TBB: Chapter Seven

[caulkhead]

Sherlock eyed the driver of the sleek, anonymous black car with disfavour.

“Mr Holmes said I was to take you wherever you wanted to go,” the driver repeated stubbornly. “Both of you.”

He and John exchanged glances.

“Thank you, we'll walk,” John said.

“And you can tell my brother it might not hurt to do the same himself, occasionally,” Sherlock added over his shoulder, as they walked off down the road. Somewhat to John's surprise, the car did not follow them. They walked in companionable silence for a while, John content to follow Sherlock's lead.

“Breakfast?” Sherlock asked eventually.

“Breakfast,” John agreed. “And coffee. A great deal of coffee. Which I will make, since you apparently never got the hang of when to stop putting the grounds in. Er - my place or yours?”

“Mine. There's rather a good deli on the ground floor, and they're fond of me in there.”

There was something inevitable about that, John reflected. The man was a walking compendium of favours done and favours owed.

“Got someone off an assault charge, did you?”

“Pointed out a problem with their cash register. Actually. Taxi!”

.....

They were making their way up the stairs (“Lift out of order. Again. It's a crime what the service charges are, given the utter lack of anything resembling service,” Sherlock observed) when they heard the clip of high heels coming up the stairs behind them. Sherlock instantly dropped both the bags he was carrying, careless of milk and eggs alike, and, to John's utter astonishment, swept him into a passionate - and surprisingly expert – embrace.

He was dimly aware of a squeak of dismay in the background, and of the footsteps speeding up and past them, but he had little attention to spare. He closed his eyes and gave himself up to the moment.

“Sherlock?” he asked, when he could speak again. “What the hell was all that about? We established months ago that I'm straight and you're not interested, and then you push me up against a wall and make a pretty creditable attempt at snogging my face off. I mean, it's not that I didn't enjoy it, but...”

Sherlock propped both arms on the wall either side of John's head and bent his head slightly to look him in the eye. The long, lean body remained pressed against his own. His voice was breathy and amused, but incisive as ever.

“Heels that height at this hour of the morning? Obvious. Someone returning from a night out. Walk somewhat unsteady; could be hangover but given the smell of antiseptic preceding her by at least fifteen yards she's also spent her most recent hours in a hospital. Well, again, finishing the night in A&E isn't necessarily incompatible with a good night out –"

"You don't say," John murmured, rather breathlessly. "Candlelit meal, little light burglary, murderous assault by thugs, trauma surgery – "

"- but given the overall lack of other women on this floor and on the one above, and the fact that of the available candidates one wears ballet flats, one's recovering from a sprained ankle and is currently wearing one trainer and one man's sock and the last one's away on a field trip in Northern Iceland, that can only be our blogger."

John's medical instincts were outraged "They've got no business letting her out inside 24 hours."

"Because of the risk of bleeding into the brain?" Sherlock's voice sounded very sardonic. "I hardly think that's the greatest risk anyone's taken recently."

"Sherlock – "

"Mycroft's people are competent. If she's been released from their safe-keeping, then they must have judged it safe for her. Or, more to the point, safer for them. Which brings us back to the snogging. After that little demonstration last night – both your reading Hardy –"

"Well, mostly Hardy.-"

"A vastly improved version in which the logical contradictions in the original were ruthlessly exposed. And your doing the heroic doctor bit – it's quite clear she's got you earmarked as a leading contender to be The One. Best to make it clear you're out of the running. Unambiguously. She's going to be out again any second to make sure she wasn't hallucinating her earlier glimpse, by the way.”

Above them, a door opened. John gulped.

“Sherlock? I never thought I'd say this, but – kiss me again.”

......

They made it – just – through the door to Sherlock's flat before collapsing in a giggling heap on the sofa.

"Oh. My. God. The expression on her face!"

Between gasps, Sherlock choked out, "You do realize that she's just hot-footed it back to her keyboard, so she can share with the whole of the internet her wild generalizations about the male population of Manchester and its sexual orientation?"

"But I'm from Chelmsford."

This, for some reason, seemed to strike Sherlock as the funniest thing yet. He croaked, "Chelmsford! Chelmsford 123!", turned over and chortled helplessly into the sofa cushions.

John pulled himself together first.

"Anyway. Breakfast. Eggs. Fried or scrambled?"

Sherlock stretched, lounging across the whole extent of the sofa. "Scrambled. But how come she got lobster and I get eggs?"

"You think I'd have risked inviting her for breakfast? Also, jealous, much?"

Sherlock wrinkled his surprisingly retroussé nose. "Rubbish. But I demand you explain your secret past as a Cordon Bleu cook, nonetheless."

John, finding himself unexpectedly flustered by the implied compliment, muttered, "You missed the bit where I told everyone that, then?"

"Evidently. Elucidate."

"Oh, it was Chloe's fault."

"Chloe." There was a speaking pause.

John, despite his underlying sense of being manipulated, felt moved to fill it. "Ex-girlfriend. Awful personality, I discovered, in the end – she'd have been a front-runner in the All-England Women's Condescension Championships – but she looked like a much taller version of Keira Knightley and her legs went all the way up to her neck."

"Really, John, given your objection to specimens of abnormal anatomy in the kitchen, you seem to be remarkably tolerant of them in the bedroom."

John moved over to the kitchen area and began breaking eggs briskly into a saucepan.

"Anyway, I started going out with her when I got my first house job at Bart's and she insisted on putting herself in charge of arrangements for the first – well, actually, only – holiday we had together. I fancied a beach in the Med, so she booked us onto a French Classic cookery course in Brittany."

"Where, of course, your dexterity with a knife, unflappability when confronted with instructions such as 'reserve the cock's blood to thicken the sauce' and command of filthy French slang caused you to bond instantly with the course staff, leaving Chloe high and dry. I see. And so, the disastrous holiday having left you without a girlfriend within a week of your return to London, you decided to turn your newly acquired skills into another weapon in your seducer's armoury. With any success?"

John turned the scrambled eggs out onto plates, sprinkled chopped coriander over them, and handed Sherlock his breakfast.

"And when you've finished that," he said warningly, "we're got unfinished business with our blogger. We can't, actually, just leave her in the lurch."

"Why on earth not? The woman's a dangerous half-wit; in one night she's managed to account for the careers of a civil service high flyer and a prominent history don, to say nothing of the collateral damage to the WCML and the Victoria Baths."

"I don't care, Sherlock. She is still having to cope with the aftermath of a violent break-in while, I suspect, having a headache like forty pile-drivers inside her skull. We have to go over and help her out, at least until Mycroft's minions posing as the SOC team show up. Manners demand it. I'll manage to gloss over the snogging business somehow; explain that I'd been fighting against it ever since I bumped into you on Minshull Street, say I'm sorry if I unintentionally led her along..."

"Leave the lying to me. I'm far better at it."

"Hm. Point of order. Last time you conveyed, 'Thanks, but no thanks' to a woman she rebounded straight into the arms of a crazed criminal mastermind."

"John, you scintillate, as ever! Insanely brilliant idea. It might even work!"

"No, that's too ruthless even for you. Actually, it's too ruthless even for Mycroft. And Toby's not getting a vote."

"What - you think even after all she's put everyone through, she still doesn't deserve that?"

"Actually, Sherlock - well, put it this way. You came in at around the coffee and truffles stage. But I had every course of that blasted dinner party, and, trust me, I don't think we dare take the risk of what Moriarty might end up doing if he's exposed to her for any length of time. And – you know the most worrying part about that scenario? God help me, I might actually end up sympathizing with him. "

---

Oh, Manchester. Manchester, Manchester. How could you do this to me? Or was it me – did I misread you from the start? I don't know where to begin. I feel bruised, and not just physically – though that too. Perhaps I was too codependent, too clingy, made my desires known too quickly. Or perhaps you just weren't ready for me. Well, it's over now. I won't pretend, it was good while it lasted, but long-term, there was nothing solid between us.

I should have known last night, of course. The signals were all there, but I guess I was ignoring them, because I wanted things to work out between us. You'd think living in LA for years would have honed a girl's gaydar to a fine point, but when I want to believe something... there's very little that can stand in my way. And I did, so much, want to believe.

Okay, you've guessed by now. Me and Incredibly Cute Trauma Specialist? Not going to happen. Came home this morning – and what a morning after the night before that was – and practically fell over him and Sherringford making out on the landing. They hadn't even managed to get through the front door. Kind of cute, but it doesn't do much for my self-esteem.

I'm getting ahead of myself, though. Last night, I went to my very first ultra-proper British dinner party. And very proper it was, too – there was even a real, live Earl. And his Countess. Who live in a castle. And a novelist, who's apparently quite well-known over here. I asked whether she'd ever tried to get any of her books optioned, sort of hinting subtly that a good screenwriter might be able to do a lot with them, but she didn't bite. Found out later I 'd broken one of the cardinal rules – mustn't talk business at dinner! So different from LA. Naughty screenwriter! ICTS's equally cute cousin told me later, so nice of him (Exceedingly cute, actually. And so considerate, in that hot British way. But way too young for me.) Anyway, John did all the cooking himself. And the food was divine. According to him because he'd been dragged on some sort of gourmet cooking course in the past, by an ex-girlfriend.

As if! I should have known. No straight man cooks like that.

I got rather giggly over the course of dinner (Gee, what is it with Brits and booze?), so in the end, Equally Cute Cousin saw me home. And that was where things really went off the rails. I'd been burgled! The flat looked like the aftermath of the Vanity Fair Oscars party, so he took me back to John's, where he was staying. Only, turns out the burglars hadn't gotten what they'd been after, and they followed us. And next thing I knew, I was flat on my back, with ICTS holding my hand and gazing into my eyes. No, not like that. If only! And then I was whisked off to hospital by helicopter (socialised medicine is obviously better than I thought), leaving him and Sherringford alone...

They both came round this morning to help me tidy up. John was terribly apologetic, and really rather adorable with it. Sherringford, regrettably, was less adorable. He was practically preening himself – but maybe that's the disappointment speaking. Seems like John fell hard for Sherringford the first time he saw him, and he's been trying to kid himself it was me ever since. I guess that's the trouble with growing up in a country like Britain where everyone's so uptight. They're just not in touch enough with their inner feelings. And for a man like ICTS, it's still a reach to admit that he's gay at all. So coming out to me was a pretty brave thing to do, really. I suppose. I'm glad I brought them together, really I am. If I can't find love myself, at least I can show other people the way. . Just call me Cupid! But where does that leave me? And my affair with Manchester?

I got confused by the name. Man-chester. So fitting, right? Only it turns out it is fitting, but not in the way that I thought. I was looking for a man but the men were looking for each other. I've been in the wrong place all along. I need to go back to my roots, start over from there. And since my ancestors are a few miles away, in Yorkshire, I think that's where I was being drawn to, if only I hadn't gotten distracted. Red roses for passion, sure, but white roses are forever. And that's what this quest is all about - forever.

So, as soon as I've posted this, I'm off to the railway booking site. And the first available train to Leeds.