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“What do you want for Christmas?” John asks.
Alex hums thoughtfully. “A new bed.”
“A new bed?” Sherlock breaks in. “The guest bed no longer suffices?”
“You fucked John on that bed,” Alex deadpans, and shudders at the idea. It’s just a guess—truly, the mattress is just uncomfortable—but Sherlock and John both blush, which is more than enough evidence that Alex is right.
“I did not!” Sherlock denies. It’s such a blatant lie that even John raises his eyebrows at it.
“…John fucked you on that bed,” Alex amends, and Sherlock drops his files and leaves the room to sulk, huffing in embarrassment. Alex laughs, then turns back to John. “The mattress is quite stiff. If I’m going to be sleeping here long-term, it would be nice to be comfortable.”
He feels embarrassed to admit to wanting to sleep here long term, but John just nods, a tiny pleased smile quirking his lips. “New bed it is.”
Alex meets Mycroft in December, two weeks before Christmas, as John and Sherlock bicker over whether or not Sherlock is allowed to take on a case during Christmas holiday.
“You can’t take on a case!” John is saying, throwing his hands up in the air as he glares at Sherlock from across the room. “It’s Christmas!”
Sherlock rolls his eyes. “Triple homicides don’t care about Christmas, John.”
“I vote we let him take the case,” Alex puts in, trying to finish up the last few chapters of The Sound and The Fury before school lets out for the holiday. “What better Christmas gift than getting rid of him for a week?”
Sherlock falters, like he’s trying to decide if Alex is really on his side or not, and John crosses his arms, frowning at Alex.
“Am I interrupting something?”
Alex almost leaps out of his skin, startling to his feet and knocking his book to the floor at the sound of the unfamiliar voice.
“Fucking hell ,” he hisses, and glares at the stranger.
“Mind your language, dear,” Mrs. Hudson tuts, making her way into the kitchen. “I’m just going to make a cuppa for Mr. Holmes. Biscuits, anyone?”
“Mr. Holmes ?” Alex demands, taking in the stranger. Despite the man’s casual posture, he has an authoritative, almost threatening aura. Alex can’t help the defensive stance he takes, prepared to vault over the couch to fight the slightly pudgy man looming in the doorway if necessary.
Sherlock huffs, throwing himself into his chair and drawing his knees up to his chest in one fluid moment. “This is Mycroft, my brother. Unfortunately. Mycroft, this is Alex. He’s homeless.”
“I’m quite familiar with Alex Rider,” Mycroft says, inspecting Alex with an intensity that makes him squirm.
Alex’s glare darkens. “How do you know who I am?”
Mycroft seats himself in John’s chair, unbothered by Alex’s scowl. Alex hesitates before dropping back into his seat beside John on the couch, snatching his book off of the ground and flipping through the pages to find his place.
“You’ve made quite the name for yourself among my colleagues,” Mycroft says, pointedly. “Especially with your little disappearing act recently.”
Alex has to fight the urge to flee the flat immediately.
Sherlock looks up sharply, his interest snatched away from the crack in the leather arm of his chair that he’d been fussing with. “What does Alex have to do with the British government?”
“Hasn’t he told you?” Mycroft taunts, and Alex wants to wipe the smug smile off of his face. He’s never heard of Mycroft Holmes, but then he’s never heard of most MI6 agents. If Mrs. Jones is trying to recruit Alex again, sending Sherlock’s brother to harass him is certainly an obnoxious way of going about it.
Sherlock looks back and forth between the two of them, his eyes narrowing. Then Mrs. Hudson bursts into the room with tea and biscuits, and if Sherlock has finally figured Alex out, he doesn’t say.
On the way home from his last day of school, Alex sees Sabina Pleasure in town.
She’s holding hands with a taller boy, her cheeks flushed red—from the cold or excitement, Alex can’t tell. But she’s smiling, and she looks happy.
Really happy.
For a second, Alex doesn’t remember how to breathe, but then her eyes meet his, her expression startling into something else. Shock or fear or horror. Alex can’t tell.
He turns on his heel and runs.
Alex runs until he reaches 221B, trusting that he’ll have lost Sabina some ways back, and he sits on the doorstep in the snow, breathing heavily, shoulders tensed.
He can’t ignore how happy Sabina looked until she saw him, and he thinks about how much better off she would have been if she’d never met him. He ruined her life the day he caught her eye. He thinks about John and Sherlock, and how happy they make each other, and he realizes he can’t do that to them, too.
Alex gathers up some of this things, stuffing them into a duffel bag with the emergency cash he’s been squirreling away, and steals some food from the kitchen. John is still at work, and Sherlock is out tracking down a murderer.
Alex hesitates, but then he grabs one of John’s jumpers, and Sherlock’s favorite scarf. He should probably leave a note, but he figures the jumper and scarf are a good indication that he wasn’t kidnapped. Sherlock and John won’t miss him for long, anyways—they’ve just spent a few months together. They barely know him at all, and his absence can only improve things for them.
It’s three days of grueling cold before Alex reaches his old house in Chelsea. It’s been completely untouched—it’s his inheritance, after all. It’s not like it was going to go anywhere.
Alex gets in using the spare key hidden behind a brick in the front wall, and hesitates before turning on the heat. He’s not sure if MI6 is monitoring the house, but freezing to death seems like the bigger risk at present.
For the first time in almost a year, he sleeps in his own bed. (He totally doesn’t cry when he finds Jack’s bobby pins scattered on the bathroom counter, covered in dust, and he definitely doesn’t take a blanket from her bed just because it still smells like her.)
He sleeps wrapped up in Jack’s blanket, John’s jumper, and Sherlock’s scarf, but he doesn’t sleep well.
The house is haunted by memories of who Alex used to be, sharp reminders of how jaded and broken he is now in comparison, and Alex dreams about Jack again for the first time in months.
He wakes in the middle of the night, freezing even though it’s warm in his room, and stares at the ceiling until dawn breaks and light starts creeping in through his window. Even then, Alex doesn’t move.
There’s nothing worth moving for. He’s isolated, truly alone in the world now. It’s better for everyone, he tells himself, but his stomach feels like acid—it’s better for everyone but him.
When Alex finally forces himself to go downstairs, Mycroft Holmes is sitting in his living room, looking like he’s been there all his life.
Alex swears in surprise, but he’s not really surprised. He knew someone from MI6 would find him eventually. He just didn’t think it would be Mycroft, and he didn’t think it would be so soon.
“You’re awake,” Mycroft notes, carefully folding the newspaper he was reading and laying it over his knee.
Alex can’t help himself. “I see Sherlock wasn’t the only Holmes brother blessed with powers of deduction.”
Mycroft’s lips curl into a sneer, and he points his cane towards the couch. “Sit. We should speak.”
Alex sighs, resigning himself to his fate, but first reaches for the AC to spike the heat again—it’s almost eighty degrees in the house, but Alex is still shivering from the cold.
“What do you want?” Alex asks, curling up on the corner of the couch, across the room from Mycroft.
“It’s not what I want,” Mycroft says, rolling his eyes, “but my brother. And his partner. They were very distressed when they realized you’d gone.”
Alex doesn’t say anything. Mycroft continues.
“I’ve been very lenient since you moved in with my brother, Alex. But I haven’t forgotten who you are. I could very easily return you to the Pleasures, or remind Mrs. Jones that a teenaged spy would be an invaluable asset. I choose to let you stay with Sherlock because you make him happy, and regardless of what he thinks, I do care for him.”
“That’s nice,” Alex says. “I’m not sure he returns the sentiment. I mean, I’d never even heard of you until last week.”
Mycroft’s eye twitches. “It’s irrelevant whether or not my brother shares my affection. Mr. Rider, what I’m saying is this: you may either return to 221B and stay with John and Sherlock, or you may resume your work for MI6. You will not be allowed to continue living here alone, as you are a child still in the eyes of the government.”
“I’m old enough to save the world, but not to live on my own,” Alex complains, but then he sighs, looking down at his lap. “Trouble seems to follow me. I’m afraid it will follow me right to Sherlock and John.”
When Mycroft speaks again, there’s a certain softness in his voice that Alex isn’t expecting. “My dear boy, Sherlock lives for trouble. It excites him. And they both seem deadset on going through whatever trouble it takes to keep you.”
Alex ends up in the hospital, suffering from a mild case of hypothermia, before he sees John and Sherlock.
The nurse tries to take his scarf and jumper, but he insists on keeping them, and she doesn’t even try to take the blanket he brought in.
He’s watching Doctor Who reruns on the telly when John and Sherlock bustle in, noses red from the cold, eyes bloodshot.
“Alex!” John exclaims, his voice torn between excitement and scolding.
Alex keeps a straight face. “That’s what everyone keeps calling me, but I don’t remember anything. Are you my dad?”
John’s face twists up in panic for a brief second, but Sherlock snorts and Alex’s lips twitch into a smile.
John is livid. “ Damn it, Alex!” he snaps, and drops heavily into the seat beside the hospital bed, his jaw clenched, lips pursed.
The smile dies on Alex’s lips, and he looks away, tugging on the sleeve of his jumper. “I’m sorry,” he mutters.
John doesn’t say anything.
“Is that my scarf?” Sherlock asks, and Alex reaches up, fingers wrapping around the end of the blue scarf he’d swiped from the coat rack.
“You forgot to grab it before you left the house,” Alex says, shrugging feebly. “I guess I decided I needed it more than you did.”
“Is that why you took my jumper?” John asks, his voice carefully emotionless.
Alex shrugs. “Yes. No. I don’t know.” He glances up at John, knowing that the older man was wanting a real answer. “I took it because I knew I’d miss you, and I thought it would help to have something of yours.”
John’s face crumples. “God, Alex. We were so worried about you. I thought you’d—”
He cuts himself off, clearing his throat. Guilt swells up deep in Alex’s gut. John grits his teeth before continuing. “I thought you were in danger.”
“Only of freezing to death,” Alex mutters, and John narrows his eyes but lets the joke slide.
“How are you?” John asks instead, looking Alex over.
“Well, the nurse says I’m not pregnant, so I guess I’m okay.”
Sherlock snickers, and John glares. “Do you really think this is funny?”
Alex bites the inside of his cheek. “No. That’s why I’m making jokes.”
John heaves a frustrated sigh and hoists himself to his feet, ruffling Alex’s hair. “I’m going to grab a coffee. We could all use one.”
He disappears from the room, and Sherlock’s gaze follows him before snapping back to Alex.
“He was worried about you,” Sherlock says, staring at Alex as he seats himself in one of the chairs. And he adds, wincing like it pains him to say, “We both were.”
Alex lowers his gaze. “I know.”
They sit in silence for a moment before Sherlock asks, “Were you in danger? Did someone from your past spook you into running?”
Alex stares at the patterned quilt on his lap, remembering how Jack used to walk around the house with the quilt around her shoulders like a cape. Then he remembers watching Jack go up in flames, and flinches.
“I don’t know,” he mutters. “I guess.”
Sherlock groans. “John is better at the talking thing. Do you want to talk to John?”
“No.” Alex shakes his head. “No, I…I just want to go home.”
Alex is discharged two days later, just in time for the holiday.
John picks him up in a taxi, rolling his eyes as he explains that Sherlock had just solved his case and gone down to Scotland Yard to “wow them with his deductions and put away a murderer as an afterthought.”
Mrs. Hudson greets them at the door, pulling Alex into a fierce hug and complaining about the fuss that was made when he ran away.
“The boys were sick with worry when they realized you’d gone,” she says, combing her fingers through his hair as she brushes past him with a tray of tea. “They looked all over London for you—even asked Mycroft for help.”
“I noticed,” Alex murmurs. “He’s the one who found me.”
“Oh?” Mrs. Hudson asks, her eyes lighting up. She gives John a pointed look. “You should invite him over for lunch tomorrow, dear. In the spirit of family, and Christmas.”
John grimaces. “I’ll mention it to Sherlock.”
“Mention what?”
Sherlock breezes into the flat, shucking his coat and glancing resentfully at his scarf, still wrapped loosely around Alex’s neck.
“John wants to invite Mycroft over for lunch tomorrow,” Mrs. Hudson says brightly.
John blanches, Alex hides his smirk behind the sleeve of the jumper he stole from John, and Sherlock’s face wrinkles in disgust.
“Why the hell would he want to do that?”
“It’s Christmas,” Alex says. “Apparently you’re supposed to be with your family during the holidays, or something like that.”
Sherlock looks horrified. “Oh, are we inviting Harry over as well, then?”
“Who?” Alex asks, as John exclaims, “No!”
John pauses. “Harry is my older sister.”
Alex flings his hands up into the air. “It’s like everyone has a secret sibling in this flat!”
Sherlock scoffs. “Secret, no. But yes, it does seem that we all have siblings. How entirely boring.”
“I don’t have a sibling,” Alex corrects him. But Sherlock arches a brow.
“Don’t you?”
Alex stares back. “No?”
Sherlock purses his lips. “You’ve been clinging to the same patchwork quilt since you were admitted to the hospital. It’s stained with blood, and while possibly the blood is yours, it’s much more likely to be that of a young woman’s menstrual cycle, considering that the quilt has a distinctly feminine scent and pattern, and there are long red hairs clinging to it. It’s possible it was your mother’s, but you mentioned last month that you never knew her, and you’re unlikely to cling so fiercely to an object that once belonged to someone you never actually met. Therefore, the blanket must belong to a sister.”
Alex clenches his jaw, trying to fight off the sudden tears that blur in his eyes.
“She wasn’t my sister,” he mutters, more to himself than anything. “She may as well have been, but she—she wasn’t.”
He pulls the quilt tighter around his shoulders and stands, making his way to the spare bedroom that he’s begun to claim as his own. “I’m going to bed,” he announces. “Wake me when Christmas is over.”
John wakes him too early the next morning (“Christmas isn’t over yet,” Alex whines, but lets John pull him out of bed and into the living room).
After a quick breakfast during which Sherlock bounces anxiously on his toes and Alex teases Sherlock about being nervous over whether or not John will like whatever Sherlock bought him, they all sit down for presents.
John gives Sherlock a new scarf—a nice one that Sherlock immediately wraps around his neck—and promises that the rest of his gift will come later. Sherlock blushes, and Alex gags.
“Now, you,” Sherlock says, and thrusts his gift into John’s arms.
The gift is unwrapped to reveal something John calls a “lucky cat” through his roaring laughter, and Alex doesn’t understand why it’s so funny or why it makes John lean over and kiss Sherlock and ask if that’s supposed to mean that he’s Sherlock’s wife now, but Alex likes watching them together, so he doesn’t mind. (After Alex goes for a shower, Sherlock proposes properly and John says yes, but they don’t tell Alex until later, so he pretends not to notice the new ring on John’s finger.)
Alex gives John a book John had mentioned was his favorite, some old classic that John apparently used to own but lost when he moved into 221B, and he gives Sherlock a book on different types of torture (the one by Dr. Three, and it only makes Alex a little uncomfortable) that makes Sherlock’s eyes light up with delight, and makes John shake his head in disapproval.
In return, John and Sherlock give him a new bed.
“You said you wanted something long-term,” John says, rubbing the back of his neck, and Alex fights the sudden urge to hug him.
All in all, their first Christmas together goes relatively smooth, Alex’s runaway disregarded.
That is, it goes smoothly until Sherlock’s work friends come over—Molly Hooper, a woman who is obviously hopelessly in love with Sherlock, and Lestrade, who gives Alex a surprised look.
“Still here?” he says, eyebrows shooting up.
Alex snorts. “Well, I left last week, but then I found out you were going to be here for Christmas, and I thought, well, I definitely can’t miss that, then. So I came back.”
Lestrade laughs, downs the whiskey in his glass, and offers Alex his hand. “Greg Lestrade,” he says.
Alex shakes the proffered hand. “Alex Rider.”
Sherlock makes a scene by offending Molly, who is apparently unaware of Sherlock’s and John’s relationship, and then Sherlock and Molly have to leave—some woman he’s been chasing down for months and playing like a harp has turned up dead in the morgue, and Sherlock is called in to identify her body, leaving John and Alex to set up Alex’s bed.
“We can’t even have Christmas without him leaving for a case,” John mutters, shaking his head.
Alex glances up at him. “You like it, I think. It’s exciting for you.”
John blushes, grumbling his disagreement, but Alex realizes it’s true. John likes the danger and the adventure that come with being in Sherlock’s orbit—and Sherlock would die of boredom before living as a civilian. They were both quite odd, but then, so was Alex.
He wanted a normal life, and a normal family. But he also suspected he would be bored out of his skull if it weren’t for Sherlock, and John, and the ever-looming threat of MI6 and related corporations. Sherlock and John were drawn to danger and adventure just like he was. That’s why they fit so well together.
That’s why Alex could stay, he realized. Even if he put John and Sherlock in danger, they liked the danger. And they were equipped to deal with it, in a way most people weren’t. Staying with them didn’t guarantee their demise; it just guaranteed excitement.
Alex clears his throat and holds up the leg of the bed they’re attempting to assemble, asking, “Where do you think this goes?”
In the end, they have to use instructions, and Sherlock comes home only for John to smell cigarette smoke on him and complain, but Alex sleeps in his new bed and things feel permanent.
And a few months later, The Woman turns up surprisingly not dead, moves herself into 221B, and attempts to seduce Sherlock until John assures her that Sherlock is taken.
But then she, too, leaves, another case cracked and filed and put away, and it’s just Sherlock, John, and Alex in 221B again.
That’s okay, too. That’s how Alex likes it.