairs, down, and out of the room.
As he passes out of Sherlock’s sight, the strength finally leaves him, and he collapses against the wall.
“Thankyou,” a voice says to his left, making him jump.
“Does your entire family just wait around waiting for dramatic entrances?”
Arabella smiles. “I understand,” she says, “that Sherlock has a solution to the case?”
John can’t say it. Not exactly. He thinks of Arabella alone in this house; remembers Gabriel complaining about her refusal to go exploring. He wonders if Arabella knows the truth, or has tried to avoid it. He wonders what the truth even is.
In the end, all he says is, “Algernon.”
“I thought as much.” There’s a twinkle in her eye, but it’s not at all clear whether that shows confirmation or a lie. Things get so confused around here.
“I know we can seem a little odd - ” she’s kind enough not to acknowledge John’s involuntary snort “ - but John, I believe I speak for every member worth knowing that you are more than welcome into this family.”
She pauses, before adding, “But you are also welcome to leave this house. Nobody would blame you.”
----------
A few minutes later, Sherlock emerges.
John looks up at him, but no. No, he can’t tell. Sherlock just looks like Sherlock - a carefully studied form, nothing but neutrality and a blank surface, practised indifference and not a hint of mental conflict either way. John might call him a machine again, except unless he’s mistaken this is just as much for his benefit as anything else. Punishment, perhaps - John will never know what the answer was - but also a blessing in a different guise.
The first thing Sherlock does is turn to his mother and nod in a slightly stiff way. Again, John can’t tell anything from that - he doesn’t think he’s actually seen them alone together before.
Apparently it’s nothing awful from her perspective, since Arabella just smiles, albeit slightly sadly.
If he’s reading the situation right, John reckons this is the point when anybody else would, oh, hug, maybe. (Although admittedly his own mum hugs at every available opportunity, all huge theatrical gestures and feigned concern.) Instead there seems to be an entire conversation taking place through eye contact, and truth be told, John’s not wholly convinced his being there makes any difference in that.
Arabella nods, barely perceptibly, and then reaches out and touches Sherlock’s cheek lightly. John still sees Sherlock stiffen slightly, although he does relax a moment later, abruptly looking almost uncertain, and John thinks he isn’t supposed to see any of this.
Finally, she sweeps away, leaving only a faint wisp of her perfume in the air.
John looks back at Sherlock; their eyes meet, and if nothing else, John knows that they will never have to speak of this.
“Come on,” he says, standing and holding out his hand. “Let’s go home.”