Fic: An Age of Silver
Title: “An Age of Silver” (1/23)
Characters: Sherlock, John, Lestrade, Stanley Hopkins, Molly Hooper, Ensemble
Pairings: John/Lestrade, [Click to read]past Sherlock/Victor Trevor, eventual Sherlock/Stanley Hopkins
Rating: R
Disclaimer: They don’t belong to me.
Warnings (overall):[Click to read]Language, angst, ongoing case dealing with rape/non-con (non-graphic), case-related homicide/violence, grief/mourning/moving on, consensual sexual content, fluff
Word Count: c. 117,000 total
Beta: canonisrelative
Summary: Sherlock Holmes is adapting to the pace of a more sedate life when a series of gruesome murders pulls him out of semi-retirement. Meanwhile, a burgeoning relationship with one of Scotland Yard’s own forces him to confront ghosts he thought he had buried long ago.
Notes: This is a retirement/case fic that can stand on its own, though having read its predecessors would help. It is the fourth and final installment of the "Until the Night is Gone" series. It's preceded by (in order): "Liaisons," "The Fall of Gods," and "Deep in December."
Stanley Hopkins is a character from ACD canon; I make no claim to him. I do, however, lay claim to this vision of 2027, and to the invented bits of technology that go along with that.
The warnings above cover the entire story. They are not applicable to every single chapter, however. I deliberately kept some of them vague to avoid spoilers, so if you have any concerns about the content, PM me and I can go into greater detail with you about what to expect.
Finally, many thanks must be extended to Canon for her help with this fic. I never thought I would again write something that consumed as much of my time and energy as “Gods” did. Boy, I should know better than to make assumptions like that. Here I am, finally starting to post a story that first crawled into my head last December, and it’s all thanks to Canon and her meticulous beta-ing. Thank you for your help, friend. It's much appreciated.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Sherlock Holmes had never been fond of dogs.
He didn’t despise them, but he also didn’t go out of his way to become acquainted with them. He found them to be useless, pedantic creatures who were far from clever and had a streak of loyalty that would have been appealing if it hadn’t also been so completely blind.
It had never been clear to him, then, why dogs seemed to enjoy keeping his company. But not only did they actively seek him out, they also always became alarmingly attached to him.
Which was why, at five in the morning, he was being licked awake by his landlady’s lab puppy.
“Oh, for the love of Christ,” Sherlock muttered, burying his head under his pillow in order to stave off the puppy’s attacks. “Checkers.”
At the sound of his name, the golden-haired puppy yelped and shoved his cold nose against the back of Sherlock’s neck.
“You are obscenely lucky,” Sherlock grumbled, throwing back the blankets and getting up, “that I have no wish to alienate Miss Hudson. Come on. Down.”
The puppy leaped off the bed and scampered out into the kitchen while Sherlock slid into his dressing gown and followed at a more sedate pace.
The kitchen lights, triggered by his movements, snapped on the moment Sherlock entered that room. The computer interface on the wall then blinked to life, as it did every morning when it detected that the flat’s sole occupant had woken for the day.
Good morning, it chirped as an image of pre-dawn London flashed across the screen. The time is six minutes after five, GMT. The date is Tuesday, August 10, 2027. Sunrise this morning will be at -
“Shut up, interface,” Sherlock snarled, and the computer screen winked off.
He dug out a bag of puppy food that he had nicked from Alice Hudson for occasions such as this one - though he would never admit to having that foresight - and shook some of it into a small food bowl. He then poured a separate bowl for water and placed both of them on the floor. Checkers ate greedily, and Sherlock shook his head in exasperation.
This was what he got, he supposed, for not bothering to fix the loose latch on the flat’s door. It hadn’t been possible to actually lock the door for some months now, and when the right combination of windows was open in the flat, it had a tendency to swing open. Sherlock had been meaning to get to it, but it had never seemed very pressing-not when there was a spotty heating system to worry about as well, and an aging electrical system that subjected him to occasional power outages.
He had been residing in 221B for nearly twenty years now, and the building itself was far older than that. It was only natural that the flat would start to show its age, but it was made all the more ironic by the fact that it had been outfitted in recent years with various bits of the latest technology. Vid screens were affixed to the wall in every room, as video calling was beginning to supplant mobiles, and a voice-interactive computer system had been installed a little under five years ago. Sherlock still preferred to text and manually search the Internet on his own laptop, but with this latest technology there was really no need for him to do any of that.
Some days, he felt as though there was really no need for him now that computer systems were better, faster, and more advanced. But the fact remained that they weren’t clever, and they certainly weren’t intuitive. Sherlock surmised that he had a few good years yet before they would render him obsolete.
In truth, he didn’t find that as disheartening as he would have a decade ago. And two decades ago, that mere thought might have killed him.
“Going soft,” he muttered to himself, and Checkers looked up. “No, I wasn’t talking to you. Though now, of course, I am. Oh, damn it.”
He scrubbed a hand across his face. It was far too early, and he had been living on his own for far too long.
Alice Hudson came to retrieve her dog a few hours later, once she had woken and noticed him missing.
“Mr Holmes,” she called, stepping into the flat after giving a perfunctory knock, “what have you done with - oh, there you are.”
Checkers, who had been napping on the sofa, took a flying leap off of his cushion and skittered over to her. Sherlock was working at his desk and didn’t look up from his laptop while Alice cooed and greeted her puppy.
“He came up here on his own; I had nothing to do with it,” he said, trying to infuse some irritation into his voice. Alice looked up and smirked at him.
“And I can see that he was quite the burden on you,” she said. She walked over to him and plucked a golden hair off of his dressing gown, holding it up so that he could see. “Last time I checked, your hair was black.”
“Then you must have looked at it a very long time ago,” Sherlock said as he ran a hand through his hair, which was now sporting so much grey that it appeared as though someone had poured dust on his head. Alice laughed and kissed him on the cheek before moving into the kitchen. She was much like her aunt, in both appearance and manner, and she treated Sherlock with the same motherly affection that Mrs Hudson had once bestowed upon him, even though Alice was several years his junior.
“One of these days,” she called out to him, “I’m going to come in here and find you experimenting on that dog.”
“What makes you think I haven’t already?” Sherlock retorted.
Alice laughed.
“Careful, mister,” she said. “I have both John and Greg on speed dial. The moment you start experimenting on my dog, I’m calling in the reinforcements. And the moment you step really out of line... I’m calling your brother.”
Sherlock winced and glared at her as she came back out into the main room, carrying a cup of sugar and with Checkers trotting at her heels.
“Ran out,” she said with a small shrug. “I’ll owe you one. Do you need anything else? I’m heading out to the shops tomorrow morning.”
Sherlock shook his head. Alice pursed her lips and considered him for a moment. Concern clouded her features.
“I worry about you, you know,” she said at last, quietly, and Sherlock suppressed a grimace. How he hated this conversation. “You haven’t left this flat in days.”
“I’m working,” Sherlock said.
“You’re always working.”
“I’m fine, Alice,” Sherlock said with a forced smile, suddenly wishing that she would leave. He had been on the verge of saying The work is all I have instead, and it was frightening how quickly that thought came to his mind. “This is just how I am. If you asked John, he’d tell you the same thing.”
Alice stared at him for a moment longer, and then finally gave a nod.
“All right,” she said finally. “But if you need anything...”
“I know. You’re just downstairs.”
Sherlock worked for the majority of the morning on a private case he had taken up just last week. It wasn’t particularly interesting - merely a case of embezzlement - but the culprit had eluded him thus far and it was enough to keep him occupied for the time being. He finally got up from his desk around nine and went into the kitchen for a cup of coffee, which he drank now more out of need than because he liked the taste. He could no longer force his body to function on little sleep and several nicotine patches. He needed the caffeine as an aid.
While he was stirring sugar into his coffee, Sherlock glanced again at the vid screen that was mounted on the wall by the kitchen door. The small red light in the corner was flashing, and he sighed. He must have missed some calls the previous night, and had not noticed them until now. Why couldn’t people just text him?
“Interface, play back message,” he announced wearily to the interactive computer system.
There are three new messages, the computer informed him, its tinny male voice just as irritating now as it had been at five in the morning. Sherlock groaned.
“Play back messages in chronological order,” he sighed. At once, the vid screen blinked to life, and John’s face appeared.
“Sherlock Holmes, what was the point of installing this bloody thing if you’re never going to use it?” he grumbled.
“It was your idea, John,” Sherlock muttered under his breath. “Remember?”
“... and we’re out of town next weekend visiting Greg’s sister,” John’s image was saying, “but you should come down the weekend after that. You were complaining the other week about it being too damned hot in London right now, anyway. Getting away for a bit might do you some good. Anyway, give me a call sometime, you wanker. We miss you.”
The screen went dark for a moment as the message ended, and then came to life again.
“Hello, Sherlock,” Molly Hooper chirped. “Look, sorry to bother you--I know you’re probably busy--but you haven’t been by the morgue lately, have you? It’s just, well, it seems we’ve misplaced some... toes. Anyway, give me a call back, would you?”
Sherlock sighed. He’d forgotten completely about those and cast a morose glance at the microwave, which he had yet to clean after that particular failed experiment.
“Interface, compose a message to send to Dr Hooper’s lab at Barts,” he said finally, taking a tentative swallow of coffee. “Message should read as follows: I borrowed the toes in order to test a theory about my latest private case. I’ll return the surviving toes to the morgue on Monday afternoon. End message.”
Message has been sent to Dr Hooper’s lab at Barts, the computer interface informed him. Now playing back the final message.
The vid screen came to life again, and Sherlock straightened as soon as he realised whose face was on the screen.
“Sherlock Holmes,” Detective Inspector Stanley Hopkins said in exasperation, “for God’s sake, man, I do wish you would answer this thing.”
Hopkins looked harried. His dark hair was in disarray from the number of times he had been running his fingers through it, and a day’s worth of stubble shadowed his jaw. He had shed his jacket and tie, his shirt was open to expose a hint of his collarbone, and there were specks of dried coffee just over his breast pocket.
“I’m going to be by later on tomorrow,” Hopkins went on. “I’ve got a case that I’m going to be bringing you in on.”
“Like hell you are,” Sherlock said darkly. He hadn’t worked a case for the Met in months, and had no intention of changing that anytime soon.
“You won’t have heard about it,” Hopkins continued. “It’s hasn’t made it to the papers yet. Listen, give me a call if you actually look at this tonight. Otherwise, I’ll see you in the morning.”
A moment later, the screen went dark.
Sherlock pushed a hand through his hair and sighed. It was rare anymore that he worked cases for the Yard. He had withdrawn his aid almost completely upon Lestrade’s retirement five years ago, and had stopped consulting entirely for two Detective Inspectors and their respective teams.
Hopkins was the sole exception. He was a valuable detective who had risen quickly through the ranks at the Yard, and he had flourished over the years under both Sherlock’s tutelage and Lestrade’s mentoring. When Lestrade retired, Sally Donovan was offered his position, but the role of DI was never one she had wanted to take on. Hopkins, then, was next in line, and he had served the position admirably ever since. He still called on Sherlock, as Lestrade had done in the past, and though Sherlock had long ago stopped helping Inspectors Dimmock and Gregson, he didn’t always say no to Hopkins.
At the same time, Sherlock also couldn’t always be persuaded to work a case for him. He enjoyed Hopkins’ company and always relished an interesting puzzle, but he found that he didn’t derive the same excitement from cases now that he had in the past.
It was different now that John and Lestrade had gone.
As promised, Hopkins appeared on the flat’s doorstep a little after ten, despite the three threatening-and increasingly graphic-texts Sherlock had sent him.
“Sherlock!” he called through the closed door, and then brought his fist down on the wood, knocking three times. “Open up, I know you’re home.”
Sherlock made him wait in the stairwell for nearly ten minutes before finally letting him into the flat. Given the loose latch on the door, Hopkins could easily have come in of his own accord. It amused Sherlock to no end, then, that Hopkins couldn’t bring himself to be that presumptuous.
“Inspector,” Sherlock greeted coolly when he finally opened the door. “What do you want?”
“You know damn well what,” Hopkins said brusquely. He brushed past Sherlock into the flat. “I know you’ve seen my message. And, for the record, I don’t think it’s actually possible to ‘string me up' by my testicles.”
“Is that a theory you’re willing to test out?” Sherlock gave him a grim smirk. Hopkins arched an eyebrow at him, unimpressed.
“It certainly would be ambitious of you to try.”
They stood there for a moment, staring at one another, irritation flashing in Hopkins’ grey eyes but his face otherwise unreadable.
Stanley Hopkins was severe in every sense of the word. Physically, he was all lines and angles. He had a strong jaw and sharp chin, and his prominent nose was almost beak-like in profile. He was several years Sherlock’s junior, and though he wasn’t a particularly striking man, his features were difficult to forget and he had the benefit of youth working in his favour.
Hopkins’ demeanor was about as unforgiving as his appearance. Whereas Lestrade had always possessed a gentle understanding and quiet humour, even in the worst of situations, Hopkins had none of his playfulness. He was as strict with his subordinates as he was with himself, and tolerated very little that stepped outside the lines of proper decor. About the only person he allowed any leniency was Sherlock, though that was probably because many years ago their roles had been reversed. Sherlock had once been the seasoned--if unofficial--member of the team, while Hopkins was once new and deferential.
Sherlock was the one who finally broke eye contact and moved into the kitchen. Hopkins followed.
“I’m retired,” Sherlock said at last. He resumed his seat in front of his microscope. “I’m not taking any cases at the moment. You know that.”
“I do,” Hopkins agreed. He pulled a photograph out of his breast pocket and handed it over. “You’re also only mostly retired. And so I want you to reconsider.”
Sherlock took the picture and glanced at it. It was a copy of a crime scene photograph, and it had been placed in a plastic evidence bag. The victim was a young female, and by all appearances she had been strangled. Her corpse was left unclothed and lying out in the open. Her nails were torn and broken. Teeth marks on her neck and bruises on her hips left little doubt about what kind of horror she had suffered prior to her death, and Sherlock quickly averted his eyes from the photograph.
“Where was she found?” he asked with a sigh, knowing that he wouldn’t get rid of Hopkins unless he made it appear as though he was initially interested in the case. He set the photograph aside.
“Victoria Park. A woman out for a run found the body yesterday morning.”
“Why didn’t you come to me then?”
Hopkins’ expression didn’t change, but the corner of his mouth tightened. “I needed to be sure of something first.”
He wasn’t telling Sherlock everything; that much Sherlock could tell from the facial tic. He let it pass and returned his attention to the photograph of the corpse.
“She was beaten,” Sherlock said at length. “Raped. Killed within forty-eight hours of sustaining her first injury.”
Hopkins’ jaw clenched.
“Yes,” he said. “We know all of that. That’s not why I’m here.”
“Why else would you be here but to bring me a case?” Sherlock asked scathingly. “Don’t waste my time, Hopkins; I haven’t the patience for games.”
“We can’t figure out her name.”
Sherlock paused. He turned to Hopkins and lifted an eyebrow.
“She doesn’t appear in the national registry?”
Hopkins shook his head.
“No. And her DNA doesn’t match anyone in the national database. She’s an unknown.”
Well, now, that was intriguing. It was rare anymore that the Yard had cases that dealt with unidentified victims. In recent years, most of Europe had catalogued its citizens, and very few people managed to exist off-the-grid. Everything and everyone was on record somewhere. Identification could usually be done at the crime scene, largely by simply scanning a victim’s features and uploading the image to a highly advanced database that only the Yard had access to.
But Sherlock didn’t take cases like these, no matter how intrigued he was by the thought of working to identify an unknown. He hadn’t been called on to look at an unidentified victim in years, and the idea of a new one was somewhat exciting. A rape case, however, wasn’t something he was willing to handle.
“I’m retired,” Sherlock repeated, somewhat reluctantly this time, and he handed the photograph back.
Hopkins considered him for a long moment, his face unreadable. And Sherlock, who was used to gleaning information from even the most inscrutable of people, found this both fascinating and irritating.
“I’d consider it a favour if you could at least come down and take a look at what we have,” Hopkins said at last. He tossed the photograph down on the table. “Keep that.”
He turned on his heel and was gone before Sherlock could protest.
----
Stanley Hopkins, if Sherlock was being completely honest with himself, was one of the most interesting men he knew.
Hopkins had John’s nerves and Lestrade’s heart, and curiosity beyond that of either. He asked questions constantly, was endlessly fascinated by Sherlock’s science of deduction, and early on in their association he had started trying to apply Sherlock’s methods to his own work. He had been unsuccessful in his first few attempts, but he learned quickly. Sherlock even began to instruct him on the proper application of his methods, and Hopkins had proved to be quite clever. Not only that, but he was actually enjoyable to instruct.
Hopkins was fiercely loyal, almost to a fault, and he hated the desk part of his job. The only protocols he defied were the ones that kept him chained to the office and, like Lestrade before him, he was always the first to charge into a situation. He was never one for putting his team in danger unless he himself was in peril right along with them.
He was also the one constant in a shifting world, which in the past five years had seen both Lestrade’s retirement and his moving out of London with John. Sherlock was slowing down as well, and had stopped consulting with everyone at the Yard except for Hopkins, and even then he was very selective about the cases he took--even more selective than normal. The fact of the matter was that, while he himself was just on the verge of fifty, his body felt at least a decade older than that. Hard use in his younger years had aged him quickly, and while he was far from an invalid, there were certain things he simply couldn’t do anymore--or wouldn’t be able to for much longer.
The flat was noticeably quiet in the wake of Hopkins’ departure; the silence was almost oppressive. Sherlock pinched the bridge of his nose, thinking, trying to ignore the crime scene photograph Hopkins had left behind on the table. He shouldn’t have allowed that. He should have pushed the photograph back into Hopkins’ hands before seeing him out.
Instead, Sherlock had allowed Hopkins to walk away and leave a portion of his case behind.
I’d consider it a favour.
Damn the man. Hopkins was the only person alive who could sometimes manage to get Sherlock to do what he wanted-and he knew it, too.
Their association spanned almost fifteen years now, as Hopkins had been a new transfer on Lestrade’s team when Sherlock returned to London after taking down Moriarty’s network all those years ago. Sherlock, desperate for anything that would keep his mind off what he had lost as a result of dismantling the network, had thrown himself back into the work with great fervor. He even started working cases for Inspectors Gregson and Dimmock in addition to the ones he worked for Lestrade. He kept himself so busy that he hardly had time for food, sleep, or erroneous thought, and very little penetrated his numb mind in the months following Victor’s death. Hopkins had to be introduced to him three times, in fact, before he remembered the Detective Sergeant’s name.
Sherlock had pushed himself beyond all limits in those months after Victor’s death, and he used Lestrade’s team and cases in order to accomplish it. He had gone upwards of five days without sleep or food, snapped at Lestrade, and once had even tried to throw a punch at John. He reached his breaking point in March of that year. Sherlock couldn’t remember anymore what innocuous event had caused him to snap--a dropped book, a lost file--but he had bellowed and raged, smashed the mirror that hung over the fireplace, and eventually collapsed on the floor, weeping bitterly. He had eventually managed to drag himself off to bed, where he slept on and off for half a week. John and Lestrade hadn’t been home at the time, but the remains of Sherlock’s breakdown had been readily apparent when they returned and it frightened them both.
Sherlock had emerged on the other side with an inexplicable sense of calm, however, and though the pain of his lover’s death never truly faded, Sherlock found that he was able to at least function amid his grief. Lestrade and Gregson, however, were wary to put him on further cases, and Dimmock wouldn’t consult with him for nearly a year.
Hopkins, on the other hand, didn’t change the way he acted around Sherlock. In fact, he had seemed to almost go out of his way to pick arguments with Sherlock, which should have been irritating. Instead, Sherlock had found the behavior inexplicably refreshing, and he came to relish their fights.
Lestrade had once said, in a fit of exasperation, that Sherlock and Hopkins could make a career out of bickering. Considering the fact that they had continued working together even after Lestrade’s retirement, that wasn’t too far off the mark. They argued about everything, from the mundane to the profound, and as many of their lunches ended in shouting matches as did in cordial handshakes. One particularly memorable argument four years ago actually resulted in Hopkins going so far as to ban Sherlock from the Yard--and enforcing said ban for nearly six months.
“It’s no good having a partner who’s an echo chamber,” Alice had told Sherlock once as he sat brooding over how bloody infuriating Hopkins was. “That’s what Aunt Martha always said. And she was right, wasn’t she? She had Alfie there all the way up until the end, and those two fought like the world depended on it. Do you remember?”
In those early days, Sherlock and Hopkins had been known to get into arguments nearly every time they encountered one another. Their disagreements weren’t always fueled by anger, though, but rather by passion for what they were speaking about, in addition to a desire to push one another. It was almost a test, each man trying to figure out what the other could withstand. And Hopkins never let Sherlock off lightly, even in the months after Victor’s death when everyone else was tiptoeing around him and treating him as though he were made of glass.
It had been strangely comforting.
Sherlock shook his head, trying to be rid of the memories. He finally straightened and walked over to the table where Hopkins had left the photograph. He picked it up and scrutinized the body. The dead woman had stretch marks on her stomach but wasn’t visibly pregnant, indicating that she had given birth recently, and there was a faint line of adhesive around her left wrist-likely, the remnants of a hospital bracelet.
I’d consider it a favour.
Hopkins never asked for favours. He was brisk and matter-of-fact--Will you come or won’t you?--and didn’t spend a lot of time dwelling on might-have-beens. If Sherlock outright refused to help him, Hopkins never wasted any time trying to persuade him otherwise.
Not until now, that is.
With a sigh, Sherlock grabbed his mobile and the photograph and left the flat.
----
For all his idiosyncrasies, Sherlock was a creature of habit.
He had his routines and rituals, and he found that he became more and more mired in his ways as the years passed. He rose every morning with the dawn and rarely stayed up anymore much past eleven. He took his coffee black, with two sugars, as he had done for nearly three decades now. He drank his scotch neat, and only indulged in it after eight in the evening.
And, in the past ten years, more and more of his habits started to include another.
He boxed once a month at the Yard with Hopkins, a habit they had both got into nearly eight years ago when Hopkins expressed an interest in learning the sport and Sherlock realised that his own skills were suffering from disuse. It had been a learning curve for them both. Hopkins had never had any exposure to the sport, and though Sherlock was a skilled boxer, he had found that he needed to retrain himself due to the incident years before that had cost him the final two fingers on his left hand. It was now a monthly ritual for him and Hopkins, and very rarely did they miss a sparring session.
They met for lunch twice a week as well, ostensibly to go over any new or cold cases that Hopkins might want to run by Sherlock. Although Sherlock wouldn’t take on many cases for the Yard, he nevertheless saw no reason to discontinue his meetings with Hopkins. Their lunches always started out with the best of intentions, and it was understood that they would meet at Angelo’s around noon. But it had been over a month since that last happened. More and more often in recent weeks, Hopkins’ presence was required at the Yard.
That didn’t deter Sherlock, however.
He picked up their customary meals from Angelo at quarter to twelve, as he had every Tuesday and Thursday for the past five weeks, and brought them over to NSY.
Sherlock arrived at the Yard at precisely noon. None of Hopkins’ team or various staff members tried to stop him as he strode towards Hopkins’ office; they were too used to Sherlock’s presence by now to be perturbed by his periodic comings and goings. Even Sally Donovan simply looked up from her desk, gave Sherlock a cordial nod, and returned to her work.
The door to Hopkins’ office was open and the bright fluorescent lights were off. He was working by the sunlight that streamed through the window behind him, head bent low over his paperwork and pen scratching away. He didn’t notice Sherlock lingering in the doorway, and Sherlock paused.
When Lestrade had occupied this office, it had been filled various with odds and ends. Strange plants had dotted the windowsill and knickknacks cluttered up the desk, vying for space amid the pens and papers. Lestrade had been very particular about his mess, though, and always claimed that cleaning it up made him lose things.
Hopkins was about as unlike his predecessor as one could get. Under his reign, the office was kept as strict and disciplined as his team. There wasn’t a paper out of place, a book out of order on the shelves, or a stray pen on the desk. Even the chairs had been neatly arranged, and they sat at perfect forty-five degree angles to his desk.
Very little of the office reflected Hopkins’ personal life, but then, he didn’t have much of one to show off. His life was his work and he preferred it that way. His elderly parents were all that was left of his family--his marriage fell apart five years previous--and Sherlock was the closest friend he had outside the Yard. He worked and drank with his team, and what free time he had was usually spent working overtime, sleeping, or, on occasion, reading. He had a penchant for mystery novels which Sherlock could never understand.
“You’re just tetchy because you can never figure out who the culprit is,” Hopkins told him once, a smirk in his voice. “You can’t deduce a character from a book the way you can a real person. Must be like being one of us, eh?”
One of the few things about Hopkins’ personal life that one could glean from a glance around the room was that the Met hadn’t been his first choice for a career. A framed degree hung inconspicuously on the far wall, and it had been awarded to Hopkins by King’s College more than two decades prior. He had pursued engineering while at university, and had obtained a degree in robotics and intelligent systems before deciding to pursue a career with Scotland Yard instead.
“I needed a change of pace,” was all he ever offered when Sherlock pressed him about the abrupt career change. “Besides, what use is a degree in robotics anymore? Everyone’s got one of those, ever since space travel went commercial and everyone and his mother started manufacturing low Earth orbit craft.”
And up until five years ago, Hopkins’ office had also contained pictures of the dark-haired David, his now-ex-husband. Sherlock had only met the man a handful of times during the five years he was married to Hopkins, but he had come away with the impression that David had been a kind-if-ordinary man who had possessed a quirky sense of humour that seemed quite at odds with Hopkins’ dry manner. Nonetheless, David and Hopkins had got on well together, and Sherlock was under the impression that they still kept in contact.
But merely getting along wasn’t always enough, as Sherlock had heard often from Lestrade. Hopkins had put it another way.
“Let’s face it, Sherlock,” he’d said morosely one night after he and David had finally signed the divorce papers, “you’re about the closest thing to a long-term relationship I’ve ever been able to maintain. What the hell does that say about me?”
“That you’re frightened of intimacy, so you throw all of your energy into maintaining platonic relationships at the expense of your romantic one,” Sherlock had answered at once, mostly without thinking. It earned him a solid thwack upside the head, though Hopkins didn’t go out of his way to defend himself.
Hopkins had spent a lot of nights on the sofa in Baker Street that year, and not all of them while sober.
“I can get you a name,” Sherlock announced, forcibly breaking himself out of his thoughts. He stepped over the threshold, acutely aware that he had been lingering in the doorway, staring at Hopkins, for some moments too long. He kicked the door shut behind him and deposited the bag of takeaway on Hopkins’ desk.
Hopkins was busy filling out a form, and he glanced up from his work at the interruption. Sherlock tossed the photograph down onto his desk and went on.
“I can tell you how to find out her name,” he repeated. “But first I want to know what else you have. You’re not telling me everything, Hopkins, and I won’t help you until you do.”
Hopkins tapped his pen against his desk for a moment, considering Sherlock, his face as impassive as ever.
“But you will help us?” he asked finally. “I’ve got no patience for games, either, Sherlock. I’m not here to merely satisfy your curiosity.”
Sherlock stared at him for a long moment, and then finally nodded.
“Conference room,” Hopkins said briskly, getting to his feet. “Let’s get you brought up to speed.”
----
Part 2
Characters: Sherlock, John, Lestrade, Stanley Hopkins, Molly Hooper, Ensemble
Pairings: John/Lestrade, [Click to read]past Sherlock/Victor Trevor, eventual Sherlock/Stanley Hopkins
Rating: R
Disclaimer: They don’t belong to me.
Warnings (overall):[Click to read]Language, angst, ongoing case dealing with rape/non-con (non-graphic), case-related homicide/violence, grief/mourning/moving on, consensual sexual content, fluff
Word Count: c. 117,000 total
Beta: canonisrelative
Summary: Sherlock Holmes is adapting to the pace of a more sedate life when a series of gruesome murders pulls him out of semi-retirement. Meanwhile, a burgeoning relationship with one of Scotland Yard’s own forces him to confront ghosts he thought he had buried long ago.
Notes: This is a retirement/case fic that can stand on its own, though having read its predecessors would help. It is the fourth and final installment of the "Until the Night is Gone" series. It's preceded by (in order): "Liaisons," "The Fall of Gods," and "Deep in December."
Stanley Hopkins is a character from ACD canon; I make no claim to him. I do, however, lay claim to this vision of 2027, and to the invented bits of technology that go along with that.
The warnings above cover the entire story. They are not applicable to every single chapter, however. I deliberately kept some of them vague to avoid spoilers, so if you have any concerns about the content, PM me and I can go into greater detail with you about what to expect.
Finally, many thanks must be extended to Canon for her help with this fic. I never thought I would again write something that consumed as much of my time and energy as “Gods” did. Boy, I should know better than to make assumptions like that. Here I am, finally starting to post a story that first crawled into my head last December, and it’s all thanks to Canon and her meticulous beta-ing. Thank you for your help, friend. It's much appreciated.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Sherlock Holmes had never been fond of dogs.
He didn’t despise them, but he also didn’t go out of his way to become acquainted with them. He found them to be useless, pedantic creatures who were far from clever and had a streak of loyalty that would have been appealing if it hadn’t also been so completely blind.
It had never been clear to him, then, why dogs seemed to enjoy keeping his company. But not only did they actively seek him out, they also always became alarmingly attached to him.
Which was why, at five in the morning, he was being licked awake by his landlady’s lab puppy.
“Oh, for the love of Christ,” Sherlock muttered, burying his head under his pillow in order to stave off the puppy’s attacks. “Checkers.”
At the sound of his name, the golden-haired puppy yelped and shoved his cold nose against the back of Sherlock’s neck.
“You are obscenely lucky,” Sherlock grumbled, throwing back the blankets and getting up, “that I have no wish to alienate Miss Hudson. Come on. Down.”
The puppy leaped off the bed and scampered out into the kitchen while Sherlock slid into his dressing gown and followed at a more sedate pace.
The kitchen lights, triggered by his movements, snapped on the moment Sherlock entered that room. The computer interface on the wall then blinked to life, as it did every morning when it detected that the flat’s sole occupant had woken for the day.
Good morning, it chirped as an image of pre-dawn London flashed across the screen. The time is six minutes after five, GMT. The date is Tuesday, August 10, 2027. Sunrise this morning will be at -
“Shut up, interface,” Sherlock snarled, and the computer screen winked off.
He dug out a bag of puppy food that he had nicked from Alice Hudson for occasions such as this one - though he would never admit to having that foresight - and shook some of it into a small food bowl. He then poured a separate bowl for water and placed both of them on the floor. Checkers ate greedily, and Sherlock shook his head in exasperation.
This was what he got, he supposed, for not bothering to fix the loose latch on the flat’s door. It hadn’t been possible to actually lock the door for some months now, and when the right combination of windows was open in the flat, it had a tendency to swing open. Sherlock had been meaning to get to it, but it had never seemed very pressing-not when there was a spotty heating system to worry about as well, and an aging electrical system that subjected him to occasional power outages.
He had been residing in 221B for nearly twenty years now, and the building itself was far older than that. It was only natural that the flat would start to show its age, but it was made all the more ironic by the fact that it had been outfitted in recent years with various bits of the latest technology. Vid screens were affixed to the wall in every room, as video calling was beginning to supplant mobiles, and a voice-interactive computer system had been installed a little under five years ago. Sherlock still preferred to text and manually search the Internet on his own laptop, but with this latest technology there was really no need for him to do any of that.
Some days, he felt as though there was really no need for him now that computer systems were better, faster, and more advanced. But the fact remained that they weren’t clever, and they certainly weren’t intuitive. Sherlock surmised that he had a few good years yet before they would render him obsolete.
In truth, he didn’t find that as disheartening as he would have a decade ago. And two decades ago, that mere thought might have killed him.
“Going soft,” he muttered to himself, and Checkers looked up. “No, I wasn’t talking to you. Though now, of course, I am. Oh, damn it.”
He scrubbed a hand across his face. It was far too early, and he had been living on his own for far too long.
Alice Hudson came to retrieve her dog a few hours later, once she had woken and noticed him missing.
“Mr Holmes,” she called, stepping into the flat after giving a perfunctory knock, “what have you done with - oh, there you are.”
Checkers, who had been napping on the sofa, took a flying leap off of his cushion and skittered over to her. Sherlock was working at his desk and didn’t look up from his laptop while Alice cooed and greeted her puppy.
“He came up here on his own; I had nothing to do with it,” he said, trying to infuse some irritation into his voice. Alice looked up and smirked at him.
“And I can see that he was quite the burden on you,” she said. She walked over to him and plucked a golden hair off of his dressing gown, holding it up so that he could see. “Last time I checked, your hair was black.”
“Then you must have looked at it a very long time ago,” Sherlock said as he ran a hand through his hair, which was now sporting so much grey that it appeared as though someone had poured dust on his head. Alice laughed and kissed him on the cheek before moving into the kitchen. She was much like her aunt, in both appearance and manner, and she treated Sherlock with the same motherly affection that Mrs Hudson had once bestowed upon him, even though Alice was several years his junior.
“One of these days,” she called out to him, “I’m going to come in here and find you experimenting on that dog.”
“What makes you think I haven’t already?” Sherlock retorted.
Alice laughed.
“Careful, mister,” she said. “I have both John and Greg on speed dial. The moment you start experimenting on my dog, I’m calling in the reinforcements. And the moment you step really out of line... I’m calling your brother.”
Sherlock winced and glared at her as she came back out into the main room, carrying a cup of sugar and with Checkers trotting at her heels.
“Ran out,” she said with a small shrug. “I’ll owe you one. Do you need anything else? I’m heading out to the shops tomorrow morning.”
Sherlock shook his head. Alice pursed her lips and considered him for a moment. Concern clouded her features.
“I worry about you, you know,” she said at last, quietly, and Sherlock suppressed a grimace. How he hated this conversation. “You haven’t left this flat in days.”
“I’m working,” Sherlock said.
“You’re always working.”
“I’m fine, Alice,” Sherlock said with a forced smile, suddenly wishing that she would leave. He had been on the verge of saying The work is all I have instead, and it was frightening how quickly that thought came to his mind. “This is just how I am. If you asked John, he’d tell you the same thing.”
Alice stared at him for a moment longer, and then finally gave a nod.
“All right,” she said finally. “But if you need anything...”
“I know. You’re just downstairs.”
Sherlock worked for the majority of the morning on a private case he had taken up just last week. It wasn’t particularly interesting - merely a case of embezzlement - but the culprit had eluded him thus far and it was enough to keep him occupied for the time being. He finally got up from his desk around nine and went into the kitchen for a cup of coffee, which he drank now more out of need than because he liked the taste. He could no longer force his body to function on little sleep and several nicotine patches. He needed the caffeine as an aid.
While he was stirring sugar into his coffee, Sherlock glanced again at the vid screen that was mounted on the wall by the kitchen door. The small red light in the corner was flashing, and he sighed. He must have missed some calls the previous night, and had not noticed them until now. Why couldn’t people just text him?
“Interface, play back message,” he announced wearily to the interactive computer system.
There are three new messages, the computer informed him, its tinny male voice just as irritating now as it had been at five in the morning. Sherlock groaned.
“Play back messages in chronological order,” he sighed. At once, the vid screen blinked to life, and John’s face appeared.
“Sherlock Holmes, what was the point of installing this bloody thing if you’re never going to use it?” he grumbled.
“It was your idea, John,” Sherlock muttered under his breath. “Remember?”
“... and we’re out of town next weekend visiting Greg’s sister,” John’s image was saying, “but you should come down the weekend after that. You were complaining the other week about it being too damned hot in London right now, anyway. Getting away for a bit might do you some good. Anyway, give me a call sometime, you wanker. We miss you.”
The screen went dark for a moment as the message ended, and then came to life again.
“Hello, Sherlock,” Molly Hooper chirped. “Look, sorry to bother you--I know you’re probably busy--but you haven’t been by the morgue lately, have you? It’s just, well, it seems we’ve misplaced some... toes. Anyway, give me a call back, would you?”
Sherlock sighed. He’d forgotten completely about those and cast a morose glance at the microwave, which he had yet to clean after that particular failed experiment.
“Interface, compose a message to send to Dr Hooper’s lab at Barts,” he said finally, taking a tentative swallow of coffee. “Message should read as follows: I borrowed the toes in order to test a theory about my latest private case. I’ll return the surviving toes to the morgue on Monday afternoon. End message.”
Message has been sent to Dr Hooper’s lab at Barts, the computer interface informed him. Now playing back the final message.
The vid screen came to life again, and Sherlock straightened as soon as he realised whose face was on the screen.
“Sherlock Holmes,” Detective Inspector Stanley Hopkins said in exasperation, “for God’s sake, man, I do wish you would answer this thing.”
Hopkins looked harried. His dark hair was in disarray from the number of times he had been running his fingers through it, and a day’s worth of stubble shadowed his jaw. He had shed his jacket and tie, his shirt was open to expose a hint of his collarbone, and there were specks of dried coffee just over his breast pocket.
“I’m going to be by later on tomorrow,” Hopkins went on. “I’ve got a case that I’m going to be bringing you in on.”
“Like hell you are,” Sherlock said darkly. He hadn’t worked a case for the Met in months, and had no intention of changing that anytime soon.
“You won’t have heard about it,” Hopkins continued. “It’s hasn’t made it to the papers yet. Listen, give me a call if you actually look at this tonight. Otherwise, I’ll see you in the morning.”
A moment later, the screen went dark.
Sherlock pushed a hand through his hair and sighed. It was rare anymore that he worked cases for the Yard. He had withdrawn his aid almost completely upon Lestrade’s retirement five years ago, and had stopped consulting entirely for two Detective Inspectors and their respective teams.
Hopkins was the sole exception. He was a valuable detective who had risen quickly through the ranks at the Yard, and he had flourished over the years under both Sherlock’s tutelage and Lestrade’s mentoring. When Lestrade retired, Sally Donovan was offered his position, but the role of DI was never one she had wanted to take on. Hopkins, then, was next in line, and he had served the position admirably ever since. He still called on Sherlock, as Lestrade had done in the past, and though Sherlock had long ago stopped helping Inspectors Dimmock and Gregson, he didn’t always say no to Hopkins.
At the same time, Sherlock also couldn’t always be persuaded to work a case for him. He enjoyed Hopkins’ company and always relished an interesting puzzle, but he found that he didn’t derive the same excitement from cases now that he had in the past.
It was different now that John and Lestrade had gone.
As promised, Hopkins appeared on the flat’s doorstep a little after ten, despite the three threatening-and increasingly graphic-texts Sherlock had sent him.
“Sherlock!” he called through the closed door, and then brought his fist down on the wood, knocking three times. “Open up, I know you’re home.”
Sherlock made him wait in the stairwell for nearly ten minutes before finally letting him into the flat. Given the loose latch on the door, Hopkins could easily have come in of his own accord. It amused Sherlock to no end, then, that Hopkins couldn’t bring himself to be that presumptuous.
“Inspector,” Sherlock greeted coolly when he finally opened the door. “What do you want?”
“You know damn well what,” Hopkins said brusquely. He brushed past Sherlock into the flat. “I know you’ve seen my message. And, for the record, I don’t think it’s actually possible to ‘string me up' by my testicles.”
“Is that a theory you’re willing to test out?” Sherlock gave him a grim smirk. Hopkins arched an eyebrow at him, unimpressed.
“It certainly would be ambitious of you to try.”
They stood there for a moment, staring at one another, irritation flashing in Hopkins’ grey eyes but his face otherwise unreadable.
Stanley Hopkins was severe in every sense of the word. Physically, he was all lines and angles. He had a strong jaw and sharp chin, and his prominent nose was almost beak-like in profile. He was several years Sherlock’s junior, and though he wasn’t a particularly striking man, his features were difficult to forget and he had the benefit of youth working in his favour.
Hopkins’ demeanor was about as unforgiving as his appearance. Whereas Lestrade had always possessed a gentle understanding and quiet humour, even in the worst of situations, Hopkins had none of his playfulness. He was as strict with his subordinates as he was with himself, and tolerated very little that stepped outside the lines of proper decor. About the only person he allowed any leniency was Sherlock, though that was probably because many years ago their roles had been reversed. Sherlock had once been the seasoned--if unofficial--member of the team, while Hopkins was once new and deferential.
Sherlock was the one who finally broke eye contact and moved into the kitchen. Hopkins followed.
“I’m retired,” Sherlock said at last. He resumed his seat in front of his microscope. “I’m not taking any cases at the moment. You know that.”
“I do,” Hopkins agreed. He pulled a photograph out of his breast pocket and handed it over. “You’re also only mostly retired. And so I want you to reconsider.”
Sherlock took the picture and glanced at it. It was a copy of a crime scene photograph, and it had been placed in a plastic evidence bag. The victim was a young female, and by all appearances she had been strangled. Her corpse was left unclothed and lying out in the open. Her nails were torn and broken. Teeth marks on her neck and bruises on her hips left little doubt about what kind of horror she had suffered prior to her death, and Sherlock quickly averted his eyes from the photograph.
“Where was she found?” he asked with a sigh, knowing that he wouldn’t get rid of Hopkins unless he made it appear as though he was initially interested in the case. He set the photograph aside.
“Victoria Park. A woman out for a run found the body yesterday morning.”
“Why didn’t you come to me then?”
Hopkins’ expression didn’t change, but the corner of his mouth tightened. “I needed to be sure of something first.”
He wasn’t telling Sherlock everything; that much Sherlock could tell from the facial tic. He let it pass and returned his attention to the photograph of the corpse.
“She was beaten,” Sherlock said at length. “Raped. Killed within forty-eight hours of sustaining her first injury.”
Hopkins’ jaw clenched.
“Yes,” he said. “We know all of that. That’s not why I’m here.”
“Why else would you be here but to bring me a case?” Sherlock asked scathingly. “Don’t waste my time, Hopkins; I haven’t the patience for games.”
“We can’t figure out her name.”
Sherlock paused. He turned to Hopkins and lifted an eyebrow.
“She doesn’t appear in the national registry?”
Hopkins shook his head.
“No. And her DNA doesn’t match anyone in the national database. She’s an unknown.”
Well, now, that was intriguing. It was rare anymore that the Yard had cases that dealt with unidentified victims. In recent years, most of Europe had catalogued its citizens, and very few people managed to exist off-the-grid. Everything and everyone was on record somewhere. Identification could usually be done at the crime scene, largely by simply scanning a victim’s features and uploading the image to a highly advanced database that only the Yard had access to.
But Sherlock didn’t take cases like these, no matter how intrigued he was by the thought of working to identify an unknown. He hadn’t been called on to look at an unidentified victim in years, and the idea of a new one was somewhat exciting. A rape case, however, wasn’t something he was willing to handle.
“I’m retired,” Sherlock repeated, somewhat reluctantly this time, and he handed the photograph back.
Hopkins considered him for a long moment, his face unreadable. And Sherlock, who was used to gleaning information from even the most inscrutable of people, found this both fascinating and irritating.
“I’d consider it a favour if you could at least come down and take a look at what we have,” Hopkins said at last. He tossed the photograph down on the table. “Keep that.”
He turned on his heel and was gone before Sherlock could protest.
----
Stanley Hopkins, if Sherlock was being completely honest with himself, was one of the most interesting men he knew.
Hopkins had John’s nerves and Lestrade’s heart, and curiosity beyond that of either. He asked questions constantly, was endlessly fascinated by Sherlock’s science of deduction, and early on in their association he had started trying to apply Sherlock’s methods to his own work. He had been unsuccessful in his first few attempts, but he learned quickly. Sherlock even began to instruct him on the proper application of his methods, and Hopkins had proved to be quite clever. Not only that, but he was actually enjoyable to instruct.
Hopkins was fiercely loyal, almost to a fault, and he hated the desk part of his job. The only protocols he defied were the ones that kept him chained to the office and, like Lestrade before him, he was always the first to charge into a situation. He was never one for putting his team in danger unless he himself was in peril right along with them.
He was also the one constant in a shifting world, which in the past five years had seen both Lestrade’s retirement and his moving out of London with John. Sherlock was slowing down as well, and had stopped consulting with everyone at the Yard except for Hopkins, and even then he was very selective about the cases he took--even more selective than normal. The fact of the matter was that, while he himself was just on the verge of fifty, his body felt at least a decade older than that. Hard use in his younger years had aged him quickly, and while he was far from an invalid, there were certain things he simply couldn’t do anymore--or wouldn’t be able to for much longer.
The flat was noticeably quiet in the wake of Hopkins’ departure; the silence was almost oppressive. Sherlock pinched the bridge of his nose, thinking, trying to ignore the crime scene photograph Hopkins had left behind on the table. He shouldn’t have allowed that. He should have pushed the photograph back into Hopkins’ hands before seeing him out.
Instead, Sherlock had allowed Hopkins to walk away and leave a portion of his case behind.
I’d consider it a favour.
Damn the man. Hopkins was the only person alive who could sometimes manage to get Sherlock to do what he wanted-and he knew it, too.
Their association spanned almost fifteen years now, as Hopkins had been a new transfer on Lestrade’s team when Sherlock returned to London after taking down Moriarty’s network all those years ago. Sherlock, desperate for anything that would keep his mind off what he had lost as a result of dismantling the network, had thrown himself back into the work with great fervor. He even started working cases for Inspectors Gregson and Dimmock in addition to the ones he worked for Lestrade. He kept himself so busy that he hardly had time for food, sleep, or erroneous thought, and very little penetrated his numb mind in the months following Victor’s death. Hopkins had to be introduced to him three times, in fact, before he remembered the Detective Sergeant’s name.
Sherlock had pushed himself beyond all limits in those months after Victor’s death, and he used Lestrade’s team and cases in order to accomplish it. He had gone upwards of five days without sleep or food, snapped at Lestrade, and once had even tried to throw a punch at John. He reached his breaking point in March of that year. Sherlock couldn’t remember anymore what innocuous event had caused him to snap--a dropped book, a lost file--but he had bellowed and raged, smashed the mirror that hung over the fireplace, and eventually collapsed on the floor, weeping bitterly. He had eventually managed to drag himself off to bed, where he slept on and off for half a week. John and Lestrade hadn’t been home at the time, but the remains of Sherlock’s breakdown had been readily apparent when they returned and it frightened them both.
Sherlock had emerged on the other side with an inexplicable sense of calm, however, and though the pain of his lover’s death never truly faded, Sherlock found that he was able to at least function amid his grief. Lestrade and Gregson, however, were wary to put him on further cases, and Dimmock wouldn’t consult with him for nearly a year.
Hopkins, on the other hand, didn’t change the way he acted around Sherlock. In fact, he had seemed to almost go out of his way to pick arguments with Sherlock, which should have been irritating. Instead, Sherlock had found the behavior inexplicably refreshing, and he came to relish their fights.
Lestrade had once said, in a fit of exasperation, that Sherlock and Hopkins could make a career out of bickering. Considering the fact that they had continued working together even after Lestrade’s retirement, that wasn’t too far off the mark. They argued about everything, from the mundane to the profound, and as many of their lunches ended in shouting matches as did in cordial handshakes. One particularly memorable argument four years ago actually resulted in Hopkins going so far as to ban Sherlock from the Yard--and enforcing said ban for nearly six months.
“It’s no good having a partner who’s an echo chamber,” Alice had told Sherlock once as he sat brooding over how bloody infuriating Hopkins was. “That’s what Aunt Martha always said. And she was right, wasn’t she? She had Alfie there all the way up until the end, and those two fought like the world depended on it. Do you remember?”
In those early days, Sherlock and Hopkins had been known to get into arguments nearly every time they encountered one another. Their disagreements weren’t always fueled by anger, though, but rather by passion for what they were speaking about, in addition to a desire to push one another. It was almost a test, each man trying to figure out what the other could withstand. And Hopkins never let Sherlock off lightly, even in the months after Victor’s death when everyone else was tiptoeing around him and treating him as though he were made of glass.
It had been strangely comforting.
Sherlock shook his head, trying to be rid of the memories. He finally straightened and walked over to the table where Hopkins had left the photograph. He picked it up and scrutinized the body. The dead woman had stretch marks on her stomach but wasn’t visibly pregnant, indicating that she had given birth recently, and there was a faint line of adhesive around her left wrist-likely, the remnants of a hospital bracelet.
I’d consider it a favour.
Hopkins never asked for favours. He was brisk and matter-of-fact--Will you come or won’t you?--and didn’t spend a lot of time dwelling on might-have-beens. If Sherlock outright refused to help him, Hopkins never wasted any time trying to persuade him otherwise.
Not until now, that is.
With a sigh, Sherlock grabbed his mobile and the photograph and left the flat.
----
For all his idiosyncrasies, Sherlock was a creature of habit.
He had his routines and rituals, and he found that he became more and more mired in his ways as the years passed. He rose every morning with the dawn and rarely stayed up anymore much past eleven. He took his coffee black, with two sugars, as he had done for nearly three decades now. He drank his scotch neat, and only indulged in it after eight in the evening.
And, in the past ten years, more and more of his habits started to include another.
He boxed once a month at the Yard with Hopkins, a habit they had both got into nearly eight years ago when Hopkins expressed an interest in learning the sport and Sherlock realised that his own skills were suffering from disuse. It had been a learning curve for them both. Hopkins had never had any exposure to the sport, and though Sherlock was a skilled boxer, he had found that he needed to retrain himself due to the incident years before that had cost him the final two fingers on his left hand. It was now a monthly ritual for him and Hopkins, and very rarely did they miss a sparring session.
They met for lunch twice a week as well, ostensibly to go over any new or cold cases that Hopkins might want to run by Sherlock. Although Sherlock wouldn’t take on many cases for the Yard, he nevertheless saw no reason to discontinue his meetings with Hopkins. Their lunches always started out with the best of intentions, and it was understood that they would meet at Angelo’s around noon. But it had been over a month since that last happened. More and more often in recent weeks, Hopkins’ presence was required at the Yard.
That didn’t deter Sherlock, however.
He picked up their customary meals from Angelo at quarter to twelve, as he had every Tuesday and Thursday for the past five weeks, and brought them over to NSY.
Sherlock arrived at the Yard at precisely noon. None of Hopkins’ team or various staff members tried to stop him as he strode towards Hopkins’ office; they were too used to Sherlock’s presence by now to be perturbed by his periodic comings and goings. Even Sally Donovan simply looked up from her desk, gave Sherlock a cordial nod, and returned to her work.
The door to Hopkins’ office was open and the bright fluorescent lights were off. He was working by the sunlight that streamed through the window behind him, head bent low over his paperwork and pen scratching away. He didn’t notice Sherlock lingering in the doorway, and Sherlock paused.
When Lestrade had occupied this office, it had been filled various with odds and ends. Strange plants had dotted the windowsill and knickknacks cluttered up the desk, vying for space amid the pens and papers. Lestrade had been very particular about his mess, though, and always claimed that cleaning it up made him lose things.
Hopkins was about as unlike his predecessor as one could get. Under his reign, the office was kept as strict and disciplined as his team. There wasn’t a paper out of place, a book out of order on the shelves, or a stray pen on the desk. Even the chairs had been neatly arranged, and they sat at perfect forty-five degree angles to his desk.
Very little of the office reflected Hopkins’ personal life, but then, he didn’t have much of one to show off. His life was his work and he preferred it that way. His elderly parents were all that was left of his family--his marriage fell apart five years previous--and Sherlock was the closest friend he had outside the Yard. He worked and drank with his team, and what free time he had was usually spent working overtime, sleeping, or, on occasion, reading. He had a penchant for mystery novels which Sherlock could never understand.
“You’re just tetchy because you can never figure out who the culprit is,” Hopkins told him once, a smirk in his voice. “You can’t deduce a character from a book the way you can a real person. Must be like being one of us, eh?”
One of the few things about Hopkins’ personal life that one could glean from a glance around the room was that the Met hadn’t been his first choice for a career. A framed degree hung inconspicuously on the far wall, and it had been awarded to Hopkins by King’s College more than two decades prior. He had pursued engineering while at university, and had obtained a degree in robotics and intelligent systems before deciding to pursue a career with Scotland Yard instead.
“I needed a change of pace,” was all he ever offered when Sherlock pressed him about the abrupt career change. “Besides, what use is a degree in robotics anymore? Everyone’s got one of those, ever since space travel went commercial and everyone and his mother started manufacturing low Earth orbit craft.”
And up until five years ago, Hopkins’ office had also contained pictures of the dark-haired David, his now-ex-husband. Sherlock had only met the man a handful of times during the five years he was married to Hopkins, but he had come away with the impression that David had been a kind-if-ordinary man who had possessed a quirky sense of humour that seemed quite at odds with Hopkins’ dry manner. Nonetheless, David and Hopkins had got on well together, and Sherlock was under the impression that they still kept in contact.
But merely getting along wasn’t always enough, as Sherlock had heard often from Lestrade. Hopkins had put it another way.
“Let’s face it, Sherlock,” he’d said morosely one night after he and David had finally signed the divorce papers, “you’re about the closest thing to a long-term relationship I’ve ever been able to maintain. What the hell does that say about me?”
“That you’re frightened of intimacy, so you throw all of your energy into maintaining platonic relationships at the expense of your romantic one,” Sherlock had answered at once, mostly without thinking. It earned him a solid thwack upside the head, though Hopkins didn’t go out of his way to defend himself.
Hopkins had spent a lot of nights on the sofa in Baker Street that year, and not all of them while sober.
“I can get you a name,” Sherlock announced, forcibly breaking himself out of his thoughts. He stepped over the threshold, acutely aware that he had been lingering in the doorway, staring at Hopkins, for some moments too long. He kicked the door shut behind him and deposited the bag of takeaway on Hopkins’ desk.
Hopkins was busy filling out a form, and he glanced up from his work at the interruption. Sherlock tossed the photograph down onto his desk and went on.
“I can tell you how to find out her name,” he repeated. “But first I want to know what else you have. You’re not telling me everything, Hopkins, and I won’t help you until you do.”
Hopkins tapped his pen against his desk for a moment, considering Sherlock, his face as impassive as ever.
“But you will help us?” he asked finally. “I’ve got no patience for games, either, Sherlock. I’m not here to merely satisfy your curiosity.”
Sherlock stared at him for a long moment, and then finally nodded.
“Conference room,” Hopkins said briskly, getting to his feet. “Let’s get you brought up to speed.”
----
Part 2