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Mary Elizabeth has been human for 113 days now. She keeps track on the whiteboard magnetised to the front of the fridge. At the morning hour of 4am, she erases the 2 from 112 with the fat of her palm, then scrawls out a 3 to replace it. The fridge is one of the only appliances in the flat that she trusts. As a former member of Hell, she doesn’t understand how this magic box keeps things cold. Sherlock, her flatmate, explains—info dumps—about technological innovations since, well, forever, and fridges seem to be the least strange in the grand scheme of things.
Sherlock is odd. Or maybe not, Mary Elizabeth isn’t sure. They keep roughly the same hours—sleep all day, up all night—so the two AM composing on the violin in their stifling the living room isn’t too much of a headache. There’s been long stretches of silences, dreary lengths of woe is me diatribes, highs of experiments and newspaper clippings, and many a day of we have no food in the fridge.
Thank god for Mrs. Hudson, Sherlock’s step-great-aunt person? Mary Elizabeth doesn’t understand familial relations; there was little structure in the pack, certainly not enough for her to care for her brothers, sisters, and anyone else that she might’ve shared blood with once upon a time. Being a Hellhound meant that she was collectively raised by some glassy faced demon in a whelping den settled in an on-fire chimney until they were all big enough to plod over the burning wood and into the Devil’s living room. She vaguely remembers being small, fitting squarely in the Devil’s claws, and crawling between his horns. There was Master and guard dog, Devil and Hell Hound; she doesn’t remember who is blood and who isn’t, doesn’t particularly care.
Sherlock cares for Mrs. Hudson, even when she’s a leathery woman, bemoaning her awful ex-husband at any given opportunity. Mary Elizabeth has only been criticised by the bat, mostly about her horrid appearance and inability to read a room, whatever that means. The woman’s only redeeming quality is that she grocery shops for them so long as they give her a list.
The whiteboard holds the list. Most of it is in Sherlock’s looping, soft handwriting, interspersed with Mary Elizabeth’s scrawl. He’s done his best to teach her how to write and spell in the last four months, but it seems to be a genuine lost cause. Her grocery asks (LaM, saMon, and raBBet) amongst Sherlock’s look like a gruesome hack job.
Rabbit has been crossed out, with not at store hastily written beside it. Beyond that is an orange post-it note stuck to the board (Please practice your spelling, Mary Elizabeth, I beg of you) that she chucks passive aggressively into the bin just beside the kitchen table.
In the other room, Sherlock’s violin playing pauses momentarily while his phone lights up amongst his composition notes. Mary Elizabeth doesn’t understand phones and doesn’t think she ever will. She does like when he plays those fun little pictures on there, especially the ones where they trap tiny chefs in a tent.
He abruptly stands, dressing gown flowing around his pyjama trousers. “I have to go out,” he calls, one thumb hastily typing out a message. “Won’t be back till late.”
There’s one lamp on in the living room, giving Sherlock a soft glow. Worn out dressing gown, ratty never trust an atom they make up everything t-shirt, and plaid PJ pants—he’s always sort of dressed like this in the house. It’s nice. It means he lets Mary Elizabeth get away with wearing less clothes than she feasibly should.
She asks, “Is it another murder?”
He doesn’t move, still furiously typing, but hums an affirmative. Ah, a juicy murder that will snag his attention for the foreseeable future. Whatever he does for work, she doesn’t get. Death clings to his clothes, his soul, but not enough to send her into a frenzy sniffing him down every time he comes home. Occasionally, police officers show up to collect him with true death stuck to their uniforms, or random people sit in his living room to ask for favours she doesn’t quite keep up with. Their conversations move too fast.
Work is easy to understand, having a job and going to do that job every day and getting payment in return is not a foreign concept to her. She had a job in Hell (roving patrol) which then led to her getting promoted (soul retriever). Demons would make deals with humans for their souls, then when those deals came due, it was Mary Elizabeth’s job to go get payment. She liked getting to venture around Earth, listening to people jibber jab before going back to Hell. Humans spill their guts to any dog that looks cute enough. She met enough lawyers, cops, nurses, teachers, and a gazillion other professions to fill a novel; Sherlock doesn’t fit into any of those neat boxes she’d drawn.
“Mrs. Hudson is answering the door,” she calls as the door clicks open and the bat’s voice echoes from the floor below them. Sherlock doesn’t notice. “Don’t worry. I’ll get it.”
She rounds out of the kitchen, through their sitting room, and over to their front door. Just at the top of the stairs is DI Lestrade, corn-blonde hair dripping wet from the downpour that had been going most of the night. His overcoat is sopping, tan to black. His bulldog scowl doesn’t fit his moderately handsome face—he’d date more if he wasn’t so upset about everything all the time. Or, as Sherlock says, wasn’t so stupid.
“Hello, love,” he says, scowl lifting ever so slightly. “Are you, uh, Sherlock’s...friend?”
Mary Elizabeth stares for a moment too long. Were they friends? She supposes so, but doesn’t want to assume. “He’s just inside. Coming in?”
DI Lestrade nods once, then begins to drip over the threshold. While Sherlock continues to text furiously, Lestrade looks around the flat. Notes the stacks of books piled everywhere, the mismatched arm chairs and couch, the flurry of newspaper clippings pinned to the far wall which Sherlock updates religiously, probably even the expensive violin that half lazily stuck out from under Sherlock’s arm. Eventually, Lestrade’s eyes land back on her, then her legs, then the ceiling.
“God. Sherlock!” Lestrade’s cheeks are bruising red. “Your girlfriend isn’t wearing any trousers.”
Sherlock finally deigns to turn around, phone still in hand as he scrolls through something. His black curls are everywhere, some flattened, some sticking up wonky. Angular cheekbones, long neck, bruise yellowing just under his eye—same old Sherlock. He says, “She’s not my girlfriend, Lestrade. Brixton is approximately 16 minutes from here. With time for changing my clothes and descending the stairs, we’ll be at the crime scene in approximately 23. Is that sufficient?”
“Well, that’s fine—”
“Perfect.”
“—but what about…you know.”
Sherlock is already halfway to his bedroom. “What about what? This is wasting precious minutes.”
“You are insufferable,” Lestrade groans. “Go on, go on.”
Without another thought, Sherlock disappears into his bedroom. Lestrade still won’t look at her, which is fine. Direct eye contact still feels very threatening. It doesn’t stop him from asking, “How long have you been…together?”
“Four months,” she answers. Four months ago, she’d woken up in a morgue storage box with limbs she didn’t know how to use and vocal cords that didn’t make the right noises, eyes and nose and ears that weren’t as sharp as she remembered them being. Fortunately for her, there’d been a strange man looking at corpses for the Devil knows what reason. She’d nearly tore him limb from limb when he’d yanked open the storage door, scalpel raised in defence. He’d taken her home then and there.
She’s been told not to mention this part to other people.
Lestrade’s eyes dip down to study her face in…surprise, possibly? His lips pursed into a nice line, eyebrows raised just enough. “God knows how you put up with him. I see why he likes you.”
“It’s her stunning personality,” Sherlock deadpans as he stands in the hall, fixing the cuffs of his shirt and jacket. “Inspector, please stop harassing my flatmate so we may leave forthwith. Lord knows you need all the help you can get, even if this case is shaping up to be quite straightforward.”
“I’ll ring your bloody neck one day,” Lestrade grumbles under his breath. Louder, “Wishing you well, love, especially with this bastard.”
Sherlock and Lestrade bound down the stairs before she can reply. He won’t be home for ages, so she takes herself to his room and curls up in his blankets. They smell vaguely of him and the laundry detergent. For a little while, she gets to pretend she’s curled up amongst her compatriots on the Devil’s furry rug, sleeping soundly against his legs. She tries not to wonder what she did so wrong to be sent away. She tries not to wonder what she did so right to stay alive despite.
John Watson can’t believe his luck. He’s free. He’s secured a meat suit—simple human body, he means—and fresh wards tattooed into his chest. No one, not even the Devil himself, will know he’s anything other than human. Really, the worst part about being newly human, officially human and not just human-adjacent, was having to piss all the damn time. Truly inconvenient biological function.
He’s having a piss in a bar toilet—alcohol tastes so much better when you’re truly alive—when he runs into someone who knows the actual John Watson. He’s a portly guy roughly around 35, cheer fixed to his face, and round glasses that make him look more joyful than he currently does. The man goes to wash his hands, gives John a halfhearted, polite glance, then stops abruptly mid-soap-scrub.
“Watson, my boy!” he calls and John zips. “It’s been a bloody age since I’ve seen you. I, eh, heard about that IED. We’d thought you’d, erm, bitten it.”
John manages to laugh, then make a polite joke about washing his hands before shaking. When they do, he’s still trying to rifle through John Watson Original’s memories. “Well, it was a tad touch and go there for a minute, but, erm, yeah. Good to see you, Stamford. How’ve you been getting on?”
Stamford—Mike Stamford, another doctor, a college friend turned plastic surgeon—suggests they get out of the toilet for this conversation and leads John to a group of other doctors whose names he can’t place. Stamford makes excuses, then they’re out in mid afternoon sunshine. They chat absently about Bart’s college, about boob jobs, then about the war, albeit briefly.
“War pension doesn’t cover much anymore,” John says because it doesn’t. He’d moved from a rent-free apartment in Hell, stable job security, and good benefits, to this malarky. London is too fucking expensive for one man and sleeping in a vaguely sleazy motel is losing its charm. Rapidly. “Might have to actually find a room to rent in this city.”
“Funnily enough,” Stamford laughs heartily, “you’re the second person to say that to me this week. You got an hour?”
221B Baker street is a semi-busy road, a section of brownstones and a bar called the Volunteer tucked into it. Stamford weaves them through a crowd, then to a well used door with a lion’s head for a knocker. He knocks, waiting patiently and making a whole lot of small talk in the meantime. But John isn’t paying attention. Not just because it’s inane horseshit, but because something is…wrong. Deeply, truly, gut wrenchingly wrong.
The hair on the back of his neck raises, so does the flesh on his arms. John has done a lot of nasty things in the name of Hell and he’s definitely not at the bottom of the food chain, but this—this feels like a predator stalking him from a mile away. His stomach churns. There’s absolutely no way the Devil sent a hell hound to retrieve him. His wards are good. But this is a hell hound feeling; the sickening sense of aching dread that follows the dogs around; there shouldn’t be one around.
But the door to the building is opening and Stamford starts jawing at the older woman coming onto the stoop. She’s a sweet looking thing in her early 70s, a perm of curling, thinning grey hair, and a loose pink dress with a nice belt and collar. She hugs Stamford like they’ve known each other ages and ages.
“Dear Dr. Stamford!” she says, then pinches his cheeks for good measure. “How are you, love? Getting along okay with that nice girl from Tottenham? Oh! And who’s this handsome man?”
“Mrs. Hudson,” Stamford says, “this is my old friend, Dr. John Watson. He’s looking for a room to rent and obviously I thought of you and Sherlock.”
Her face downcasts for just a moment. “Oh that boy. What trouble he keeps getting into—”
There’s a clatter on the stairs. John hears the tumbling, the heavy footsteps and giggling. Mrs. Hudson and Stamford don’t hear it until she’s already shoving past them. And leaping into John. A body wraps around him, arms circling his neck, chin tucked over his shoulder, and she’s squeezing the life out of him.
“Oh, it’s you it’s you it’s you!” squeals the voice in his ear. Something about her lights the rest of him abuzz. When she leans back, it’s still a face he doesn’t recognise. Not the mess of soft brown hair, not the rounded cheekbones, not the bright green eyes.
“And you are again?” he asks. She fists both hands in the front of his t-shirt, rocking back on her heels.
Her pretty face melts. “You don’t remember me? I fetched all your souls.”
And—oh. He leans back, giving her a second once over with unfocused eyes. Yes, there it is! The Hell Hound he’d had assigned to him—she didn’t have a name, just a number, but he’d given her one because she was a special hound—Mary Elizabeth.
He grins and she grins and she latches onto him again. “I thought you’d been reassigned,” he says quietly. It had been one of the reasons he’d wanted out: they’d taken his dog away from him.
She pulls away and shrugs. “Dunno. Woke up Earth side.”
Mrs. Hudson pointedly clears her throat. “Mary Elizabeth, dear, I was under the impression you didn’t have…friends.”
Even as Mary Elizabeth fully separates herself from John, she grips onto his hand stoically. “I know lots of people.”
“Who’s this man, then, that you’ve never mentioned?” and from behind Mrs. Hudson steps out the handsomest man John’s ever seen. The terrible hair, the skinny shoulders, the stench of superiority—John could lick it off him.
“Hi,” John says, trying to appear nonchalant, “I’m Dr. John Watson. You must be Sherlock.”
Sherlock’s eyes narrow. “I see. Iraq or Afghanistan?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Where did you serve? Iraq or Afghanistan?” Sherlock’s gaze is insistent and John might as well be naked under it. Mary Elizabeth’s hand is the only thing holding his feet on the ground.
“Afghanistan,” he mutters, mouth suddenly parched. “How did you—how’d you know?”
Is Sherlock some sort of demon? He doesn’t read like it, but then again, has John’s sense been in the right place these last few days anyways? If Mary Elizabeth is here, by some miracle, then maybe Sherlock is another topside demon. It would be something else if he was just a human and a good guesser. He hopes that as undressed as he feels, Sherlock feels something equally under John’s gaze.
“Sherlock is a smart guy,” Mary Elizabeth says, stress on the human implication. Sherlock’s dark eyes track their conjoined hands and John can practically hear the thousand things he’s processing under that intense gaze. John lets go of Mary Elizabeth’s hand, then gently shoves her forward by the shoulder.
John suggests, “Let’s go inside, yeah? Bit odd taking up the sidewalk.”
Stamford adds in his excuses, something about getting off to an appointment or whatever. John gives him a firm handshake goodbye, tries to add that cheery face to his rolodex, and follows Mary Elizabeth inside the flat.
It’s a nice place, warm toned and charmingly Victorian. There’s a set of rugged stairs leading up to another nice landing and beyond that, a small first floor flat that Mrs. Hudson must live out of or rent. Mrs. Hudson primly leads them all up the stairs, Sherlock bobbing behind her, and then opens the door with a big bronze B on it.
“It’s a two bedroom,” Mrs. Hudson says, “one bath. Though, I can see you certainly won’t mind sharing that second bedroom with its current occupant.”
“Mary Elizabeth and I are just—”
“No, no, dear, no need to explain these things to me.” Mrs. Hudson rips open the curtains sending dust flying and then begins to pick up the slew of dirty cups littering the flat surfaces. It’s a nice living room under all the books, the music stands, and the worn armchairs stacked with a few hundred copies of newspapers. It leads into a kitchen with nice modern appliances and another slew of dirty dishes across the small table and countertops.
In a rush, Sherlock manoeuvres past everyone into the kitchen, scoots aside a pile of dishes, then plops down in the wooden chair to read a book that has seen better days. John wonders if he would be allowed to suck marks into the side of Sherlock’s neck, right where the skin is palest.
“—all for 1400 pounds a month,” Mrs Hudson finishes. John agreeing before she really even says a price. “Rent and deposit due by the end of the week, okay?”
“Sure, Mrs. Hudson,” he says, looking firmly at Sherlock. “That’s all fine.”
Sherlock sees so much and nothing at all when he looks at John Watson. Lots of indicators of various things—the tan line on his wrists and neck from his army uniform; the twinge in his step from the IED explosion that caught soft tissue mostly, leaving structure in tact; the scraped up watch from his drunk older brother; the creases in cheap, well worn jeans and a threading button down with two replacement buttons messily stitched on. John’s never been posh, doubtfully attended a top tier medical school, and definitively excelled in war.
Then, there’s nothing. He peers around the flat as if he’s never seen chairs before, much less books and curtains and throw pillows. John eyes him with too much fervour for someone he’s never met and yet to piss off. John’s stolen Mary Elizabeth’s affection right out from under Sherlock’s nose.
That he doesn’t understand. The two of them are practically glued together. Mary Elizabeth was a corpse for God’s sake! She doesn’t know how to spell, to write, had never seen a goddamn appliance in her life; there’s no way she’s been hiding a boyfriend that just magically appeared as a coincidental flatmate option. However they know each other, it’s from when Mary Elizabeth was a something instead of a human.
Sherlock has his suspicions, but they all sit firmly in the realm of ‘ain’t fucking real’, so he chooses not to think about it too hard.
(It’s consuming him.)
“Tell me, Mary,” John says, sitting squarely in the larger of the two armchairs, “How did you end up in Sherlock’s care?”
Every word that comes out of that man’s mouth feels underlined, subtextual, sensual. Sherlock wishes he would stop talking. Interrupts with, “She and I met in a hospital. She needed help. End of story.”
From the floor, Mary Elizabeth hurrumphs. She sprawls along Mrs. Hudson’s attempt at decor, a dusty, red throw rug from one of Sherlock’s other great aunts, and languidly stares up at the popcorn ceiling. “Not true!” She latches a hand around John’s outstretched ankle, fiddling idly with his shoe strings. “I wake up in this place, no idea where I am or what’s going on. Poor Sherlock didn’t know what to do with me, but you know me, John. He was kind for long enough that I wasn’t going anywhere without him. You’ll like it here. He’s teaching me how to spell!”
A smile curls on John’s face. Fond. What on earth does he have to be fond about? “You’ll have to show me, love. Anything else I should know?”
Tell him you curl up in my bed every night, Sherlock thinks from the other armchair. Tell him you can’t stand when you’re left alone in the house. Tell him I’m afraid you smell the death on me and want more of it.
“Oh!” Mary Elizabeth says, practically wiggling loose from her skin. She sits up enough and tugs on the front of John’s pant leg. “Sherlock has a job! It’s like what we used to do. I think. Sherlock, what do you do again?”
What we used to do. Sherlock tugs on that thought. What they used to do together. Mary Elizabeth, the thing, used to work with John Watson, who is human. Probably. Sherlock looks at him again, knows that the silence is agonisingly long, but John and Mary Elizabeth are looking right back at him. Both of them are human, he thinks, brain working overtime to prove it. They have skin and modern clothes and haircuts. John talks like any lad Sherlock had ever met around the city. Where was the proof of the otherness? How does one prove something that isn’t there?
“I’m a consulting detective,” Sherlock snips. John’s face goes alight, eyebrows and mouth and freckles upturning in a show of interest, of happiness. Human reactions. “I pick up the slack when the police are being their usual dull selves. I provide services to those who have nowhere else to turn. What did you and Mary Elizabeth do, again?”
Mary Elizabeth looks towards John immediately. Deferring. So John was in charge of her, in whatever capacity they worked together. John shrugs, leaning forward to pinch her cheek hard enough that she pulls away. “This and that.”
“Yes, but what?” Sherlock pushes. He hates pushing, hates being annoyed like this. He wants to shout, to throw something at John, to throw things until John just does something close to the truth. They are so far away from each other, orbiting the issue like two planets, one solid, one gas, and their little moon bouncing between.
Mary Elizabeth stands up abruptly, hands on her hips. She’s wearing pants for this conversation, a pair of soft cargo pants two sizes too big that somehow make her endearing looking. The shirt—much too long, one of his, a gag gift from one of his aunts that has periodic table elements spelling GENIUS, he can’t stand wearing it—doesn’t match one bit, which makes her look less endearing. The two cancel each other out to leave just Mary Elizabeth, with zero fashion sense.
“I think,” she says, “we should go to the park. I want to do the, um, oh, the, what is it called? It spins?”
“The carousel,” Sherlock says.
“Yes! That.” Mary Elizabeth must not like the scowl on his face (going somewhere with John? With her? The three of them? Horrible. Untrustworthy. What will John do in a public setting when Mary Elizabeth is uncontrollable at the best of times? Too many unknowns, really) because she trots over and circles her arms around his neck from behind, pressing their cheeks together. “Pleeeeease, Sherlock?”
Her cheek is warm against his—human—and she smells of the vanilla soap he keeps stocked in the shower. It’s hard to resist her when she’s like this. Somehow, he’s both disgusted by human touch and starved of it. One day, he knows it’ll eat him alive, but Mary Elizabeth is soft, safe, nuzzling hard into him like she might sit firmly in the pocket of his cheek one day.
Eventually he concedes with a soft, “fine,” and she squeezes his neck hard. Kisses his cheek. John watches happily, like he might get drunk on it. Sherlock doesn’t like this. Doesn’t like the feel of John’s happiness in his mouth, in his eyes.
John stands, unable to hide the micro expression of pain in his mouth as he puts weight on his unstable, injured knee. But it’s gone in a moment, replaced with a commanding pleasantness. “Mary, go put on some matching clothes. I’m not walking around London with you in that shirt.”
Sherlock feels her frown against his cheek before pulling away. Her hands stay on his shoulders. He feels claimed by her, a toy she’s unwilling to let go of. It’s shockingly warm in his stomach. “But Sherlock never complains about it.”
“That’s because he’s nicer than me. Go, love.”
She pouts harder. Fingers dig ever ever so slightly into his trapezius muscles.
John strides towards them. Sherlock grounds himself in noticing the smallest of stiffness in John’s gait, the whiff on stale cigarettes on his clothes from some bar he’d been in today; Sherlock still has a brain, he still sees.
“I’ll go with you,” John says. Then, “Don’t argue with me.” Sherlock hopes John doesn’t see the shiver that runs through him. Hopes that Mary Elizabeth has all of John’s attention in this moment. She lets John shepherd her towards the bedroom she keeps her small stack of clothes in, the one that John will move eventually move into. Sherlock breathes. No more crowding in his own home, no more undue pressure as people observe him in return. But it’s cold in the absence of Mary Elizabeth’s fingers and John’s stare.
They return a few minutes later, when Sherlock is suitable ready to endure both of them again, with Mary Elizabeth scolded into a sensible sweater and jeans. It’s odd to see her in a normal set of clothes. Sherlock has never once successfully bullied her into anything sensible; he hadn’t thought it possible.
“Ready,” John says, hand carefully curled around Mary Elizabeth’s bicep, her arms folded into a match of her frown. “I thought that would be more of a fight.”
Sherlock stands, grabs his keys from a lingering bookshelf and charges out the door without waiting. As he’s opening the downstairs door, Mary Elizabeth wraps a hand with his, creating a daisy chain between them. Their arms swing as they walk the street towards the park. She doesn’t stop yammering about the ducks, how Sherlock took her to feed them peas once because it’s safer than bread, how he wouldn’t let her eat one of the birds. They are a unit then, visible, public, together.
Later, with Mary Elizabeth shin deep in the pond, John and Sherlock sharing a park bench in an appropriately separate way, John sighs. Says, “I know that you’re suspicious of me. Because of her.”
Sherlock doesn’t make a noise. Doesn’t want to ruin the moment. Mary Elizabeth waves at them from the pond, jeans rolled up to her knees, before shoving her hands back into the gunk to fish for something.
“We have a history, me and her, but don’t think it will change how she feels about you.”
Don’t look at him, Sherlock, don’t look at him.
“Mary’s…when she decides she likes you, she’ll do anything for you. Loyal as a dog.”
Sherlock looks. Eyes the slope of John’s nose, the hint of blonde stubble on his cheeks, the rosey tint to his skin, the way his hair is growing out of its regulation haircut, the scar over his left eyebrow and on the matching cheek. He’s fond, soft, easy. Until John looks back at Sherlock and it’s like looking at the sun. Bright, hot, reverent. John isn’t soft at all in that moment.
What if, he wants to ask, this changes how I feel about her? About you?
“Thank you for looking after her,” John finishes. It’s implied, But now I’m here and you won’t need to any longer. Job opening closed.
Sherlock turns back to Mary Elizabeth, to the older women quickly walking along the path in their sport suits, both staring disgustingly at her brazen pond diving. Quickly, she’s jumping out of the pond, running towards the pair of them, barefoot, something clutched in her hands.
“Look! Look!” she says, diving into the spot between them, joining them again into a unit. She opens her palms to show off a very gold necklace, a heart shaped locket underneath some of the pond gunk.
“That’s some find!” John remarks, taking it from her fingers to pry it open. No pictures inside; probably melted away by the water. “See how it’s blank in here? That’s where people put tiny pictures of their loved ones, so they always have them with them.”
Mary Elizabeth grins, wiggles in her seat. Sherlock can feel her wet legs bleeding into his own pants. “I can put pictures of you in there! I like it.”
Of John. Sherlock scoots far enough away to avoid the wet sensation continuing. Mary Elizabeth takes a hold of his forearm. “That means you too. Can we get pictures this small?”
“Yes—” he starts, but she’s hugging him wetly around the neck. Explosively happy. Over her bushy hair, John is looking at him. The sun is noticing him, golden and shining and so much heat. Both of them. She said both of them like it was nothing. Maybe it is nothing. Maybe Sherlock is reading into things too much. Sherlock doesn’t like maybe.
“We’ll get them printed,” John says, “together.”
It’s pointed. Message received. Sherlock looks down at his shoes, once Mary Elizabeth has pulled away, pulled back to John. Sherlock looks at the Oxfords his brother made him get, at the detailing that Mycroft insisted on, at the scuffs in the leather from crime scenes and breaking and entering.
“I have this case,” Sherlock says, “that I—I’ll need an assistant for.” Swallows. “How do you feel about dead bodies, John?”
And the satisfaction in John’s smile is worth it. Just for now, just in this one microsecond that Sherlock allows himself.