by S. K. Lloyds
Faint smell of weed.
Blood and hair on table edge.
Head impacted with table.
Slight drag marks in carpet.
Victim dragged head first.
“This store is open until 8PM on Fridays.” Reese said. “So this club was gathering down here without store knowledge.”
John drifted up to stand beside Reese, watching Sherlock hunt through the room.
“They came in under cover of darkness.” Sherlock made a quick span of his hands in air as if measuring something that appeared inside his mind. He gestured at the door. “Your man came in first. This was routine, so the coat came off, and he was relaxed. He’d done the homework, knew his percentages, plus, he’s comfortable with risk. He framed the scene, put up the flier on the door, planted the cups and smokes, other false evidence. He’s their roadie.” The back of one hand clapped into the palm of the other, “He sets the stage. That was your mole’s job.”
Reese followed this with, “His fingerprints will be on the bulbs. He might have worn gloves to change them, but there was the handling he did before coming here. He would have changed the white lights out with these red and reversed them after. It’s his night vision that took the pounding when he did that.”
“No night vision in a dimly lit room.” Sherlock opened his arms.
Reese nodded her ducked head, “Equals good night, Gracie. And that makes that dead man Lawrence, particularly if we can pull anything we can match to the CIA database off the bulb.” She cupped a hand over her nose and mouth. “God, the smell….”
“Meaning your initial assessment was right, and he’d gone dark for a good reason.” Sherlock saw John’s lips tighten into a line. “Uh… bad reason; for a reason. Let’s get air. You’re blacking out.”
“What?” John said abruptly. But he didn’t need any further explanation when Reese began to buckle toward the floor.
John caught her on one side, and Lestrade rushed in to get her on the other. Reese struggled to get her legs locked under her, and bent at the waist. She was slim. It would take nothing to lift her.
Sherlock turned toward the door with an exclamation. “Oh this is capital! Get in here and dust for prints Anderson.” He threw his hands out, excitedly, “The night’s looking up!”
On his way out, Sherlock momentarily shut them all in nearly blinding darkness so that he could snatch the flier from the back of the door.
***
“I don’t understand the need for this,” Special Agent Young pushed a lock of white blonde hair off of her face and warmed her hands on a cup of coffee.
“Freak doesn’t eat when he’s on a case,” Donovan sighed. They had the table beside the door of the soup and sandwich shop in which the team sat. “We’re doing this for John. And John’s a nice guy.”
Young’s grey-blue eyes narrowed as she looked at Lestrade. “You run it differently over here. It’s very… unstructured. I mean, are you sure you’re getting everything you can out of him with your method? If you… have a method?”
“It’s the question and answer method. Sherlock isn’t one for holding back,” Lestrade had to look back over his shoulder to take the American team in. This was because he was facing John, Sherlock, and Reese at the table in the back corner, and because he didn’t approve of the CIA’s methods. “And then again, Sherlock hasn’t sliced up his wrists, so I count myself pretty effective.”
“Hm.” Young glanced back from Lewis and Scott who stood outside. “How’d he get shot?”
Donovan snickered, “Not everyone’s a fan.”
In the back, at the table directly under the vent expelling warm air into the room, Sherlock sipped tea and watched John polish off his hearty vegetable soup and black forest ham. Beside him, Reese stared at nothing. Her face was blank, but at least she was warm again.
“I knew him,” she swallowed hard and then looked down at her latte. “That’s what’s gotten into me. I knew him for months.”
“It will pass,” Sherlock said calmly. He turned from John to study her.
“Yeah. Okay. Why don’t you just ask?” she cocked her head.
Curiosity.
Holmes sipped his tea and looked at the wall clock. But he said nothing. John looked from genius to genius with a certain amount of pity for them.
“There are eight of us in Langley,” she told Holmes without being prompted. “There’s me and two other girls. The rest are guys.”
“All adolescents?”
She looked up at him. “I’m 19.”
“Girls, guys,” Sherlock’s hand made a lazy little reel in air. “Not women, men.” Sherlock looked out of the misted glass, and there was no way to read his expression, really.
“True,” she said over the steaming rim of her coffee cup. “Only suits and apes call me Reese. All the other specialists call me Ree. You’re one of us.”
“Ree,” Sherlock said. “You call yourselves ‘specialists’.”
“It’s better than Asset. So… when did you start?” she picked emptily at the scone before her and asked Holmes.
“I was young.”
She nodded and accepted that he wasn’t going to share a figure with her. “There’s no MI6 program around here for developing children of outstanding IQs into-”
“No.” Sherlock shook his head. He glanced down at the scone that was slowly travelling across the table in his direction. The plate bumped the back of his hand and came to a stop.
John, though he had noticed the overture, kept his eyes on his meal. He wanted to lay low. It was fascinating watching them try to relate to one another. And there was something going on with Reese for sure. She studied Holmes closely. Not just in terms of scanning him either.
“You could have used that program,” Reese sat back. “It would have helped you figure out where you belonged. You mightn’t have gone through all those problems with the drugs.”
“I don’t eat on a case.” Sherlock pushed the plate carefully back in her direction.
Reese straightened, “Why the hell not?”
John launched into the standard speech he’d learned for this occasion. “The process of digestion pulls blood from the extremities to the stomach-”
“Yeah, it does!” she frowned. “To fill it up with nutrients and shoot it back up into the head.” But she looked down at her scone crossly and gave it a gentle push away. “I should have had it with some jam, anyway.”
John looked up at her in agreement.
“I would die doing that, like, not eating on a case. This case has been going two years now. It’s been through four Assets before me.”
“It’ll go faster now,” Sherlock glanced down at Watson’s diminishing meal.
Reese snickered, “Oh, because you’re here now, hey Sherlock?”
Sherlock looked up at her. “Yes.”
She held his gaze for several seconds. John began to feel like he should really excuse himself to the loo in case something came of this, and while he didn’t expect them to attack one another across the tabletop by any stretch, he felt the deep tug of some undercurrent that told him to make himself scarce. Only now he didn’t dare move a muscle. It was everything he could do not to smile.
“Okay, big boy. I’ll cut you in. Which hand you want?” she laid down her coffee, flexed her hands, and made fists. “Right or left?”
Sherlock sat back and considered her fists on the table. “Left.”
Reese opened her left hand and passed him a lapel pin. “University pin in the inner coat pocket of the coat back at the crime scene.”
“Coat.”
On chair.
Far corner of the room.
Under red lights.
Lawrence died, and fell, from there.
She pointed out, “I didn’t place the chair-”
“I know.” Sherlock nodded at her right fist. “Let me see.”
“Why? You have your assignment. Rock it out and report back.” She put her fingertip on his hand, wrapped around t
he school crest, and pushed it back from her. “Be grateful I shared with a near-ape like you, at all.”
Sherlock spoke slowly, “If you steal things from the crime scene before I have an opportunity to look at them, then I’m working with an incomplete picture. Not only won’t this case be solved, you’ll never know if you’re better than I am. And status is what it’s all about, correct?”
Her expression shut down. Reese’s colourless eyes found the table. She stared at it blankly for several seconds. Then she turned over and opened her right hand. Inside were a couple of evidence baggies. Sherlock’s eyes narrowed then he settled back. “Take that and return with Donovan. Go back to Scotland Yard.”
“I want your lab.”
“I don’t have a lab.” John recognized this was a half-truth. It was Molly’s lab he used.
“Bullshit.”
Holmes leaned forward, “Idiot. Watch my face. I don’t have a lab.”
John’s head came up. She’d swung and missed.
And her temper exploded. She made a fist, stood up, and punched the table. “You love their rules, don’t you?! I thought I had it bad with Young and the others riding my ass – do it this way, do it that way – no matter how stupid. But you actually lie down for people like that.” She swung her fingertip until it came to rest on Donovan.
Many deli staff from the back hurried out to see what the shouting was about.
Sherlock rose from his chair and said, “I do not, however, react well to bratty children shouting in my face. It’s irksome.” He strode past the table, whirling in a flare of wet coat, only to say, “John?”
“Oh, I’m done.” John got up and wiped his palms, hastily, on napkins. He was beginning to think that Holmes never had to pay for anything when he ate out. It was as if he stopped at all his favourite haunts and found some sort of mystery to solve, or trouble to square away.
Sherlock didn’t wait. He had almost reached the door. He swept by Lestrade, who didn’t move a muscle to stop him, even though Young looked dumbfounded. She seemed to think that Donovan and Lestrade had to follow Holmes around everywhere he went. Sherlock had already likened his behaviour to a dog owner with a baggy over his hand, and made it clear this would not be tolerated.
Reese shouted at him, “You put too much faith in the apes, Sherlock. They’re dead weight; they’ll slap limits on you; it’s always got to be their way, even if their way is for idiots. You need to start working like I do. Work with me. We’re not like them.”
Sherlock turned at the door and strode back to her. “Listen closely, Ree.” Holmes tugged his gloves on with quick angry motions, and then swung a hand at Lestrade and the handlers. “First rule of working with them: Learn the system. Work the system. Also, don’t shout at me. I don’t like to be shouted at.” He glanced around the deli in a quick read of the employees.
Reese glared up at him, her eyes glittering with fury and other stewing emotions. Very softly, she asked him, “Whose side are you on? Answer.”
“That’s enough, Sherlock,” John schooled Holmes. When he put a hand on Sherlock’s back, he found it stiff. “Come on.” John didn’t look back on his way out. He knew Holmes was no fool. He would reach for the only life preserver in the storm.
A second or so after, John could hear Sherlock follow.
This had gone much better, much better than with Sofia. John was relieved. Sherlock pushed the door so hard it snapped against the padded stop and slammed back into place. But the glass held.
Holmes huffed air, his coat flared, reflected in the glass. He started walking. He went several blocks without summoning a cab. John gritted his teeth and hunched along behind his friend’s long strides. When he could take no more, he signalled a cab and had it pull even with Holmes, “Sherlock, you’re wet through – come on!” he shouted from the window.
The rain was so heavy that he was the only poor sod on foot. As the downpour hammered the road and sidewalk, it bounced back up at Sherlock. Passing cars had soaked him. Finally, saturated and angry, he submitted and got into the cab. John reached into his pocket and rescued Sherlock’s phone, just to save it from the rain.
“Where too,” the driver eyed Sherlock unfavourably.
Everything Sherlock wore was stuck to him. He was drenched. “We’re 221 B Baker’s Street.”
Sherlock put his head down, uncommunicative for the entire trip.
***
“What’s happening?”
Sherlock peeled his sodden shirt off and dropped it on the floor of his bedroom. John tossed him a towel. His hair was drenched. In the lamplight, his skin shone wetly, all gooseflesh.
“Would you talk to me, Sherlock?” John gave his own face a rough rub, like feeling for stubble, only he did it out of frustration. “Come on. You’ve got a case. You should be chuffed. You should be-”
Holmes reached down and threw the sodden shirt at John, who narrowly ducked it as it shot into the hall and made a wet sploshing sound against the wall. Sherlock, when he looked back, sat with his back against his bed, elbows draped over his knees and his head down. The towel covered even his bowed head. His fingers knit together gently.
John was momentarily at a loss. Sherlock, in his twenties, was unquestionably an adult. But then there was Sherlock emotionally. In that sense, he was very raw and inept. It was to that unfledged part of Sherlock that John found he had to respond.
So John ambled into the densely packed room – full of all manner of gear and oddities – and sat on the bed beside Sherlock’s left shoulder. And the injured arm. Shortly, he got up and went to the dresser. It was covered in bottles, and chemicals, and beakers, and among the collection sat his painkillers. John opened the cap and looked into the bottle, coming to the immediate realization that Sherlock hadn’t taken a single one. Dammit. He held his temper. There was such a thing as being too strict. Okay, he’d been an addict. That didn’t mean he didn’t deserve to fight pain.
But… now wasn’t the time.
He sat back on the bed, reached out, and rubbed the towel against Sherlock’s hair, underneath. John was at a loss, so he said the only thing that made sense to him. It was the only objective thing he could offer on the situation. “You’re okay. You’re doing okay… actually, better than okay. I’m going to take the school pin out to the laptops – figure out what school we need to go to in the morning.”
“Goldsmiths, University of London.” Sherlock said from under the towel.
“Then I’m going to make tea.” John decided. “Look, I can’t imagine what meeting this girl is doing to your self-perception… for lack of a better word. But to the rest of the world, you’re handling her very smartly. Okay? That’s why this knocked me for six. Dry off, get your head together, and come out for tea.”
John hoped that had been enough. He walked out with a glance back at Holmes from the doorway. Emotions had to be exhausting for him; so inconvenient. Such a virtuoso, and such a child.
In the kitchen, John started the kettle going. His nerves were rattled, so he wished he could call Sarah. But it was after 1 AM now. John watched rain sluice down the Baker’s Street windows, thankful for the fire, and glanced in the fridge at last. No more avoiding it. He was surprised to see that Sherlock had boxed up the samples that dominated the bottom shelf. He’d helpfully drawn little skulls on the boxes in Sharpie pen. John supposed he shouldn’t be surprised that the drawings were so good, but it still made him smile. He put milk in his tea and sugar in Sherlock’s, and then brought the cups to the front room.
Sherlock sat in his favourite chair, with his legs folded under him. He’d been watching John in the kitchen. He wore a dark blue cotton tee and what looked like satin pajama bottoms. Not going out again. John noted he’d set the trays of samples aside and turned up the fire. He glanced at John. “There are seven more of me in America.”
“No. There are seven kids with unusually high IQs trained to use deductive reasoning in America,” John set the cup of tea down beside his flatmate’s left h
and. “There isn’t anyone else like you.” It was because Sherlock never gave his internal mechanisms a second thought – beyond being able to think properly to begin with – that he was having trouble with his slippery identity.
Sherlock sucked a deep breath and exhaled. He picked up his tea mechanically. He didn’t want tea. John had made it for him. John was trying to help. He blew on it and sipped. The familiarity of the activity took hold of him.
“You want to talk to her,” John sat across from him. “Why don’t you just do that?”
“Because I can’t just talk to her,” Sherlock sipped again. Colour bled into his lips. Heat.
“I just talk to you.” John pointed out.
“You aren’t,” Sherlock gestured in air, “one of them.”
“Us.” John corrected him. “When you say it, it should be, ‘you aren’t one of us’, Sherlock. Reese gets that much about this right. Now, I get that you hate being treated like you’re this incomparable phenomenon type thing, but there it is. That is what you are. Your coping skills are for dealing with the people she calls apes and suits, I mean, right or wrong, so, yeah, you’re going to be a bit out of your depth with her. Relax. I honestly admired what you told her back there.” It didn’t help matters that she was a young woman. He avoided those.
“A bit out of my depth?” Holmes said slowly. He shook his head, unable to calculate.
“She’s grown up with people just like her. You have to understand the insular mentality. She expects you to think like them. You’re throwing her curve balls she’d never expect out of one of you. I think that has her feeling betrayed.” John looked at the fire. “And you’ve been isolated. You don’t know any better. I don’t suppose you thought what it would be like to meet someone else like you.”
“Mycroft is like me, and I don’t know how we manage to breathe the same air.” Sherlock said.
After consideration, John realized he didn’t consider Mycroft to be very like Sherlock at all. John didn’t bother saying so, but he knew where his loyalties lay. But there was one thing he was starting to recognize. “You thought it would be easy. Like something would click, and there you’d be.”
