(no subject)

[substituteskull]

Three years since the outbreak and John Watson still doesn't know what to make of it. Like all doctors, he'd heeded the call of city and country as England did what all smart island nations did the moment the moment WHO released a statement that the virus had spread outside of America through international travel. It shut down completely. He'd not paid attention to the politics of it, hadn't bothered so much with the news. John had his work to do, people to treat, safety and quarantine to enforce. His world because St. Barts'.

At first, isolation seemed to work. Patriots were forced to stay outside of the relative safety of Great Britain as the airports and the Eurostar stations shut down. Ferries between the islands were discontinued.

The problem was that no one could isolate whatever it was causing humanity to change. The virus didn't seem to kill the host's brain, just every other part of their systems. A day post infection, the victim would become feverish. Two days later, they'd succumb. And after that...nothing short of dismemberment could stop them. It wasn't airbourne. And not in the blood either. Just the saliva. John had never seen anything like it. The internet called it a zombie plague, but that wasn't quite right either.

It took six months for everyone worldwide to realize that quarantine wouldn't help. Infections sprouted up for no discernible reason. People turned in the Underground, in shopping centres, on the playground. London, and the country, didn't stand a chance. The government fell overnight. Society followed.

And John just stayed on at St Barts'. He stopped trying to do the most good. And just attempted to survive.

It's not easy, even for an ex-soldier. There's no heading down to Tesco's any more. Ammo is impossible to come by. But if John, and the others holed up in St. Barts' still want to eat, someone has to go out. And that someone is almost always John.

Comments

[substituteskull]

It's difficult to say if John is clinging to a truth that is likely false or if he, in fact, had proof. The blond -- former blond, perhaps, for John's grown rather gray around the temples, silver shot through his hair -- just mumbles something, the weight off of his knees and more onto one of his outer thighs. This is not cuddling, however. No matter how close. No matter how much they both might need the touch of someone else at the moment.

Sherlock's question goes unanswered for the moment because John has a few more questions of his own. They can discuss the science, the scans, and Molly's notes later.

If he being selfish? Yes, likely. Does he care? The cheek against Sherlock's shoulder might make an onlooker think so, but that can not be further from the truth. How many people does he have to lose and how many times did he have to lose each of them?

John pulls back quite suddenly, not just away from Sherlock's chest, but also from his touch. He itches. He aches. It hurts. As disgusted as Sherlock had been with John, John can't help but feel as if Sherlock has back from the dead simply to further punish him.

"How many... How many did you kill?"

John's voice is no where near calm at this point. It's true that they've always fed off of one another. And this is no different.

[consulting_freak]

Sherlock doesn't push John away from him. He doesn't enjoy the touch, but he doesn't mind it either. He feels numb, so the physical touch is all but unnoticed. There's no answers for him. At least none that John's willing to share with him for the moment, so the world just stays open under his feet and keeps him dangling there and waiting to fall.

His hand slides off of John's shoulder easily as the other man pulls away from him. Sherlock probably looks pale and distant. He's thinking back on the moment several hours ago when he'd killed his own brother and substitute mother.

"J-Just. Just two," Sherlock tells John unsteadily, head lulling down as he pulls his knees up to his chest. He doesn't usually show this side of himself to anyone, but he also doesn't usually kill his loved ones. He wants his bedroom door closed, whether John stays or goes. For now, he's a welcome presence. He's already seen the shift in him and what's shattering all over again.

Would John know which two he'd killed? There'd been only one room with two inhabitants, so it would be an easy thing to deduce.

[substituteskull]

Just two. Just two. The two people Sherlock cared most about. The people he's writing the music for. Oh, don't worry about the door getting shut. John turns and slams it, facing away from Sherlock for a long, long time. He can't think.

The chances of Mrs. Hudson, of Mycroft, being able to come back from this is slight, at best. Their bodies have ceased to function, and yet, the parasites are somehow keeping their bodies alive, even at the cost of muscle tissue.

They don't decay, but not all of them survive. The hosts have died, sometimes in John's captivity. He's seen it happen. He's had to clear a few away.

But Mycroft... He's been there the longest. Still moving. John's even repaired his legs so he wouldn't lose blood when and if they could revive him. Now that had been a terribly harrowing surgery!

The sounds of John's acceptance follow. His shoulders stay lifted but his head drops.

"I'll bring you Molly's work tomorrow. I'd...wanted to ease you into it. It's not... It's not pleasant being there. I know."

[consulting_freak]

The door shutting is good. Sherlock wants the privacy right now, even if the act brings the tears back. A mess. That's what he's made of the situation and himself by going to that office building. If John turns around, it should be quite evident that even through all his goings on about how emotions and sentiment are below him and worth nothing, he's still very much afflicted by them.

He's never cried in front of John. Not like this, anyway. He'd summoned false tears on multiple occasions, but the only time they'd been real before now had been up on that rooftop just before he jumped.

Molly's research will come too late to do him any good. He'll accept it and use it, of course. But if he'd only known about everything before. If anyone in this damned place had thought to come clean to him, he would have been prepared for what he'd see and he wouldn't have resorted to execution.

"I killed them, John," Sherlock tells his friend, voice sounding desperate. The way a child would handle these things and nothing like the stoic and emotionally detached man John's known so well. "My own brother... and Mrs. Hudson, too. Oh God, what if they recognised me?" Surely if anyone could predict this side of him, it would be John.

[substituteskull]

This Sherlock is terrifying. John's witnessed his emotion, his real emotion just once...and that was when the other had had to leave him. John hadn't been close enough to see his tears, but he'd heard them enough to realize just how lost Sherlock had been moments before he stepped off of the edge of that roof.

Sometimes, John is far too human and far too selfish to remember that Sherlock is human too. No matter what anymore might say or do or think, Sherlock is capable of feeling. He'd known before he'd had it directed at him. He'd known it when Sherlock scoffed at himself for calling his skull his friend.

John swallows, at a loss. Of all the people in this world that should be able to deal with this, it's Sherlock, and yet he;s crumbling there, a child.

He's never been good at consoling. He's a doctor, his bedside manner is impeccable, and he genuine cares for people, but John's dealt with his emotions on his own in the past and expects everyone else to do the same.

How do you fix broken men when it's more than bones and flesh that needs to be mended?

"You... No one knows, Sherlock. I could very well have sentenced them to a life locked away inside of their own heads with no cure in sight. It might have been mercy." John is tentative when he approaches the bed again and slowly climbs back onto it, facing Sherlock with cautious, red and tearing eyes. "I should have told you straight off. The blame's my own." He'd been able to react so much better to Sherlock's physical pain the week before, hands to his face, comfort in his voice. He feels as if he's failed.

[consulting_freak]

During the hesitant silence where John's gathering what he needs to do, Sherlock just takes the time to relive the scene from earlier in the day.

He'd pushed open the door using his shoulder with his sword ready. They'd been 'resting' if that's what you could call it. He'd come up behind Mrs. Hudson, but she sniffed the air and turned to him before he could swing. Her eyes were vacant, like they all were. Or had she looked at him? He can't tell, even as he plays the 'video' over three times, each ending in her blood on the walls and his face.

A shuffling sound was what alerted him to Mycroft. The once proud and upright man sliding across the ground with one leg. His arms reached for him, hands grabbing. He could feel the nails dig against his ankle through his trousers and socks. He'd acted quickly, pushing the sword downward and into his neck, pinning him there. Mycroft writhed and cut his hands on the sword, so Sherlock drew his gun and fired. His hand was shaking, but the range was close to point blank so the shot struck him through the left temple.

The tears keep coming, followed by several sobs he tries unsuccessfully to choke down. Before tonight, the only person he'd let see him like this was the very man he'd killed earlier that day.

"We're not doing this," Sherlock warns when he looks at his friend just after the last thing John's said. "We're not fighting over who gets to blame themselves more. It was... stupid. A stupid miscommunication brought about by us not trusting one another enough." And me putting too much faith in Bill Murray.

[substituteskull]

John nods dumbly and moves to sit beside his friend. His knees don't lift high enough and his shoulders aren't the right height either, but he feels a little bit like the world's stabilizing itself just by being like this. They've spent a great many moments together with their backs against the wall. Despair and anguish have never been part of their repertoire (save, perhaps, for Sherlock's outburst by the fireplace the night he'd really cut John badly). It's about time that they share this new intimacy.

And it's about time that John get his head out of his arse and let Sherlock in. He'd done it before and if he thinks hard enough about it, he'll realize that Sherlock's never left.

He might never had completely mastered his techniques, but it's Sherlock that's pulled him through all of this. And John needs to be ready to return the favour.

"I missed you," John says, gazing straight ahead as he feels Sherlock's sorrow gently shake the mattress. "Nothing's been right since you've gone. But--" He wets his lips, an old nervous habit he's not done the entire time Sherlock's been at St. Bart's, "you're back now. And I do trust you. I ought to have never stopped. You managed to give me my miracle after all and I-- I'm not going to push you away again if you promise you won't take up any more jumping activities."

[consulting_freak]

Sherlock lets John get into bed next to him without a complaint. He watches the other man at first until he disappears into the area only his peripheral vision can reach without turning his head. It's bad enough he's crying; he doesn't need to give John eye-contact as he's doing it.

His head dips downcast once John's comfortable next to him. No longer numb, he's aware of the warmth next to him and what little comfort he can gather from that sort of thing. He's never been a tactile person.

The speech is a sobering one to listen to, but he still lets out an awkward sounding half-laugh at the end note. "Unless it's to save my life, I'd just as soon not jump from anything taller than I am," Sherlock admits, sniffing noisily.

He feels a fool having stayed strong for over three years only to come undone after coming back home. Sentiment. It really is reserved for the losing side.

"Though, I suppose it all makes sense now. All the mixed signals and the secretive atmosphere everyone's got around here. Well, since there's no more mystery, I'll get to working on the other problems you mentioned. Medicines should be easy enough to make synthetically. And, I'll look into some agriculture since you lot haven't got a clue. And, a cure, of course. That should be a long-term goal," he says. His voice might sound somewhat nasal and hoarse after crying, but he's got his mind back on more productive and less destructive thoughts.

[substituteskull]

He'd wanted to leave the rest of the conversation go until later, but now he can't. Sherlock has the right to know everything. And there's more to the story than just John's slow cataloging and storage of infected people he's cared for or the others in his camp have loved. He doesn't turn to face Sherlock. It's good that they're talking but the awkwardness will be difficult to overcome.

John's head rolls slightly onto his shoulder and again, he finds himself wetting his lips. This story, more than any other, does truly hurt him. The telling is slow.

"Greg was bitten. It was an accident when we were trying to move a few new...infected...into the psychiatric unit. We'd managed to-- What am I saying? They'd managed to come up with a prototype then. A virus with a stripped casing that was suppose to kill the parasites. We were just...waiting to try it. Molly was gone, we'd lost more than half of us in the breach at the western wing."

Babbling, perhaps, but John's story telling has always been a little disjointed. It's what makes it so personable and relateable.

John leans forward this time, catching Sherlock's equally red eyes. They're certainly the pair. "He didn't succumb for three weeks, Sherlock. Three weeks! We'd been so sure... So sure we did it-- But... We... We lost the dosage. And most of the notes after we were infiltrated." This must be the Thomas incident Sarah had partially mentioned. And, it seems, the notes that Bill had crossed out. "The procedure..." John shakes his head. "I can't duplicate it. But they were on to something, they really were. While I agree that the medicines, and yes fine, the farming, are all important--"

John wipes almost angrily at his face. No more tears.

Greg's death had been very, very hard on him. They'd grown so close in the crisis. It'd nearly been the last straw.

[consulting_freak]

Sherlock isn't expecting to know more about the details regarding the infected down in the basement. At least not tonight. Tomorrow is his estimate, since that's when John had agreed to give him Molly Hooper's notes regarding the experiment.

So, when John starts to speak again, the mood immediately goes back to a more morose one. He's recovered enough of his emotional compartmentalisation to be able to listen objectively, even though the first words out of John's mouth are the name of the last person he'd been meaning to execute this morning.

He doesn't interrupt the story, listening to John's account of what happened until the very end. A viral agent makes sense - in certain strains of bacteria infecting patients with antibiotic allergies, they'd been using bactherophage therapy. The science had been developed in Switzerland if he recalls correctly. It only makes sense to use viruses as a means to cure a parasitic infection.

"Three weeks," Sherlock responds, frowning to himself. He picks up the diary and flips through it to the page where the dosing list had been crossed out. "I might be able to replicate it, but I'm going to need your help, John. Do you remember what sort of virus you were working with?"

His mind's already working toward making sense of everything and clicking things into place. "This kind of technology is good for he beginning stages, but we'd need to look for something better if you have hope of curing those who've been infected longer than it takes for the behaviour changes to begin."

There's a short pause now, but Sherlock interrupts before John can say anything. "Tomorrow, I'll go back to the basement. I'm going to need to extract the submandibular glands in order to observe the life cycle of the parasite. I think I know how to let them reproduce in vitro, but you'll have to make sure no one but you and me has access to my lab once I do. It could have dangerous repercussions if there are any incidents."

[substituteskull]

"I wasn't part-- It wasn't something I was helping with," John explains. "But I have that diary memorized. I can fill out the torn and crossed out sections for you. The virus had never been mentioned but-- Perhaps in Molly's notes, if they haven't all been destroyed." If Molly had been able to figure what to do, then Sherlock ought to be able to do it better. And faster. And--

Honestly, John would be very happy not to think about it for just a little while. His head is pounding. John's been doing his best not to think about Greg's fate but perhaps that had been the mistake from the start.

Without really thinking, he leans forward to unlace his boots and kick them off. He's going to stay for just a little while and he doesn't want to get the muck of London all over Sherlock's sheets. He's working on the second when Sherlock mentions the trip tomorrow. John is almost grim about it.

"I'm coming with you. We don't need to do any more runs for a long time. I'll send Bill out to do my patrol."

John's the only person left with the required medical knowledge...and he really isn't sure he can be around Bill without punching the fool in his face. Who else could have stolen the diary from his room than the only person John had let in?

[consulting_freak]

"Absolutely memorised? one-hundred percent?" Sherlock asks him, because he knows getting the wrong information could be worse than receiving no information. He just won't let himself get biassed. Whatever Molly and Doctor Roderick had come up with, he's bound to find and refine into something useful through his own methods.

Either Sherlock doesn't notice or doesn't mind John inviting himself to stay longer. (It's the latter. He notices everything.) He can use the familiarity and company right now. His mind is currently thumbing through his knowledge of various viruses. - Was it a DNA virus? RNA? Single-stranded, double-stranded, what? It would obviously need to be something not particularly harmful to the human host, otherwise what would be the point of using it in the first place? - But, when he finds a place to stop, he's likely to go back into that dark mood.

He tries not to react when John says Bill's name. He hadn't mentioned his involvement with the book nor the 'leads', but John seems to have already pieced some of it together himself. His tone of voice alone says as much.

"You can use anything I've got in my bag," Sherlock tells him. He means his weapons, but if he wants a snack cake, that's fine, too. "I didn't see any infected outside of those rooms. But, they could be attracted to the noise and smell." He hadn't closed the doors, had he?

[substituteskull]

"Absolutely memorised," John replies with a smile, the first real one that he's managed since Sherlock's arrival. "Give that diary here." If Sherlock is going to spent time in his mind palace mucking around in the closets, then John would like something to do as well. No one will be bothering them, no one would dare.

Especially Bill. That's a discussion for another day, however. He props his socked feet -- heavily darned -- on the sheets and begins to flip through crossed out pages and clean ones not taken over by notes of music that John can't read and that he's absolutely certain he'd not want to at this juncture.

They don't need to cry any more, not tonight, though there will surely be a desire to no doubt before the sun comes up. In a way, the tears had been somewhat healing.

John pauses when Sherlock offers him access to his supplies, pen lightly tapping at the spine between the pages as he smiles. "I dare say, if you'd been here three years ago, we'd had have too much fun with this business and been likely kicked out."

They really shouldn't be so enamoured with cases, and perhaps each other, over corpses at crime scenes. They use to get such strange looks.

"And thank you, but I've my own. Where'd you manage to pick up the sword though?"

[consulting_freak]

The genuine smile does a lot of good for Sherlock's struggle against sliding back down into brooding. He returns it, if somewhat strained. "All yours," he says as he lets John take the diary. He'll let John start his work before he eventually starts to lean over his shoulder to watch what he's writing in real time.

This is something he'd missed. Just him and John sitting around somewhere and working together for a common goal. Solving a mystery. Doing what they were meant to be doing. If he thinks about it too much, he might feel a hint of guilt that this feels a bit fun.

The comment about having too much fun with their 'hobby' just gets John a less strained smile from him. "We would have managed. We could have taken over a smaller clinic somewhere, just the two of us. Or turned 221B into a fortress after pilfering what we could from the medicine cabinets."

He says it like a joke, but there's something serious tugging at the edges of their talk. What they are doing is 'wrong' in some way, at least according to the other people in this group. John is in a leadership position right now, but even that doesn't mean much when majority rule comes into play. It gives him the impression that John would like to remain secretive of this. Sherlock doesn't mind too much, since he only needs one assistant. But, he's not fond of the idea of censoring himself and he'll likely forget at times.

"Mmm, the sword? I got it while I was still in Siberia, actually. Moriarty's web was full of men and women just as dramatic as he was and one of them fancied themselves a ninja," Sherlock explains. Of course, he hadn't spoken with the man personally and deduced what he could from the throwing stars and nanchaku next to the katana. "You might think it looks stupid, but it works surprisingly well. Lightweight and silent."

[substituteskull]

"Speaking of Siberia--" John should probably finish this (though he's skipped over that truly terrible second scribble for the time being simply because he can't manage it right now no matter how important the details might be-- "I've changed my mind. About Siberia." His whole posture has changed, though that doesn't really cause him to lean back against Sherlock. He just finds his nosiness comforting and comfortable and talking--

Yes, they should be talking. They should have never stopped talking. And he's curious as to how the man managed to learn swordsmanship without much of a teacher too! Yes, he's a genius, but the techniques certainly can't be picked up just by waving the thing around!

No. No, it doesn't occur to John that Sherlock had been proficient with the weapon before the trouble either. He'd known about the Judo, but not about Mr. Ninja Master.

"The kids could do with some new stories, besides."

[consulting_freak]

Comfortable is good. It has a way to wash some of the emotional filth off so he can start to relax. Sherlock, as always, mirrors John's looser posture without him really noticing that he's doing it. Usually he pays attention to this stuff in order to appear to be interested and receptive toward a person, but since he's doing it without a conscious effort should alert him to... something. To what?

"You want to hear about Siberia?" Sherlock asks him, but it's an empty question. "I've already told you that's where I tracked the first of the three assassins. I'd heard names whispered in the underground and like any other trail, I followed it. Two of the assassins had already left London before I could find them, and I almost missed the third. I was deep undercover as an overindulgent drug addict at the time when I pick pocketed him. He'd been carrying a ticket from Heathrow to Bratsk for the following day as well as a substantial amount of cash. He retrieved it, much to my discomfort, but didn't recognise me."

He doesn't think that listening to his stories will make things easy for John's concentration, but it's not likely he'll forget what had been in the diary by taking a rest.

"I boarded the same flight in a new disguise," Sherlock continues. Having something to recall like this keeps his mind occupied and his voice seems to have some soothing quality for his friend. "A blonde lawyer from Nevada going by the name of Robert Tyler if you must know. From there, I tailed him until he lead me to his base of operations roughly two-hundred kilometres north-east of the city. I'm not stupid, so I didn't follow him into the compound. I returned to the city and checked into a hotel. I stayed low and worked with my contacts in London, Switzerland, and the United States for extended planning. A week later, I started hearing rumours about some plague in America. I wasn't interested in it at the time, even though the media was convinced it was some kind of Z-day apocalypse. Needless to say, my American associates became very difficult to reach.

"It must have been almost three weeks in Tsentralny before I made my my move against the small base. I'd visited there a half dozen times by that point in order to map out the layout and identify the men and women holed up inside. There were eight men and three women to worry about. I'd come prepared to dispose of all of them, but I was too late. That must have been the moment I started taking the plague seriously."

[substituteskull]

"Blond?" So he's focusing on the physical, these things happen. John turns an incredulous look up to Sherlock who, then, had been more willowy, more soft in appearance with dark curls that didn't go past his ears and some sort of hair care regimen that John never discovered but probably had to be quite extensive to keep him from frizzing up each time the London weather turned nasty.

He's found Sherlock's appearance to be one of great interest. Ginger eyebrows, but he's never noticed any dye used in his hair. And that eye colour-- People don't typically have eyes so green they might as well be silver with gold flecks. So incredibly otherworldly is Sherlock and yet his brother--

Mycroft had been so typical. Weaselly, perhaps. Long nose, regularly placed cheekbones. Portly. John's head tilts back further, his own strangely coloured eyes scanning Sherlock's face before his own breaks out into another grin. John has such even, white teeth, even now. They're almost impossibly uniform.

"I really can't imagine you blond. Wig or did you bleach? You bleached didn't you-- I'm not sure how I feel about that!"

[consulting_freak]

Sherlock had ignored the first time John asked about the hair colour, instead choosing to continue onto the parts of his tale that he found more important. It had been easy enough to ignore how intensely John had been focusing on him through his speaking, since by speaking, he had half a foot into his Mind Palace to extract the details directly from the files there. No editing, no choosing the appropriate words. Just taking information and acting as a conduit for it, much like he treats any other kind of information. (The body is only transport.)

After he's come to a pause, John's gaze is much harder to ignore. It makes one eyebrow quirk upward. A slight tilt of his head. He almost asks if he's got something on his face.

"You're still on about that?" Sherlock asks incredulously when John brings up the hair colour again. He can't tell whether he should feel amused or flabbergasted. Amused. Yes, that's much better for the moment, and it's hard not to be with John looking so young compared to how he's been.

"You didn't listen to a word I said after blond, did you?" he shakes his head in mock disappointment. "And, you're right. I bleached it. Had to. Wigs are far too obvious and easy to remove. I straightened it too. That took about as long as the bleaching."

[substituteskull]

"I listened!" John says defensively, his nose wrinkling still. He shouldn't be staring but he has very vivid memories of Sherlock staring at him at all hours of the day and night and for a variety of reasons only half explained in any logical (to him at least) manner. Wetting his lips, he does take the time to glance away if only because he's trying to recall -- and spit back -- facts about the plane ride. And the American contacts.

And the drug addict-- And yes, yes, all right, Sherlock, that came before he mentioned being blond but--

A movement explained only by the fact that John's regained his comfort with Sherlock sends John's hand up to pull lightly on one looser curl so that it straightens out. He's seen Sherlock's hair wet and scraggly, but never completely straight.

"That's it, I'm getting the scissors. I can't think of you as blond with straight hair. I just can't." He slides back into his shoes and leaves the room before ducking back into it a moment later. "And for god's sake, eat your dinner."

[consulting_freak]

Sherlock isn't so sure that John's being honest with him when he claims to have listened. He waits for whatever 'proof' John can come up with for his attention. It's easy to be patient when he doesn't feel offended, so he only gives another shake of his head when John gives him disjointed bits and pieces of his story. "I never said I was in first class during the flight. You filled that in yourself," he corrects.

His eyes fall to John's hand as it comes toward his face. No, not his face. His hair.

"Hair cut?" he asks, craning his head more to one side. Scissors don't have any direct connection to straight, blond hair, but it's not too difficult to work out what John wants to use the scissors for. (And thank God for that. His hair's been a total mess to comb out every morning. Especially with only one arm to work with.)

"You might want to bring a sheet to catch the hair," Sherlock tells his friend when he returns with the message to have his dinner. It's advice he'll follow. He's not very hungry, stomach still upset from everything else in the day, but he's got to keep his strength up for tomorrow's errand.

[substituteskull]

Gabrielle doesn't question John's search for scissors. He tends to go to her when he needs his hair shorn off and he doesn't care to dull his own surgical set because he's having issues with Sherlock's physical appearance due to a story that happened years ago. He gives him a bemused look and hands over a comb as well. "If it's for your friend, wet the hair first or you'll never get it even."

John gives her a quick salute and stops off in the locker room to find a few fresh towels and a spray bottle to fill with some water. It takes a bit of time and he's happy to see Sherlock not-so-eagerly munching on a piece of cornbread made from slightly off freshness tinned cornmeal that had been stale, but not gone bad. John'd liked the taste anyway. Something new, something different.

There's a great flourish of the sheet on the floor by the small desk and John uses that surface to hold his things while he wheels the squeaky chair over.

"Are you sure you didn't say first class?" he asks because-- Because why not? "I suppose that's what you get for not having me make the reservations." Oh Sherlock. He'd thought you would be so useless on your own, no matter how you managed for thirty-odd years without him anyway.

[consulting_freak]

Sherlock's break from John is a quiet one. The threat of brooding isn't quite out of his system and without his friend in here with him, his thoughts naturally go toward Mrs. Hudson and Mycroft. Not morbid thoughts, this time, but recollections of events that had happened while they were still living. Good things and bad. (More bad than good with his brother because of the second half of his life so far.)

The dinner tastes reasonably good compared with what he'd been living off of before. Much like the baby food on his first day here, it leaves his mouth watering despite the heavy feeling in his stomach. He's able to get several bites of canned yams down as well as half of the canned stew concoction before John returns.

"I'm sure I didn't say it," Sherlock tells John around a mouthful of cornbread. There's something he doesn't quite like about the flavour, but no one's been complaining of a sour stomach yet. "I rode first class. Obviously, being a lawyer and all, but I'd left it out in the telling."

[substituteskull]

"And this is exactly why I write up your cases. You leave out most of the important bits." Not that flying first class is important at all but he's just trying to save a little face. And Sherlock's corrections feel like home again. He waits for Sherlock to finish the seriously bland piece of bread (no oil, stale cornmeal, it's bound to taste off) before he motions his former flatmate into the chair.

That they can have domestic moments like this, when the world is gone to hell and the dead -- or not quite dead -- wander around with parasites in their heads, is something of a necessity.

A touchstone.

Jill Roderick said that to him once. That he had to find a way to keep him human, if only for a little while.

He's very glad Sherlock found him again.

Getting use to working a comb and scissors at once, and keeping the hair damp enough, takes practice. Luckily, there will be no photo ops in the near -- or likely distant -- future.

[consulting_freak]

"You and I have a clear difference in what each of us finds important," Sherlock says off-handedly as he uses the cornbread to sop up some of the gravy from the stew. He doesn't particularly like soggy bread, but this piece had been tasting too dull and flat.

Sherlock picks up the sweet when he's done picking at everything else on his tray. He'll carry that with him over to the chair John's set out for the task and he'll eat it as the other man wets his hair. He's already predicting another shower after this and maybe finding somewhere else to spend the night. (Unless John volunteers to sweep up any stray hairs that get out of the sheet, anyway.)

"Why do I get the feeling there's a reason you didn't go into hairdressing?" he asks rhetorically, having to close his eyes when John plasters his overgrown fringe to his face with a few spurts of water. He's not expecting his hair to look good by any means once John's finished butchering it, but it can't be as bad as the mess he's let it get into.

[substituteskull]

There's always been a difference in their storytelling styles. Sherlock skips every part he assumes should be obvious. Even the ones that could only be obvious to him. John's never minded, no matter how he use to screw up his lips and take the brunt of the intelligence jab. Well, all right, he usually had minded.

And he notes, strangely enough, that none came with this one. Yes, Sherlock pointed out his assumptions but without the typically meanness that had once accompanied any short coming on John's part.

For good measure at the hairdressing remark, John adds extra water to Sherlock's overgrown sideburns. It's childish but he thrives off of childish sometimes.

Sue him.

"It's actually a painful story. I wanted terribly to be a doctor but my parents assumed I'd be a barber. I had to sneak into the army too. It was nearly the last straw and they were so devastated by my career path that they refused to tell any of their friends." At least John is gentle once he forgoes the comb for his fingers.