First of all: sorry for the delay. I'm still very slow in traslating and both me and my beta reader Zylstra (how much can I love that woman?) were occupied with real life for a bit. But now the second chapter is on so... have a nice read! ;D

Chapter 2
Andante

Sherlock drew the pipette from the reagent's plastic bottle, taking a minimum amount from it. He transferred the plastic tip to the slide, making it drop a drop over the sample – a green paint residue found under the shoes of the victim's brother.

The man claimed it came from a wall that he'd stripped during the renovations of his newly purchased home but Sherlock thought otherwise. The brother was his number one suspect – everything perfectly matched his observations. All the puzzle's pieces were perfectly aligned to form the general framework and this simple chemical experiment would give him the solution he was searching for (and the evidence that Lestrade was looking for).

The reagent soon began to sizzle, causing a reaction with the piece of paint dissolved in the neutral base. While placing the pipette on the table someone knocked and the laboratory's door opened.

Sherlock glanced in the direction of the entrance just to make sure who it was. Using a university lab was inconvenient in that it wasn't his own and it was normal for the legitimate occupants of the building to enter at their own convenience. He couldn't do anything about that.

He had already expected it to be Mike Stamford, and it was, but had expected him to be alone. Instead, he was accompanied by a man (shorter than average, lame, military-style posture and haircut – wounded in action? Yes, but still too vague. Need more information. Tanned, on vacation? No. On a mission in the Middle East? Too early to tell. Silver ring on the finger, wide enough as craftsmanship, particularly interesting. Normal clothes, used but not crumpled or dirty, middle class, modest income, unemployed) who he seemed to know.

He focused his attention back towards the slide and moved it with circular movements, watching the reaction occurring. It'd changed colour. Presence of iron, then. The paint didn't come from a wall but from an object with an iron core which had oxidized with time. Like a gate...or a ladder.

Meanwhile, the newcomer stopped at the end of the table, looking around.

"Oh... bit different from my days," he commented.

"You've no idea," replied Mike.

(Educated at Bart's, doctor, military doctor.)

"Mike, can I borrow your phone? There's no signal on mine," said Sherlock sitting, mobile phone in his hand.

"What's wrong with the landline?" asked Stamford in response.

"I prefer to text," he quickly retorted, as if it were obvious. It was obvious.

The newcomer watched them in silence. Sherlock observed him out of the corner of his eye.

(Straight posture, well balanced, he's still standing but not overly relies on the cane and doesn't ask for a chair. Psychosomatic limp?)

"Sorry, it's in my coat," replied Mike at the same time, making a distracted gesture in the direction of the door. He'd left it in his office, probably, hung in the coat rack along with the above-mentioned coat.

Sherlock was about to snort, annoyed, when the (former? Of course former) soldier spoke up.

"Oh, here," he began, extracting the mobile phone from his trousers' pocket, "use mine."

"Oh...thank you," replied Sherlock, standing up and heading towards him.

Mike decided it was a good time for presentations. "He's an old friend of mine, John Watson."

When John handed over the phone, and the shirt sleeve hitched up up due to the movement, Sherlock had to suppress the instinct to raise the right corner of the lips. Now he had the full picture.

(Military doctor, on a mission in the Middle East, wounded in action but not the leg, psychosomatic limp, almost certainly has a therapist, PTSD. Middle class, unemployed, probably recently discharged from hospital, lives on his army pension. Oh. Seriously, Mike? A flatmate? That's why you brought him here. A risk though: from underneath the ring it can be seen the white rim of a band-aid; he's a BCE. Mike doesn't seem to know. Remarkable that he's been trained at Bart's with that sort of condition.)

Sherlock took the phone, their fingers touched lightly and, turning it over, began to write the SMS.

(New model, too expensive for him, he can't afford it. A gift. He has someone who wants to stay in touch. There's an engraving on the back, it can be felt under the fingertips and I was able to read it before turning the phone. "Harry Watson from Clara xxx." The three kisses mean romantic relationship; the cost of the phone was high, suggesting it was from his wife, then. A wife who Harry's left, since he gave the phone to his brother – no sentiment there. The cover is scratched, as well as the charging jack: unstable hands, alcoholic? It's a stab in the dark but it could be. John didn't approve of either, and that is why he won't ask for help. The only doubt left...)

"Afghanistan or Iraq?"

Mike pulled out his crafty expression, as if he'd been expecting that show since he set foot inside the laboratory. Watson seemed simply caught by surprise.

"Sorry?" he asked.

"Which was it, Afghanistan or Iraq?" specified Sherlock immediately, making it easy to understand and hoping for a quick response that would finally put an end to his chain of reasoning on that man.

The doctor hesitated a few moments, looking at him and then Mike before responding.

"Afghanistan. Sorry, how did you...?"

"Ah, Molly! Coffee, thank you." Sherlock interrupted him as he closed the phone and returned it, before grabbing the cup from the coroner who had just entered the room.

"What happened to the lipstick?" he asked Molly.

"It wasn't working for me," she replied, wringing her hands.

"Really? I thought it was a big improvement. Mouth's too... small now." Returning to sit at the table, he sipped his coffee.

"Okay..." cheeped Molly, leaving the lab.

Placing the cup on the table and starting to write an email on the laboratory's computer, Sherlock decided to move onto practical things.

"How do you feel about the violin?" he asked John.

Mike grinned, obviously pleased.

Watson was silent for a moment. "Sorry, what?"

"I play the violin when I'm thinking," Sherlock explained, speaking directly to John, "and sometimes I don't speak for days on end. Will that bother you? Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other."

Watson turned to Stamford, surprised. "Did you... you talked to him about me?"

"Not a word," came the answer.

"Then who said anything about flatmates?"

Sherlock shrugged on his coat. "I did. I told Mike this morning that I must be a difficult man to find a flatmate for; now here he is, just after lunch, with an old friend clearly just home from military service in Afghanistan. Not a difficult leap."

"How did you know about Afghanistan?" asked John, more wary now, almost suspicious. Typical reaction.

Sherlock ignored the question. "I've got my eye on a nice little place in central London. Together we ought be able to afford it. Meet me there tomorrow evening at 7 o'clock. Sorry, gotta dash, I think I left my riding crop in the mortuary." He checked his phone quickly before stashing it in his pocket and brushing past John, still standing.

"Is that it?" asked the doctor.

Sherlock turned away from the door with a fluid motion. "Is that what?" he asked in turn.

"Well, we just met and we're gonna look at a flat."

Sherlock looked around before responding. "Problem?"

Watson smiled thinly, then shot back, "we don't know a thing about each other. I don't know where we're meeting, I don't even know your name." The soldier part of him finally came into sight.

He asked for it.

"I know you're an army doctor and you've been invalided home from Afghanistan. You've got a brother who's worried about you, but you won't go to him for help because you don't approve him, possibly because he's an alcoholic, more likely because he recently walked out on his wife. And I know your therapist thinks your limp's psychosomatic, quite correctly I'm afraid. So, that's enough to be going on with, don't you think?"

John Watson's look passed from doubtful to incredulous over the whole speech, the settled into a serious amazement. Sherlock decided that as a demonstration could be enough and turned again, reaching the door for the second time. Except that he stopped and added: "the name's Sherlock Holmes and the address is 221B of Baker Street. After–"

He was interrupted before he could finish the sentence.

" 'Sherlock'? " snapped suddenly Watson, eyebrows frowned in an astonished expression.

Sherlock wasn't perturbed by the reaction. Many times people had raised their eyebrows upon hearing his name, so unusual and old fashioned, and after thirty years he was used at it. What prevented him to give a quick response and fly out of the lab was the expression in the eyes of John Watson, hiding something else behind the surprise, something he couldn't quite define.

But he stopped anyway.

Because it was impossible for John Watson to have his name on his finger underneath that silver band... wasn't it?

"Is there any problem?" Sherlock asked.

A flicker of another expression crossed John's face. "Sorry, it's just an unusual name, that's all." It was gone again just as quickly.

Maybe he was wrong and it was really a reaction due to the strangeness of the name. Maybe.

Sherlock nodded slightly, then again toward Mike and, saluting with a "good afternoon", he finally left the lab.

Interesting, that John Watson.

.o.

John opened the door to the room he'd rented in the military boarding house, closing it behind him absent-mindedly.

His brain was completely empty, as if it'd received an electric shock more powerful than a usual synapse, and it was still in the midst of being restarted again.

Sherlock Holmes.

It couldn't be him, of course. But how many "Sherlock"s existed in Britain? A dozen? And how many under fifty years of age? "Sherlock" wasn't a common or frequently used name, and it certainly wasn't a young man's name.

It was like being reunited with an old classmate who always took the piss out of him, or a teammate who hadn't found a more exciting pastime during adolescence than teasing him. As "Sherlock hovered in the door to the lab, John had felt the instinct to punch him, his left hand itch and the wound on his ring finger burn more than ever.

"Sherlock", his injury flashed and screamed, "Sherlock" is here. The name at the end of all your nightmares. "Sherlock."

But John didn't hate him. He had almost been expecting it, the wave of pure resentment to come from his stomach and wash across his chest, climb into his throat and up to the brain. But it didn't happen.

He didn't hate Sherlock Holmes.

Instinct told him that was him, but reason insisted that he couldn't prove it. And never could.

John was a BCE and Sherlock a Bondless. Sherlock had no name on his finger, and wore no ring (John had noticed while the man was sending a message with his phone). The rules of Bond didn't apply to them.

For many, it would have been conclusive evidence... in fact all matched the observations and all was so glaringly obvious: a Bondless and a BCE with the Bondless' name engraved on the skin. The refusing and the refused. A funny little comedy that had brought them in front of one another for ten minutes, in which John had been dissected like a frog during a biology lesson.

Was he supposed to be his...flatmate?

John's lips twitched into a sarcastic smirk.

It seemed life wasn't the only pretty bitchy force. Mother Nature (or perhaps nature's angry step-mother) had been as much of a great whore to him and that was it. And it hadn't lost the habit.

Sighing, he pulled the phone out of his pocket, selecting the message icon.

John had asked Stamford exactly who Sherlock Holmes was but the teacher failed to tell him too much. He told him that Holmes was a chemist but never completed university. He had withdrawn after completing all his lessons but before presenting his thesis. His job was to occasionally –and very unofficially – collaborate with the police and, due to some family connection, he had access to Bart's laboratories for analysis.

Practically, it was nothing, the tip of the iceberg. Sherlock Holmes seemed much more and just a glimpse, just listening to him once was enough to figure it out. Sherlock looked like one of those people that could be loved or hated without the luxury of a middle ground. And still, even if he had all the reasons, John didn't hate him.

John opened outbox folder, quickly finding the message typed by Holmes a few hours before and sent to a number which clearly Sherlock knew by memory.

If the brother has a green ladder, arrest the brother. – SH

Who was Sherlock Holmes? What was he? Should John show up at Baker Street the next day? Should he let it go and leave things as they were? Should he quit right here, not overstretch fate's belt, disappear from Sherlock Holmes' life making Sherlock himself disappear from his own just as he'd entered it?

Without putting the mobile phone back in his pocket, John grabbed his cane and limped to his desk. Then he turned on the PC, connected it to Internet and opened Google.

And in the search bar typed "Sherlock Holmes".

.o0o.

The Chinese restaurant, Royal China, at 23 Baker Street [1] was a large place with many tables and curtains made of heavy red fabric. On the walls, sparkles of gold and blue paint gave the place a typical oriental atmosphere and red paper lanterns dangled from the ceiling above each table, giving the place a soft and private atmosphere.

It was now past midnight and there were few customers in the restaurant. It was Thursday after all. But, despite the time, Sherlock and John were greeted with a smile and a bow and accompanied at their small table in the corner of the room. The window overlooked the road and John began to wonder if Sherlock was in the habit of keeping tabs on the outside every time he went to a restaurant or if, instead, only went to restaurants for stake outs.

"I don't go to restaurants only for stakeouts," said Sherlock suddenly from across the table, glancing through the menu offhandedly. John raised an eyebrow.

"How did you...?"

"I can read it in your face," replied Sherlock. "You looked at me and then at the window twice, probably wondering whether I was in the habit of sitting alongside windows and why, so I replied."

John had known him from a little less than 48 hours and Sherlock still left him flabbergasted every time he opened his mouth. "Fantastic," commented John, sincerely impressed.

Sherlock shrugged. "Easy." He appeared indifferent, save for a tiny quirk of the corner of his lips.

John understood in no time that the consulting detective had a penchant for compliments. And certainly John wasn't doing it only for fun but because he had the impression that Sherlock could understand exactly when a person was sincere or not – and not only by observing the classic signs of a lie, like eyes or non-verbal gestures; Sherlock could recognize a liar in their clothes and in their surroundings and a million other places, too. To deceive him would require a great liar, and John wasn't one. So John's compliments were sincere.

Sherlock had won him over within 24 hours, dragging him around London like a spinning top, making him see the hidden aspects of the city and its black blood veins under the skin of boredom that covered it.

His hand trembled no more, and his leg didn't ache. He wasn't feeling alone anymore, not now. Mycroft Holmes was right: with Sherlock, he could see the battlefield again and this seemed to make him well.

He wondered for a moment on who really was the more mentally disturbed of them.

He had gone to Baker Street in exasperation, out of courtesy. He would have looked at the apartment and, beautiful or not, refused with any excuse. He'd thought it was impossible for him, after all, to live with his SIN, or the person who almost certainly it would be. He'd needed years to come to terms with it, to shake off the resentment, and when it came down to the punch he hadn't managed it at all. Among the other things, Sherlock was opinionated, arrogant and decidedly self-centred, and John had no time for dealing with someone like Sherlock Holmes.

He'd entered Baker Street with the intention to refuse. He left it as different man with a new apartment, shared with an eccentric and brilliant flatmate that, never mind liking, he was supposed to hate enough to outshine his curiosity (but didn't, perhaps out of empathy) toward him.

John was screwed.

Upon arrival of the waitress Sherlock ordered Cantonese rice and lemon chicken, while John ordered spring rolls, rice noodles with vegetables and a plate of mushrooms and bamboo. The girl, young and smiling, nodded and headed into the kitchen with their orders.

Precisely when the silence began to be almost embarrassing, Sherlock took word.

"You're a BCE." His voice had the flat and quiet tone of someone who wasn't asking a question.

John jerked in surprise. He didn't think he'd be able to get away with it for too much longer but he'd hoped, due to the private nature of the topic, that potential arguments would be a sufficient deterrent. It seemed that for Sherlock Holmes, it wasn't.

John smirk bitterly, eyes low and settled on the table. "I was hoping we'd talk about the rent," he said.

"This is more interesting," Sherlock answered, watching him carefully.

"No. No, I don't think so," retorted John, harsh and suddenly on the defensive, a knee-jerk reaction that raised its hackles despite his attempts to moderate it. He made a concerted effort, however, to soften his speech. "I'd ask how you discovered it but the answer wouldn't surprise me."

Sherlock answered anyway, prompt as anything. "I saw the patch when you passed me your phone, yesterday at Bart's."

"It's not something anyone would notice."

"I'm not anyone." Sherlock looked over his shoulder into the street beyond before he continued. "Also, your reaction to my name intrigued me. This isn't the first time that's happened, but in these past hours I understood that it wasn't the usual type of reaction. Therefore I wondered why..." dropped Sherlock, implying without a doubt a question.

John lifted his eyes from the table and stared into Sherlock's blue-green ones. Depending on the light that struck them, those irises had different shades, but they never escaped their owner's control in reflecting his feelings. If Sherlock wanted them to express any sentiment, he would make it happen; if he wanted them to be cold and unfeeling, that's how they'd be read.

To John, they looked cold and unfeeling now.

"Why...?" It was the last defensive line of someone who had their back against a wall and just barely refused to give in to panic.

The corner of Sherlock's lips rose up before he talked again. "Do you really want to play this game with me?" he asked.

John raised his chin slightly. "Give me a direct question and you'll get a direct answer."

The other man seized the opportunity. "There's my name under that band-aid?" Sherlock asked, pointing at the silver ring in John's left ring finger.

John raised an eyebrow in the most puzzled expression in his arsenal. Holmes was an unbelievably skilled observer but John had lied about this from childhood, and surely that meant he could spout lies without batting an eyelid. Falsehood was an art that improved with time, after all.

"What?!" John exclaimed, smiling. It seemed to work, because Sherlock frowned. "No, absolutely not! What sane person in a situation like mine would live with his SIN?" He shook his head with a smirk. "Egocentric much?" He took a sip of water, hoping that Sherlock hadn't noticed the slight tremor of agitation in his hand.

Although not entirely convinced, Sherlock was definitely doubtful – always better than nothing. At least he'd stop asking questions for a while and perhaps even reconsider his idea. Maybe.

Any reply Sherlock was about to give was interrupted by the arrival of their orders. They stood silent while the waitress placed the dishes on the table – a moment that John used to calm down - and continued even after, during the first few mouthfuls.

John decided to break the silence by changing the subject. "Is it a problem, anyway?" he asked.

Sherlock looked up at him through a surprisingly delicate forkful of Chinese food. "What?"

"That I'm a Ribbon. For the flat, I mean." Certain things had better be unravelled immediately. If Sherlock would rather not have him around...

"No," Sherlock answered, as if the question itself had no reason to be asked. "If I had problems I would have distanced you first."

John nodded. "Right."

"John, I pay close attention to statistics about BCE. I can't say they aren't at least reasonably sound – it's undeniable that they are – but I don't like to generalize. I'm a Bondless after all."

The detective wasn't entirely wrong. If the Ribbons were discriminated against, the Bondless were closely-related subspecies, another example of Nature's crude humour. Sherlock was also a rather eccentric type so John supposed being a Bondless hadn't helped much in his life, either.

A smile escaped from John. "How can you know that I'm not dangerous?" he asked, although the tone was decidedly more relaxed.

Sherlock cleaned his mouth with a napkin. "A few hours ago. You didn't shoot until I was in immediate danger. You were waiting to see my reaction."

"Your thoughtless and idiotic reaction," John shot back.

"In either case," Sherlock skated over the comment with a wave of his hand, "the point is what it shows. You have a strong moral fibre, you've not killed until you've been obligated to. It's enough for me."

Watson giggled, incredulous. "And you base your assessment on the fact that I hesitated before killing a man rather than the fact that I actually killed him?" he asked, flabbergasted.

Holmes eyes swivelled. "You haven't hesitated, you've waited," specified Sherlock, "it's different. And it was... a great shot," he added.

John returned to his rice. "I assume this is a "thank you for saving my life"."

"Like I said, I had everything under control," retorted Sherlock, but John chuckled again. Behind all that pride and eccentricity and his lack of consideration for others' feelings, he glimpsed the man Sherlock Holmes really was, with all his flaws and strengths, a reflection that probably few others had glimpsed and that even John had barely scratched the surface of.

And he didn't dislike what he saw at all.

.o0o.

They returned to Baker Street a couple of hours before dawn.

From above London's skyscrapers, the night's black began to fade into feeble colours, brush strokes of pastel blue on the horizon and sprinkles of dark purple here and there. Sherlock expected it to be a good day.

As always after a case, the 72 hours of continuous vigil was taking its toll on his mind and the derived fatigue was beginning to burden him. It was not unlikely that he'd allow himself more than 10 hours sleep once the aftermath of the case – bureaucratic and non-bureaucratic – had been resolved.

They were gone from the crime scene before too many police patrols and journalists arrived. Dimmock was predictably in agreement that they didn't testify, so they jumped in a cab and returned home, making a quick detour to return Sarah home.

John found a free chair in the kitchen and sat on it. "Did I ever tell you how much I love this place? Especially after a long day of being held at gunpoint." The living room was still littered with containers upon containers of books, armchairs included. It'd take a whole afternoon to clean everything up and returning them to police.

Sherlock didn't comment, removing his coat and hanging it behind his bedroom's door. He shed the black jacket next and, heading calmly into the kitchen, rolled up the shirt's sleeves over his elbows.

"Turn that way," he ordered, pointing towards the table and pressing John to show him the side of his head.

John, taking a few moments to remember he had a head injury, made a vague gesture with his hand. "Don't worry," he dismissed easily, "it doesn't hurt anymore. I'll disinfect it before taking a shower."

But Sherlock refused to give up. "Turn that way," he repeated, this time gently grabbing John's chin with his fingers and forcing him to turn away. Watson couldn't help but obey (Holmes could be stubborn sometimes).

"I told you it's all right," John insisted.

"They knocked you out with the stock of a gun. You might have a concussion."

"I don't have a concussion, Sherlock," replied John calmly, but that didn't prevent Sherlock from observing the wound. "I'd have other symptoms as well, like nausea, which I don't have. It's just a little knock."

"Cut."

"What?"

"You got a cut on your head," corrected Sherlock. "Stay here." He disappeared into his room.

When Sherlock returned carrying disinfectant, cotton wool and a brown leather case, he noted that John's eyes were fixed on the living room's window, still marked with Chinese numbers 1 and 15 in yellow paint.

The detective moved one of the remaining trays on the table from earlier that evening, placed the medical equipment on it and began to disinfect wound among John's hair.

"It'll take a whole bottle of turpentine to remove that paint, unless we change the glass," mumbled John, wrinkling his nose when Sherlock rubbed the disinfectant-soaked cotton ball across his bloody cut.

"I was thinking of leaving them like that, actually." Said Sherlock, too focused to sound ironic as he wanted.

"No, Sherlock," replied John immediately. "I won't leave a threat in Chinese on my living rooms windows."

"Our living room. And technically it's a numeric code in dialectical ideograms that just happens to be a threat."

"It's a threat."

The corner of Sherlock's lips curled up.

Sherlock finished cleaning up the wound and the surrounding skin, placing the dirty cotton ball on the table and reaching for the brown box. By clicking the grapple he opened it, carefully selecting one of the glass bottles contained therein. He unscrewed the cap, plunged another piece of cotton wool – holding it with pliers this time – into the clear liquid it contained and, tapping lightly, began to wipe the wound.

"What kind of stuff is this?" asked the doctor, turning the small bottle in order to read the label. He jerked, pulling away from Sherlock's care. "Morphine?"

Sherlock sighed. "Stay still." He reached up again, pulling John's head in the same position as before.

"Morphine, Sherlock?" repeated the doctor, baffled.

Holmes sighed again. "I'm glad you can still real labels," he mocked absent-mindedly, all his attention focused on wetting John's skin as much as possible with the anaesthetic.

"Don't joke. If Lestrade finds this thing..."

"I stopped using it for recreational purposes years ago," Sherlock interrupted, well aware of what the doctor was getting to. After the last drug bust, John and Lestrade had agreed to keep an eye on him like two bad accomplices in an equally lousy felony. "However, if Lestrade finds this box, the morphine will be the last of my problems. Now, stay still." He stressed the last words.

A command which John promptly ignored. Rather, he leaned over to look at the contents of the beauty case.

"Daphne cneorum..." read John, carefully looking at each of the twenty small glass bottles, each sealed with cork caps and wax, in turn. Some had printed pharmaceutical labels, some had labels written in fine, neat handwriting. "Ricinus communis, Datura stramonium... Digitalis purpurea?!" He took a minute to observe the dark liquid inside the bottle against the light. "Sherlock, Digitalis is a poisonous plant!"

Sherlock, setting down the morphine-soaked cotton ball, began to disinfect a suture needle and its thread. "Yes," he replied calmly, "it is. So I suppose you don't want inadvertently drop the bottle."

John stared at him but then sighed, doubting that nothing could surprise him anymore. "They seem homemade," he observed.

"They are," confirmed Sherlock.

"Where did you get the plants for these? They don't even grow here."

"I had them sent to me." When John gave him a look, Sherlock added: "My adolescence was very boring. And now stay very still." He lifted the needle with its appropriate accessories for making a surgical suture.

John eyed the suture needle for a moment before he really stopped moving while Sherlock was working. "You even know how to stitch a wound," John said after a few minutes, to fill the silence.

"Evidently," Sherlock answered.

"How did you learn?"

"On corpses."

John wasn't surprised. "Molly?"

"University, actually," corrected Sherlock. Normally he wouldn't have added anything, but with John was different. He looked like a normal person but he had something in him that others had not.

John listened without judging. Perhaps that was the reason Sherlock continued to speak, offering something of himself to someone else on his own free will. "As sophomore I stole the key to the morgue from the Forensic Medicine associate. At night, I used to sew along the fingers and toes of cadavers that were used in class the next day." Sherlock heard John chuckle at that and, consequently, smiled.

"Poor teachers," commented John, amused.

"They were incompetent in any case," said Sherlock.

It was a unique situation. Something was different, perhaps, in the air or between them, he didn't know. Completely at ease, totally relaxed. A strange new feeling but pleasant, almost intoxicating. Sherlock knew other people – Lestrade, Mike, Mrs. Hudson, Mycroft, Molly – but none were like John.

Even with Victor. Victor had touched and seen and tasted and claimed every inch of Sherlock's skin, his body, breathed his air. Victor had seen him stripped bare, not only naked but in situations of vulnerability and sub-par excellence, untied from reality and sanity. Victor owned him.

But Victor never had his mind, the key to understanding its secrets and its operation, one thing that John seemed to have simply taken without realizing. Perhaps John wasn't particularly intelligent, or acute, or cunning, but Sherlock was intellectually attracted to him in a way that he was at a loss to explain.

That wasn't to exempt John from asking completely the wrong question.

"Couldn't you find something a bit more ordinary to do? Hang out, find some girl or a boy? Maybe your Soulma–"

John froze mid-sentence, but too late. Sherlock, just finished tying the first stitch, stilled as well.

"Sorry," John said immediately, but Sherlock replied anyway.

"I never had the opportunity to devote myself to these pastimes." His reply was resentful, deliberately cruel, perhaps a little in spite. He conveniently left out the Victor Trevor affair (who was still, he assured himself, only a long term experiment).

As expected, John resented Sherlock's words. "I apologized. And in any case they're not pastimes, they're consensual relationship between two adults... it'd be normal. It is normal. To only have sex with your Soulmate is archaic," John pointed out, slightly digressing.

"You don't have to excuse yourself with me for your relationships, John. I'm sure that Sarah as some good reasons to ignore the name she has on her finger." Sherlock's tone was harsh and he closed the second stitch too quickly.

"What makes you think that Sarah isn't my Soulmate?" asked John.

Oh, for God's sake! Thought Sherlock before answering him. "What sort of sane person would be in a relationship with their SIN in a situation like yours?" he asked rhetorically, quoting almost literally what John had said that evening at the Chinese restaurant.

He heard John snap his jaw and grit his teeth. "Do you still think that the name on my finger is yours?" he asked then, clearly nervous and irritated.

Like in a mirror, John's anger made nervous Sherlock too. "If it's not true let me see." He replied.

The worst thing to say.

John stood up from the chair, taking two steps away and turning towards Sherlock. "No, Sherlock. It's private and none of your business!" he exclaimed, whetted upon a raw nerve. "But what do you know? What could you ever know about what is like to be like me? You've never had to begin the Search for someone you'll likely never find, and you never even cared about it! You never felt alone or abandoned, have you, Sherlock?" he asked loudly, making silence fall again only when he realized that Sherlock hadn't responded, but was watching him motionless and with a neutral expression.

They looked at each other for seemingly endless minutes, holding their gazes steady. Finally, John closed his eyes and sighed. "Listen, I'm tired. I... I didn't want to..."

"You're right." Sherlock interrupted him, never looking away, "it's all true. I'm a Bondless, which logically means that somewhere there might be a BCE with my name on their finger, but I don't care. I am the one who broke the Bond; according to logic, I'd have should done it for a reason. And if there's one person I trust in this world, it's me." He raised his chin. "So yes, John, you're right. All in all, I don't give a damn. I'm free more than you'll ever be." He left everything on the table and quickly brushed past John, heading toward the couch where he lay down.

John, still standing at the door, remained silent. Sherlock heard him swallow but didn't look at him, determined not to respond to whatever came from John's lips. Because there were different ways to feel alone and rejected, and John should have to know more than anyone else.

"I'm sorry..." whispered the doctor, his voice low, apologetic. "I'm going to sleep a couple of hours." He climbed the stairs in silence.

Sherlock didn't answer. He already knew that, come the next morning, they'd both turn a blind eye on it.

And it was the thing that upset him the most.

.o0o.

John awoke to a strong and unpleasant odour.

Chloroform. He recognized it before even opening his eyes.

Remembering what had happened wasn't difficult; the memories came on their own. He and Sherlock had just solved the missile projects case and retrieved the USB stick, and passed all the bomber's tests. He'd just walked out of 221B for Sarah's place when he was flanked by a pair of sturdy men at the entrance to Baker Street station. One of them passed a handkerchief over his nose, taking advantage of the crowd that came and went, then darkness. He vaguely remembered hearing the echo of a few words, seeing a policeman in uniform and the feeling of strong hands carrying him through the Underground under the guise of a sudden stroke –all the while thinking "fuck, it's not over yet" before he completely lost his senses.

Now, with a dull headache, slight nausea and the smell of chloroform still in his nose, John finally realized the trap he'd fallen into.

Without opening his eyes, he forced himself to stay calm, trying to shake off the effects of anaesthetic and sharpen his senses.

In addition to his heartbeat – accelerated due to the agitation, the doctor part of him said – he heard a few other noises. Breathing (quick, shallow, probably his own), a single set of footsteps in the distance, a roar like water but not running like a river, stationary. He was hot. His chest and back felt heavy – like the pack he carried equipment with in Afghanistan – and the air itself was humid and muggy. He sat with his hands tied behind his back, sure that the wooden slats under his fingers belonged to a bench. He could still smell nothing but chloroform's characteristically strong odour.

If Sherlock was there, he would likely be able to immediately deduce where they were. But, John reminded himself, Sherlock wasn't here and he had no idea of his whereabouts.

Slowly, struggling against the heaviness of his eyelids, John opened his eyes.

Bright blue, small tiles. They stretched across the floor and up the wall, painted white with grey stripes in some places, with scuffs where the tips of shoes had left marks. Wooden benches were lined up along the wall and across the room, black plastic hangers hanging on metal frames above all of them.

The revealing clue, though, was the second type of tile, white and rough, chiselled with rhomboid patterns that dispersed the blue ones – anti-slip tiles. Then, the smell of chlorine began to permeate the chloroform and like a trigger being pulled in his mind, John realised where he was.

He was in the locker room of a swimming pool.

He didn't need to raise his head completely for the person behind him, sitting on the other side of the double-sided bench, to notice he was awake.

"Rise and shine, Johnny-boy," sung the man in a high voice, a tone that John had already heard somewhere before (but just couldn't remember where).

John tried to stay calm. "Who are you?" he asked, his voice low and harsh.

The man chuckled. "Wouldn't you like to know?" he countered, before standing up and starting to walk back and forth, always behind John. "I'll keep it as a surprise for a while longer".

"Soon, your hands will be free, Johnny, but it seems fair to warn you beforehand. For technical reasons only, I daresay." He stopped pacing and tapped the heels of his shoes as though following a tune." Under your quilted jacket you're wearing a quantity of PE4 [2] enough to raze the entire building. As a military man, I'm sure you'll understand that one false move, one word off-script, and not even a single strand of DNA will remain of you." The man was cheerful, even while humming his threats.

John didn't have to lower his eyes to confirm the man's account: wires were sticking out from the collar next to his left ear and he felt the explosives distinctly against the chest.

John took a deep breath, which released trembling. "Why free my hands?" he asked then.

"Oh, you have to seem like a volunteer. I mean, I know that you'll be, of course. Anyone with the amount of explosives you're wearing would prefer to volunteer. But all the others were untied and willing, and I want Sherlock to see you so. I want him to doubt, for an instant, that behind all this there's you before he realizes that no, you're just another fool that's been captured like a moth with a neon light."

Suddenly, John felt a blade pass between his wrists and cut the plastic strap that bound them. He forced himself to lay his hands on his knees slowly.

"Good, little soldier," the other man teased, and stepped out in front of John. He smiled with a face anything but evil, and John felt a glimmer of recognition.

John frowned when he recognized him. "You're..."

"Jim from Bart's? Yes!" the man – Jim – exclaimed, hands in the pockets of the expensive suit he wore, including a silver tie-pin. "One of my best performances," he added, sitting in front of John and crossing his legs at the ankles. He watched John, smiling with closed lips for a time that felt infinitely than a few minutes.

Although John wouldn't admit it, a good portion of his concentration had slipped onto the explosives on his chest, so much that he'd trouble keeping a regular breathing pattern.

They stared one another in silence.

"Jim Moriarty." The man introduced himself, whispering his name as if it was a secret.

"Moriarty, right. Should have seen that coming," John replied.

Jim pretended a surprised expression. "The proximity to Sherlock Holmes is good for you, I suppose. Did you already tell him that you're his Soulmate?" asked Jim, never looking away, deeply amused.

John's eye were wide with surprise and they flew immediately to his own left ring finger. There, free from both the patch and the silver ring given to him by his mother years ago, Sherlock's name was pulsating with pain and dirty with blood.

When he raised his eyes, Jim was playing with John's silver ring, passing it from one finger to another one on his right hand.

John suppressed the temptation to lunge at him, as well as to scream against him. "If you think that Sherlock will accept the challenge..."

"Accept it? He invited me," replied Moriarty immediately, almost thrilled at the idea. "He has the Bruce-Partington missile plans. He wants me to come out and play with him... and I'll satisfy his request." He moved to lie flat on his back on the bench, knees bent and crossed with one foot hanging out.

Jim's attention was still all on the ring and it was only when he held it firmly with both hands that John noticed the golden ring that Jim was wearing on his own left ring finger, underneath which was clearly visible a white patch.

A BCE. Like him.

Maybe he should have expected it.

"So, how did Sherlock react?" pressed Jim, waving his foot and trying John's ring on all ten of his fingers to see which one it'd fit best.

John wrinkled his nose. "You really talk too much for someone who borrows other people voices.

Moriarty snorted. "I'm bored," he complained. "I took a free night to play with Sherlock, but he's not yet arrived and I've nothing to do."

"Stop talking as if you know him." John couldn't contain himself.

James, arching the eyebrows, returned to watch him. "You think you know him better than me!" he remarked, looking frankly surprised.

"I live with him."

"Irrelevant."

"We're friends."

"Yet he waited for you to be out of the house before inviting me to play with him, leaving you blissfully unaware of everything. What do you think he did it for? To protect you?" he asked, frowning when a thought struck him.

Jim turned on his side, scrutinizing John from head to toe. "Who are you, John Watson, for having Sherlock's name on your finger? What use are you?" he wondered rhetorically. "So ordinary as to be sent home from the Army, so naive to fall into elemental traps like this one, so mediocre that you have to hide your being a Ribbon... I'm very, very disappointed by your level of uselessness, and if there's one thing that haunts me it's wondering how someone like you expects to be Sherlock Holmes' Soulmate."

John bore Moriarty's words in silence, watching him as the man placed his ring on the ground, balancing it so that it stood upright, and observed it thoughtfully. "I'd like to have his name on my finger in your place..." Jim kicked the silver ring slightly, making it roll up to lightly impact John's shoe.

John swallowed, closing his eyes overwhelmed by powerlessness. He sighed heavily, then returned to watching Jim. "That's useless for me, anyway. You may actually have a chance," he joked bitterly.

Jim glared at him for a moment. Then he laughed, exposing his white, perfect teeth.

"I have already taken what belong to me, Johnny-boy," he said, without explain further.

A beep from the room adjacent to the locker room broke the tension and the silence. Jim looked beyond the door, further than John's line of vision would allow him to see. "Seb?" he called.

"He's here," confirmed a deep voice from the hallway.

Moriarty smiled smugly. "Raise the curtains!" he exulted, ready to go. "Put your ring on and follow the instructions that I give you very carefully. One wrong word and..." He winked. "Well, I suppose you know how it'll end."

John fought the extra weight of the explosives and just managed to hide the name "Sherlock" under his silver ring before the earpiece crackled the first order in his ear.

.o.

They had to call Lestrade.

They couldn't just leave plastic explosives on the edge of a public swimming pool, so the Detective Inspector had to pull the bomb disposal unit from their beds to secure the PE4 blocks that had been strapped to John not an hour before.

In the meantime, of course, Lestrade took account of all that had happened. Mycroft also arrived and Sherlock found the situation transitioning from dull to downright annoying. He shut down any conversation with Mycroft and the Yarder without delay and, nodding for John to follow him, went briskly to the main road to hail a cab.

During the ride to Baker Street, John (predictably) begun to suffer the effects of the inhalation of chloroform. He'd tried to talk on the phone with Sarah but it was clear that he was failing to follow the conversation; from the way he massaged his left temple, it looked like he had a headache; Sherlock noticed several times where John's head started to droop onto his chest in bouts of uncontrollable drowsiness.

He hadn't meant to involve John – that's why he waited. Not only that, John would have probably complained about his plan, trying to persuade him to stop immediately, to deliver the Bruce-Partington plans to Mycroft and let Moriarty go... and he simply couldn't do it.

Sherlock couldn't ignore Moriarty.

James Moriarty was a rare pearl. An individual of strong intelligence and cunningness; he played a wonderful game, a succulent occasion, and it was Moriarty himself that wanted to play. It didn't matter about the threatening, that wasn't really the purpose.

They courted each other for months, looking for traces and clues. Sherlock simply had to meet him, drive him out, invite him to the banquet to see his opponent and study him, to link a face to the name croaked by a dying man. That moment resonated through the high vaults of Sherlock's mind, and he couldn't escape it.

He'd hoped that Moriarty would ignore John. That he'd focus only on him.

A vain hope.

"Here we are." The driver interrupted his thoughts as the cab slowed and stopped in front of the familiar, dark door.

Sherlock lifted his eyes to the rear view mirror, used his credit card to pay and turned to John.

"John," he called, shaking the sleeping man awake. "We're home."

Watson groaned in weariness and snorted, struggling to keep his eyes fully open. He managed to mumble a "thank you" to the driver and stumble out the car door behind Sherlock who went ahead to unlock 221B's door. The consulting detective held the door to allow his friend to enter, and John thanked him with a grunt, grabbing the handrail and beginning to slowly climb the stairs. Sherlock followed him.

They hadn't yet talked about what happened and he knew John would definitely want to sooner or later. Sherlock had almost expected to hear him begin the sermon on the cab ride home, or just after leaving Mycroft and Lestrade. But it didn't happen.

Spending the evening in close contact with explosives, he supposed, would dampen any desire for more serious conversation than necessary. Exhaustion did that; he wasn't too surprised.

However, leaving things as they were unsettled him. Sherlock didn't know how to explain the reaction he swiftly silenced and buried deep in his chest, but the tired silence of John dragging himself upstairs disturbed Sherlock in ways he never would have imagined feeling. Not Moriarty, not the danger or the adrenaline. Not the fear that he felt seeing John at gunpoint or the cold moment of doubt at the thought that John was Moriarty. Simply the silence.

"John..." Sherlock began, but John held up a hand.

"Tomorrow, Sherlock." John interrupted. "I just want to sleep. Lie down and sleep..." He trailed off, too worn out to even make the last flight of stairs to his room. Instead, he made a beeline for the couch and, without taking off his jacket, he threw himself on his back.

Sherlock sunk into the armchair after throwing the coat over the union flag pillow. The room was lit only by the light from the street lamp that seeped through the window. Neither them nor Mrs. Hudson had lit the fireplace that evening, so the temperature of the room was considerably lower than usual.

Bringing his hands together under his chin, Sherlock meditated.

Moriarty wasn't incompetent. Sherlock already realized that he had means and opportunities to do whatever he pleased, that he had fingers in the pies of several major criminal organizations, not to mention being a criminal organization in and of himself. Sherlock had already realized all this. But looking directly at the man... oh, the sight of him seemed to project even more.

Something indecently attractive. Cunning, nerve, conceit.

From the first to the last minute, Jim had them both in the palm of his hand, control never waivering, but even when it was no longer so, even when Sherlock had reversed the situation and threatened blow them up without distinctions, Moriarty hadn't been perturbed. And not because he thought that Sherlock hadn't the courage to actually do it.

"He's a complicated opponent, John." Sherlock couldn't help but comment, the urgent need to have an audience that was shrivelling up his innards. "Fearsome. He likes to stand on thin ice, and if it involves death, all the better. His or others', it doesn't matter. This makes him a person ready to do anything. He has endless possibilities ahead of him."

"Mh..." was John's only answer, his eyes closed and arms folded across his abdomen.

"It's a complicated situation, making it difficult to predict the next move. But I think I can recognize the signs, the schemes. He'll make the first move and we need to be ready to respond. This is a chess game, and we need to have our strategy ready."

When he didn't receive a reply, his eyes flickered onto John.

He was fast asleep. His eyes weren't moving under his eyelids – he hadn't yet reached the REM phase – but his breathing was deep and regular and the expression was relaxed. The chloroform and the peak of adrenaline had emptied him of his energy, not to mention the past few days spent following him around on the case. Too many events for that night.

Sherlock, lowering his hands, observed him.

He couldn't avoid considering John as an essential part of his present. He couldn't avoid wanting to protect him, in his own way, wanting to preserve him. He wanted to be Moriarty's only opponent, in good part due to his own selfishness, but what remained was for John.

A sense of belonging meant having John beside him. A place to call "home" and someone to come back to. These were things he'd always had but that he never really owned or needed, not voluntarily, but now..: Between the gentle hands of a cobbled-together soldier who had the courage and intelligence, in his own way, to try and go on living.

Since John Watson had appeared in his life, quietly and by pure chance, Sherlock understood what it meant to have a friend and the effort it involved. And it was all confusing, complicated.

Sometimes he questioned himself. His father had taught him this trick. "Sherlock," he'd told him one day, "you're intelligent, but some day you'll encounter things you won't completely understand, not immediately. Asking yourself questions helps to find answers."

Sherlock asked himself if John was worth protecting, and the answer was of course "yes". He asked himself why he wanted to do it, and the answer was "because he's my friend". He asked himself if "friends" was a enough word.

He hadn't been able to answer.

There were too many variables, too many consequences for every action, too many words. Every move included dozens of different scenarios, and usually he could sort and discriminate between them but this time he had doubts, indecisions, things that didn't have the courage to say and actions that he didn't quite have the will to accomplish.

Caring for others was a gyp from start to finish. And he couldn't prevent it.

It was while watching John sleep that his attention was drawn to the silvery gleam of the ring on John's ring finger.

A Bond. A Soulmate. Sherlock had stopped worrying about those things ad a child, when it was clear that he would never have anyone to call his, aware that there would be no one waiting for him at the end of the Search and that nobody was searching for him return.

Sherlock's finger had never hosted any kind of rings or names of sorts. The skin had been candid and immaculate; no letters had ever dirtied it.

Oh, there had been a time when Sherlock wanted it, yes. With all his heart. Twice in his life he'd given up and prayed to a God he'd never believed in to make something appear on that finger, even just a shadow. Any shadow. The first time, the shadow was named "Victor"; the second, he had deleted its memory from his hard drive.

A shadow named "John".

Staring at the doctor's hand illuminated by the whitish light coming from the window, he scowled an unfair but tempting thought.

Even if John denied it, he was hiding something.

It was a niggling, continuous whisper in the back of his mind that kept tempting him, teasing him.

Is there my name under that ring?

Logic said that it was. John was a BCE, Sherlock a Bondless. The common interpretation wanted the Bondless to be those who'd rejected the Bond, in some previous life, and that the BCE where those bearing the consequences; they were those who hadn't had the opportunity to choose, those who had been abandoned by those who should represent the exact half of their soul and whole being, and the physical pain of a never-closing injury was believed to be the tip of the iceberg of a bigger, interior wound.

According to this interpretation, and admitting that Sherlock had the will to believe in it, he had been the one to sever the Bond with John.

Why?

Sherlock didn't know. He couldn't understand. The only certain thing was that John was lying.

John moved the fingers of the left hand in his sleep. There was only one way to find out. To be sure. John would never let him see it voluntarily. But now John was asleep, exhausted and wouldn't readily wake up.

Sherlock slid from the armchair and crept across the floor on his knees towards the couch, quietly nearing the doctor's hand. He gently slipped his right hand under John's left one, barely touching the skin of the palm, to rest his finger on John's wrist. The doctor's heartbeat was calm and regular against Sherlock's fingers, quiet as his breathing, and he gave no sign of noticing the detective's proximity.

If they were Soulmates, thought Sherlock, and that was their first, real contact, the Bond would be activated. Nobody could really explain the sensation they experienced and it happened only once in one's lifetime; many said that descriptions in books didn't do justice to the real thing.

As a child, Sherlock had wished for that experience more than anything, and hope had turned its back on him.

Holding John's hand as if it were a particularly instable chemical compound, Sherlock touched the silver ring gently. He hesitated only a moment before starting to pull it over the knuckle and remove it entirely.

It slipped from the finger easily, and he saw.

It was dirty, covered in coagulated blood, the skin around the letters red and swollen, but it was there. Undeniable as the rain, as the sun. John could hide it behind lies and patches but he couldn't erase it, it couldn't disappear.

On top of the ring finger, the name "Sherlock" stared at him, making him feel guilty.

Sherlock gritted his teeth, holding his breath. He seared that last image into his mind, then put the ring back in its place covering the name so that John would be unaware of what he had done.

With a sigh, Sherlock sat on the floor with his back toward the couch. He closed his eyes, concentrating on his own breathing and putting his thoughts in order.

He was waiting for the feeling of success, the feeling of knowing he was right, to set in. But it didn't, and all he could think of was John. John, who shouldn't have had to feel like alone and rejected all his life. John didn't deserve what Sherlock had put him through, even if Sherlock didn't remember why or when he'd done it, or how many lifetimes before.

He was asking questions of himself that he could never answer.

A movement behind him caught his attention; John turned on his side with a weary sigh, and ran the tongue between the lips.

"Sherlock?" he muttered, his eyes closed and still a victim of sleep. "Everything okay?" asked.

Sherlock smiled slightly. Physically, he was fine and John knew it. But the doctor was disorientated and confused, too tired to really pay attention to what he was saying.

"Obviously." Sherlock answered, taking the doctor's hand in his own.
"It's all right," he whispered softly. "Rest now."

.o0o.

"I hope you didn't mess up my sock index this time."

John heard Sherlock's bedroom door closing, and then silence embraced the flat again. The fire was still crackling in the fireplace, spilling warm light into the sitting room, in stark contrast with the snow still falling outside.

It had been a nice evening. He knew people who'd pay to spend a Christmas Eve like that, with friends and sparkling wine, gifts and a joyous atmosphere. It was the first time since he was a young man that he felt do peaceful, so... at home.

But, of course, someone had to ruin everything.

John hadn't even noticed that red package on the fireplace (but Sherlock had). He hadn't figured out the meaning of it (but Sherlock had). He had even forgotten about those pesky messages Sherlock had received (but Sherlock hadn't).

And then, as usual, it happened all too quickly. With a phone call to Mycroft, Sherlock took his coat and left (alone). Then Mycroft himself phoned John, ordering him to scour the detective's room for cocaine, because if he was right and they had indeed found Irene Adler's corpse, it could be a "bad night".

A bland euphemism to describe the worry that Sherlock might resort to drugs.

And all because of Irene Adler. The Bondless Irene Adler.

John was the jealous type. Yes, he could control himself, pretend he didn't care, smile and pretend complicity, but that didn't change anything. They were just masks, occasions, catch-phrases. Folding screens he hid behind so he wouldn't arouse suspicious in Sherlock and the rest of the world.

A strange equilibrium had settled between them since the Adler case started.

Things unsaid, things left to intuition, things completely kept quiet. Questions that John asked and Sherlock didn't answer, silence, closed doors. He was accustomed to the consulting detective's strange behaviours, his spikes of anger and his days of complete silence, but not this. This was different.

Sherlock cared about her. Her. The woman who had managed to screw Sherlock over and continued to play with him. Like a peacock showing off. Like a siren with the finest voice whose sole purpose was to hold him close and eat his heart. He seemed to care about her, Sherlock did, the man who hadn't cared about anyone in his life. The man who had a place in his heart for not even John, only himself. John should have had the right to a place there. He had Sherlock's name carved into his flesh, and it bled and throbbed and made him an outcast. Surely after all that, he deserved a place in Sherlock's heart?

John hated them. Sherlock and Irene both, but Irene more. They were thoughts John was ashamed of and kept to himself until he was alone, where he could afford to remove the filters and analyze, discard and dispose of the dangerous considerations.

If he could somehow shrug off the urge to tell Sherlock the truth…If he could get rid of that thought, maybe he could tempt a miracle.

John closed his eyes, taking a deep breath, and tried to swallow the knot that had formed in his throat (unsuccessfully).

He couldn't care less about Sarah or Jeanette. He was going out with women who'd lost their Soulmates, or had never found them, and each of those affairs were based on the same, infamous lie: that he too didn't have a Soulmate anymore due to an accident, or that he never met them and was tired of waiting, or that he didn't believe in SINs to begin with. They all nodded, pleased that a kind, fun man like John Watson didn't believe that someone, somewhere, was waiting for him.

They never knew that he had already found that someone, and yet it was still a lost cause.

Opening his eyes, John observed his left hand, resting in a clenched fist on the cover of the book he'd been reading as he waited for Sherlock to return from the morgue.

He opened his fingers, pulled off the silver ring and began to remove the patch.

And there it was. "Sherlock" engraved into the skin. His bloody, painful little secret he feared he'd already revealed. The impossible dream at the bottom of a drawer.

He couldn't hate Sherlock, in the end. He simply couldn't do it. So brilliant, so eccentric, so fascinating, both mentally and physically. Far from being the ideal, perfect man but he was the right person for him, John knew, he felt it.

The trust that John had given to him right away, although he knew who Sherlock was and what he represented, was a symptom of the undeniable fact that he cared about Sherlock. John wanted him despite everything, regardless of the fact that Fate said "no".

But going on to repeat to himself "he's mine" didn't make sense, now. In the best-case scenario, Sherlock belonged to Irene Adler. After all, he could. He was a Bondless and Irene was too.

And John Watson would smile, happy for them both – happy for Sherlock. John could easily pretend – he'd had plenty of practice.

Moriarty's voice resounded in his mind: "who are you to have Sherlock's name on your finger?"

He swallowed, placing the ring on the coffee table beside the armchair and reopened the book where he'd stopped reading. He read the first phrase past the title page, and a bitter smile curved his lips.

"My only love sprung from my only hate; too early unknown and known too late." [3]

.o0o.

Sleepless nights were nothing new to John.

He'd endured them on countless occasions: due to fever and pain in his hand or having to tend to yet another of his sister's hangovers, or spending the night hanging out with his friends or bent over a book at university. During the war, he slept only one or two consecutive hours for days on end. Back home, nightmares kept him awake.

Since he'd met Sherlock, however, the consulting detective had become the source of John's sleeplessness. Riddles in yellow paint on isolated walls alongside the Overground's tracks, reckless running around London's streets at night, a violin being played too late (or too early), Sherlock's need for a midnight sounding board…the list went on.

However, tonight was different.

The room in the Dartmoor hotel was small but comfortable and welcoming. Not exceptional, but at least clean; it had a single bed, a bedside table, curtains and carpets well dusted, clean sheets, TV and a lovely view of the rural village. And silent like only the countryside could be. As far as trips away from home went, Henry Knight's case had brought them the perfect one.

John was tired. In a single day, he'd explored a high-tech top-secret base (for the second time after illegally infiltrating it yesterday), he'd been drugged, scared to death by a huge beast (real or imaginary, at the time he didn't know or care), co-discovered a secret project and caught its culprit, been drugged again and finally seen said culprit explode in a minefield. That excluded the statement he had to give the local law enforcement, since Sherlock had seemingly made a pointed effort to insult half of the Army Corps, and taking Henry, disturbed and in shock, home.

He couldn't not be tired.

So why he couldn't sleep?

It was three o'clock in the morning and John, in pajamas and socks, was flipping through channels of crap telly, leaning with his back against the bed's headboard. After circling the channels a couple of times, he found old reruns of the third season of Doctor Who and he resigned to watching it, waiting only for his well-deserved rest to come. His ring lay on the bedside table; he'd removed it as he did every time the early symptoms of an infection appeared (He hoped he hadn't contracted anything in Baskerville. To be honest, he didn't want his finger to glow in the dark) and periodically rubbed antiseptic into the inflamed skin.

A knock at the door startled him. John held his breath in anticipation, wondering if he could expect more of the sounds that sounded like firecrackers against the silence of the night. His first thought was that the television had bothered someone, but the volume was so low that even John found it hard to follow the dialogue, so only one option remained.

"I know you're still awake, I can see the lamp light from under the door."

Sherlock.

John sighed, rubbing his eyes with his right thumb and index finger. He quickly recovered his ring, sliding it over the partially-absorbed cream and reluctantly crawling out of bed to open the door.

Sherlock was also in pajamas – which, in his case, consisted of a pair of grey tracksuit's trousers and a blue t-shirt – and his ruffled hair suggested that he too had turned over and over in bed without sleeping.

"What is it?" asked John.

"May I come in?" requested Sherlock.

"Why? I seemed to understand that you don't have friends." John did his best to keep an air of fake offense.

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "How many more times do we have to go over this? I've apologized already."

"You began, but you never finished," retorted John, unable to help a close-lipped chuckle, to which Holmes shook his head.

"Yes, I did."

John closed the door behind Sherlock and went back to sit on the bed. Sherlock soon joined him.

John was still amazed at how natural this had become for them: going to each other, sitting down together to watch television, eating breakfast together every morning. They never officially agreed to it, never established any rules, but they did those things anyway. It felt like home.

The room fell into a comfortable silence.

The bed was small, so as their shoulders touched, as well as their arms, hips and legs, separated only at the ankles which Sherlock had crossed, but neither seemed to be annoyed by it.

It was a strange atmosphere, a bit like a parallel dimension in which they ended up without realizing it. A feeling like staying in precarious balance, as if the day was scaled not by hours, but by sleep; as if the hour before sleep was the last chance to make mistakes you'd regret and by morning, you were only judged by the sunlight. As if you could make reckless mistakes and delete them all with a night's sleep and pretend nothing ever happened. As if sleep would delete the reality by turning it into a dream that could be quietly forgotten.

That's why John took the liberty to look at him.

Sherlock's thin chest was rising and falling to regular rhythm under his shirt, his entwined fingers resting on his stomach with no ring to cover a ring finger with no name on it. All of Sherlock was particularly unique, but that was nothing like his face. High cheekbones with sharp profile, thick black eyebrows to match his eyelashes and curly hair that never really was in order. Thin and pale lips. Eyes of a colour that changed with the light.

Sherlock Holmes was carrying a beauty that couldn't be immediately understood, but that matured with time. A beauty that was part of his impossible character and his boundless intelligence.

It was a beauty that John hadn't had problems unashamedly absorbing in its entirety, even when Sherlock noticed his gaze and turned to look at John.

Their gazes met and, even if John's first instinct was to look away, he didn't. He kept his eyes fixed on Sherlock's, in that moment of a deep blue, the only thing he could feel within himself that continuing to look at him that way was the most right thing in the world. Sherlock didn't speak, saying everything his needed to with his eyes. They moved closer, as a matter of need rather than anything programmed or calculated. It simply happened. By chance or instinct, they reached one another, enough for John to feel Sherlock's slight breath on his cheek.

It was Sherlock who lowered his eyes first, sliding his gaze along John's left arm up to the silver ring. John felt the intensity as keenly on his skin as if it'd been tangible, like a caress, or the trickle of a water drop. John followed Sherlock's eyes.

Sherlock placed his fingers on the back of John's left hand as if he were touching the bow of his violin; they slipped from the wrist to the knuckles in complete silence, brushing the metal band that covered John's SIN with the tip of his middle finger. No force, no pressure.

But after a few moments, perhaps justified by John's silence, Sherlock placed his fingers around the ring and began to remove it.

John held his breath. "No..." he whispered, tensing.

"Yes," replied Sherlock, the voice only a whisper, "yes."

They were close enough now to hear each other's heartbeat. John closed his eyes as Sherlock took off the ring, as intimate as if Sherlock was stripping him naked, undressing him one button at time. John leaned his forehead against the black curls that fell across Sherlock's own, his mouth ajar in trembling breaths.

John felt it slip away, but couldn't open his eyes to observe Sherlock's reaction. Suspended in an endless second of visceral terror, he waited.

Sherlock pressed the tip of his index finger against the name. Once, twice, three times, making the skin burn in many ways, none of which was healthy. The touch was delicate and somehow kind, as though Sherlock was trying to cure it. To apologize.

He didn't understand how painful it was.

"Please, no..." whined John, desperate, eyes tightly closed and breath drifted, hidden from view as if not seeing what was happening could make it less real.

But Sherlock slid his fingers between John's and lifted his chin a bit, causing their noses to touch. The doctor felt Sherlock's lips brush his skin as he repeated, "yes, John."

John let Sherlock's proximity get him drunk. The doctor sighed before approaching further and touching his lips to Sherlock's temple in a trembling, chaste kiss, uncertain, with his lips barely touching the skin.

Sherlock held his breath and, tilting his face, kissed John's cheek. Just as insecure as John's own, it was sweet an inexperienced, like it wasn't given by the world's only consulting detective who believed in the head over the heart, who had arch enemies and allies instead of friends.

John, just as gently, kissed Sherlock's cheekbone; Sherlock kissed his jaw. John kissed the tip of his nose; Sherlock kissed his chin.

Joining their lips was just the next step that neither thought about, that neither even noticed until after it had occurred and their lips were already resting together.

Their first kiss was chaste and short, almost accidental; the second was the same, a simple meeting of lips like evidence of their discovery. The third deepened, tongues dipping past lips, tasting. The fourth deepened still, reciprocal searching.

They stayed like that throughout the night, laid out on the bed facing each other, divided if not for their folded hands and joined mouths. Floating between the gaps of silence, on the verge of an ephemeral lethargy, they explored each another's lips until they were too tired to move. Then, they fell asleep, lips still lightly touching.

.o.

When morning came, John woke up alone.

The sun had really turned reality into a dream, and in Sherlock's absence he felt it slipping away more acutely. For an instant, he doubted that it was real, but the ring left on the blankets and the taste of Sherlock on his lips told him the truth.

But what happened between them, what had been discovered, was part of a night locked in a parentheses, and wouldn't be repeated: John read it in Sherlock's eyes when they met in the hall before breakfast and, not knowing what else to do, he accepted the status quo without saying a word.

Life continued as though nothing had happened.

.o0o.

In the following months there was no more time to talk. Moriarty returned into their lives to the tune of Rossini's Thieving Magpie. [4]

It was a perfect score that Sherlock would only be able to understand later, when a perverse and well-oiled machine, an intricate set of cogs and gears, had already been set in motion and there wasn't a chance of stopping it.

His whole life was now part of Moriarty's game and the only thing Sherlock wondered, the only thing he could think of when his mind didn't go around in circles repeating every word his antagonist had said, was why Moriarty hadn't yet involved John. It was something Sherlock didn't understand.

And he still didn't know if it was important, or by how much.

.o.

"He'll be deciding."

"Deciding?"

"Whether to come back with a warrant and arrest me."

John looked away from the window while the car carrying Lestrade and Donovan left Baker Street. "You think?"

"Standard procedure."

"You should've gone with him," said John, smacking his lips. "People will think..."

"I don't care what people think."

"You'd care," continued John, "if they thought you were stupid or wrong."

"No, that would just make them stupid or wrong," Sherlock immediately contradicted.

"Sherlock, I don't want the world believing you are..." He stopped.

The detective looked up from the computer screen, already well aware of what John wanted to say and possibly already knowing how the conversation itself would end.

"That I am what?" Sherlock asked after a moment.

John swallowed. "A fraud."

Sherlock sighed, leaning back on the chair. "You're worried they're right."

"What?"

"You're worried they're right about me."

"No."

"That's why you're upset, you can't even entertain the possibility that they might be right, you're afraid that you've been taken in as well."

"No, I'm not."

"Moriarty is playing with your mind too. Can't you see what's going on?!" Sherlock snapped, banging his fist on the desk.

John looked again at him, watching him seriously, before returning with his eyes at the road out of the window. "No, I know you for real."

"A hundred percent?"

"Yes."

"You're saying it because you feel obligated?"

John hesitated at those words, thumbing the silver ring that covered Sherlock's name. When he turned back to Sherlock, he was just as resolute as he'd been at the start of the conversation: that he'd believe his friend because he wanted to, not because a name ordered him to do so.

"Nobody could fake being such an annoying dick all the time."

.o.

Finding Kitty Riley's address was easy – as simple as consulting the telephone directory – and Sherlock's ability to open locks using a credit card went far enough to get them inside without a key.

They waited in complete darkness and silence, sitting on the small couch next to the front door, waiting in for the journalist to return home. No other noise could be heard except for their breath and, sometimes, the clink of the handcuffs when one of them tapped fingertips on their knee.

Sherlock was completely lost in his own thoughts. John could almost hear the mechanism of his superhuman mind turn and stuck fast-paced, excluding everything that wasn't important, cutting off the rest of the world.

Closing his eyes in the dark, John sighed. In the last couple of hours he had chinned a senior Scotland Yard officer, he'd been arrested, handcuffed, officially become a fugitive and run off hand-in-hand with Sherlock to ambush a person he'd never met, only because Sherlock had seen a clue of sorts somewhere and thought that the journalist clarify some things that didn't add up.

John wondered who was crazier: the fool or the fool who followed him.

"Are you still mad?"

Sherlock's question suddenly broke the silence, distracting John from his own thoughts.

"I should be," replied the doctor after a brief sigh.

"Does that mean you're not?"

"No, I'm not."

"You should be."

"I know."

Silence again. Expectations became increasingly high when one didn't have anything to do or was handcuffed to another person with a few inches of chain the maximum amount of movement available, and so it was for them too. They'd entered the apartment less than thirty minutes ago but already seemed hours had passed.

It was Sherlock who started talking again. "John?"

"Mh?"

But he didn't continue. Sherlock remained completely motionless, breathing quietly. He only gave a light rustle when he shook his head (or so Watson deduced). "Nothing."

In total darkness, sight was useless – keeping his eyes open or closed was pretty much the same thing – so John turned his head to the right, where Sherlock sat. He wet his dry lips with his tongue and, handcuffs rattling, stretched out his hand to take the detective's.

He didn't wonder whether it was right or wrong, or if the timing was correct. He didn't ask himself why he wanted to do it because he'd an unpleasant feeling in the bottom of his stomach that didn't want to leave him in peace.

Maybe Sherlock was losing himself.

Surprisingly – or perhaps not – Sherlock didn't withdraw at the touch nor reject it. He intertwined their fingers in a slight but steady clinch.

John smiled.

"I would have liked it," murmured Holmes out of nowhere.

"What?" asked John.

In response, Sherlock moved his thumb in search of John's ring finger, which stroked softly, once. "I would've liked it," he repeated then.

And John realized what he wanted to say.

"Me too, Sherlock," he replied. "A lot."

We can still do this, John thought. We can go ahead anyway; spend our life together as if I were still yours and you hadn't ever stopped being mine.

We have all the time of the world.

.o0o.

You watch him from up there and you wonder how much he will suffer.

If he'll understand.

If he'll ask himself why.

If he'll investigate.

If he'll remember even if it hurts.

If he'll forget for his own good.

Everything is prepared. It's all a trick, magic.

You won't hurt yourself (not really).

You won't die (not really).

You won't fall, not really. Never.

Moriarty drove you on the edge of the abyss but made the mistake of jumping first.

It still remains a bitter taste in your mouth. You still can't figure out if you've won or lost your personal battle with the dark side of yourself, with the opponent that kept your imagination alive.

You'd waited someone like him for all your life.

But there, standing on top with the taste of neither victory nor defeat, you wonder if it was really Moriarty the one you expected so ardently.

Because there's someone, down there, that makes you doubt.

You really wanted this to be easier.

You watch him from up there and you already know that he'll suffer.

That he won't understand.

That he'll wonder why everyday but he won't investigate.

That he won't remember through the hurt.

That, finally, he'll decide to forget for his own good.

You watch him from up there and you wonder if, at the end of everything, he'll still be there.

"Goodbye John."

"Sherlock!"

[1] It really exists.
[2] PE4 is a plastic explosive similar to C-4. In UK it's more common.
[3] William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
[4] The Thieving Magpie by Gioacchino Rossini is Moriarty's soundtrack during the Tower of London scene.