Never Change a Running System

Part 17

Epilogue – top or bottom? And the final return of the pineapple juice.

oooOOOoooOOOoooOOOooo

Several months later...

It was August, and London was unbearably hot.

Lestrade's text was like an answer to John's prayers. He'd asked Sherlock and John to come to Croydon to help with a mysterious case.

Croydon wasn't exactly the countryside, but the air there was better, fresher, and a bit cooler, and John took a deep breath as he and Sherlock got off the train.

"Look, Sherlock, that's what the sky looks like ... without a layer of smog," he sighed in relief.

"Mmhm," Sherlock murmured without looking up from his phone. "And where's the car that's supposed to pick us up?"

"Someone might think you weren't even interested in the case," John teased.

"I'm not," Sherlock snapped. "I was completely happy in London."

"No, you weren't!" John argued. "You've been lying around bored on the couch in nothing but your pants for the past two days."

Sherlock sent him a dark look.

"And now I've had to get dressed!" he complained. "And this case is only about a three. I don't leave the house for something like this. We agreed."

"The fresh air will do you good," John said, unmoved. "And now stop pouting."

"Why?" Sherlock retorted. "You like it when I pout. It always makes you think of how kissable my mouth looks."

John wrinkled his forehead in annoyance.

"How often have I told you to stop reading my mind. That's private!"

"You know perfectly well I can't turn it off."

"You know what?" John hissed. "You're even more insufferable in the country than you are in the city."

"This is the thanks I get for pulling myself together so you can get out of London?" Sherlock asked, insulted.

"Don't think I'm going to fall for that," John grumbled. "I talked you into it because I thought a change of scenery and some fresh air would do you good. So don't start with how you only took the case because you thought I was the one who wanted to get out of the city."

Sherlock just stared at him, slowly arching one eyebrow.

"Is that so?" was all he said.

"You... you..." John sputtered, nearly speechless.

During their argument, they had left the platform and passed through the station, and were just exiting onto the High Street.

"Make a note of what you wanted to say, if it comes to you," Sherlock said neutrally. "There's Lestrade with the hire car." He slipped out of his jacket as he walked and rolled up his shirtsleeves. "Going by the size of his pit stains, the air conditioner's out."

oooOOOoooOOOoooOOOooo

Lestrade had chauffered them to the house of one Miss Susan Cusing. They were now sitting in the living room, trying to shed some light on things.

The interview hadn't been very helpful, in John's opinion. All they had learned was that Susan Cushing had received a package in the mail containing two amputated ears, but then Lestrade had already told them that. Miss Cushing couldn't make heads nor tails of why she might have received such a delivery. Lestrade had asked most of the questions, as Sherlock was busy flitting around the room. He didn't say anything until Lestrade ran out of things to ask.

"You have two sisters?"

"Yes," Miss Cushing answered. "Mary and Sarah."

John looked around the room, only now noticing the many photographs – wedding portraits, family shapshots, pets, children – many of which showed the same three women together. One of them was Miss Cushing herself, and the other two bore a striking resemblance to her.

"Sarah lived here. How long?" Sherlock continued brusquely.

"Well... she moved out just a couple of weeks ago..." Miss Cushing replied hesitantly.

Sherlock rolled his eyes in annoyance.

"And she lived with your sister Mary before that – until she threw her out, too, because she's a shrew. Spare me. Simply answer the question: how long?"

Miss Cushing stared at him with round eyes.

"Three months," she said, puzzled. "And she moved out two weeks ago."

"You threw her out," Sherlock stated. "Now where is the package?"

"Outside... it disgusted me. It's in the gardening shed," Miss Cushing replied, still staring at Sherlock in shock.

Sherlock looked as if he were about to say something – judging by the way he was curling his lip, it was probably something rude or biting (or both), which was why John tried to stop him.

"Sherlock... garden," John said shortly, causing Sherlock to shoot him a look of astonishment. "The package is in the garden shed, all right?"

Sherlock's face relaxed a little and he shrugged, saying gamely, "Fine, let's go to the garden. What are we waiting for?"

Out of the corner of his eye, John saw Lestrade giving the two of them an odd look and shaking his head.

oooOOOoooOOOoooOOOooo

Once outside, Lestrade went ahead and retrieved the package from the shed. There was a bench in front of the little building that provided space for all three men to sit. Sherlock sat in the middle, inspecting the strange package with the morbid contents. He studied the address, the packing paper, and the smaller one of the two ears thoroughly before passing the package and its contents to John and leaning back.

"Well, John? Your opinion?" he asked, placing his palms together and blinking up at the summery blue sky.

"Not done by a professional," John answered. "Dull knife. Wasn't a doctor, a veterinarian, or a butcher who made these cuts. Time of amputation..."

Sherlock sprang up.

"Lestrade, take the package." Lestrade did so, nonplussed. "Now go back inside and ask Miss Cushing how long it's been since she heard from her sister Mary."

"And what will you be doing?" Lestrade asked, somewhat reluctantly.

Sherlock gave him a look of pure innocence.

"I'll be continuing to think about this incredibly exciting case."

"Why do I not believe that?" Lestrade muttered to himself on the way back to the house.

John blinked up at Sherlock's backlit form.

"So? What are we really doing?" he asked. "Breaking and entering somewhere to gather some evidence?"

"Not necessary," Sherlock said, grabbing John's arm and dragging him into the garden shed. "Ah... very good," he then said, satisfied, after looking around.

John tried to see what Sherlock had, but there was only the usual: gardening implements, a rickety chair, a big wooden barrel... It was more of a tool shed than a garden shed. It was warm and stuffy. The air smelled of dust, rotting leaves, soil, metal, and wood. Dull yellow light filtered in through a small window in the back that hadn't been cleaned in a long time.

"What..." But before John could finish his question, he felt himself being shuffled around by Sherlock until he was half sitting on the barrel. "Sherlock, what the..."

Sherlock grabbed his hands with an iron grip and pressed them up against the wall behind him, while his lips sank hotly down onto his mouth.

John couldn't do anything but moan into the unexpected kiss. When Sherlock let up for a moment, John gathered enough of his wits to protest.

"Sherlock, we can't do that here... This is a crime scene."

"Wrong on both accounts," Sherlock said, unmoved, then licked greedily over John's neck. "First, this isn't a crime scene, merely the storage point for a package containing two human ears. Second, as you see quite clearly, we certainly can..." Sherlock pressed his lower body against John to emphasise his point, at the same time allowing him to feel how much he wanted him. "I don't think you want me to walk around out there like this, do you?"

"Sherlock! Aaahhh..." John's indignation decreased at the same rate at which his trousers became increasingly and uncomfortably tight.

"Anyway, it's all your fault," Sherlock noted, nibbling on John's ear lobe.

"My fault?" John moaned, rubbing his awakening erection against Sherlock's thigh.

"Your fault," Sherlock confirmed soberly.

"You kept sending out those sexy, provocative vibes."

John sighed. This wasn't the first time he'd heard this excuse.

"Again?"

"Who else is parading around in front of me all day in jeans that leave nothing to the imagination? And who's showing a shocking amount of skin today?" Sherlock justified himself. "And you drank pineapple juice at breakfast. I saw it. You want me to get down on my knees for you."

"There wasn't any other juice in the flat! And I'm not parading... oh God... and I'm not showing a lot of skin, I only have the top button undone... aaahhhh... and you're the one who bought me these jeans!"

"Proving once again that I have excellent taste," Sherlock noted with a smug grin, and changed his grip on John's wrists so that he could maintain his hold with only one hand. He slipped his other hand down between their bodies.

"Sherlooooooock... Oh God, do that again..." Despite the advanced state of his arousal, John managed to gain control of Sherlock's lips and kiss him stormily, until they were both gasping for air. "I love you," he whispered softly while Sherlock was still trying to catch his breath.

"That's the second time you've said that since breakfast..." Sherlock said, but he didn't sound very put out about it.

"How about it, Sherlock?! Have you figured it out? What are the two of you doing in there..." Lestrade's voice suddenly broke in, and the shed door – which had been slightly ajar - opened.

John froze; Lestrade, too, stood poised in the doorway, unable to move.

Sherlock was the only one who seemed to know what he was doing.

"The smaller ear belongs to Mary. The sister. How do I know? Because it bears a striking resemblance to Miss Cushing's ear. But of course I'm the only one who noticed. It's a mystery to me how you've solved a single case without my help. But never mind that for the moment. Back to the topic at hand.

"As you also heard, there are three sisters. And if you had looked carefully at the photographs on the wall, you would have noticed that there is only a wedding picture of Mary. None of Miss Cushing, nor of the other sister, the regrettable Sarah. But you won't have noticed. As always. Since it's too hot today and I have better things to do at the moment, you could go find this Sarah yourself. I'm certain she was the intended recipient of the package, as it was addressed only to S. Cushing. But you presumably didn't notice that either.

"At the moment, I suspect the larger ear belongs to Mary's lover, and that her husband has murdered both her and the lover. It should fall within the realm of your capabilities to track down the husband, shouldn't it, Lestrade?" Sherlock graced Lestrade with a sunny smile, dripping with sarcasm. "I can take care of the details later. Oh, yes... and even though it might look like it at the moment ... John isn't normally the bottom."

Lestrade's paralysis lifted, he let out an inarticulate sound, took a quick step backwards, and slammed the door shut.

"You did not say that!" John groaned as soon as they were alone again, shutting his eyes in mortification.

"Poor Lestrade's been driving himself insane wondering about it for weeks. I wanted to put him out of his misery, as well as avoiding your male ego taking any damage based on groundless suspicions," Sherlock explained, resuming with the distribution of kisses on John's cheeks and neck.

"You are going to seriously regret that!" John grated out between clenched teeth, but didn't make any attempt to free himself from Sherlock's grip, a task which would have been easily achieved.

Sherlock looked at him with great interest.

"Will you put on your uniform again? I do like it when you pull rank."

"What does my..." John hissed, but didn't get any further.

"Your rank has everything to do with it," Sherlock interrupted with a meaningful grin. "It's just begging to be pulled, in fact." He started slowly rubbing his thigh over the obvious bulge in John's trousers.

"I hate you!" John groaned and wrapped his legs around Sherlock's hips in order to pull him in closer.

"No, you don't," Sherlock contradicted him confidently.

"It's a relief that you can still think clearly enough to do your work, despite the challenge my vibes pose to you," John taunted him, although his voice did sound a little hoarse and breathless.

"If you hadn't been wearing these jeans, I would have figured it out even sooner," Sherlock said, undoing John's flies with his free hand.

"So you were just showing off again." He sighed in relief when he felt Sherlock's fingers on his overheated skin. "No matter what Lestrade hopes... you'll never be a good man. Never."

"Why ever would I want to be?" Sherlock whispered in John's ear. "You love me just the way I am. Why should I want to change?"

oooOOOoooOOOoooOOOooo

In the meantime, Mycroft Holmes was sitting at a desk in the library of the Diogenes Club. Before him laid a cardboard shipping sleeve, a DVD, and one of his business cards. With his second-best fountain pen and a smug smile on his face, he was writing: 'For stimulating moments – Best regards,' on the back of the business card, which he then laid into the plastic case with the DVD. He had already labelled the DVD with another pen. 'Ice cube – Bar – Sherlock – Part 1', it said.

Mycroft slipped the DVD into the cardboard sleeve, sealed it carefully, and wrote John Watson's hospital address on it. Mycroft was purposely not sending it to Baker Street, as he wanted to avoid Sherlock getting his hands on the corpus delicti and making it disappear before his little doctor got to enjoy observing Sherlock in the midst of his extremely naughty experiment.

Once the package was on its way, Mycroft indulged in playing through in his mind's eye all of the possible reactions which his brother and his little doctor might have. Mycroft Holmes had seldom spent a more enjoyable afternoon.

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THE END

Notes on the epilogue:

I'm shamelessly playing with the original story "The Cardboard Box" here. I've also incorporated some of the dialogue from the explanations on the English fan site "With Love, S.H. - Decoding the Subtext". (There, they suggest that Sherlock only took the case for John's sake because he knows that John would like to see something other than London.)

nekosmuse sherlockholmes / subtext / cardboardbox . htm

It's a really interesting site that looks at each original canon story through slash goggles, imagining that Holmes and Watson were real people.

Author's note:

Well, that's it then... kind of a shame. I've developed a real soft spot for the story. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.