A.N.: This story has a very different dynamic to The Heart Pressed Into Flesh. I wanted this one to be a kind of epilogue: much happier and focussing on the positives of Sherlock's hobby.

A.N.2: You should probably listen to 'Bring Me To Life' by Evanescence before you read this story, if you're not already familiar with it. It's not a requirement, but it would help the story make a little bit more sense.

Warnings: One use of strong language, references to boy/boy kissing (but not slash), reference to drugs

Disclaimer: Don't own Sherlock or the lyrics in this story

Despite all John's efforts to hide it, he'd found the gun.

Over the past year or so, he had tried several hiding places for the firearm. He'd tried under the sink; he'd tried in the boiler cupboard; he'd even tried at the bottom of the laundry basket. Each time, it had been found, and this time was no different.

The sound of bullets being pumped into the wall one by one filled the flat: a steady, regular rhythm that shook the building violently. It had been just over a week since their last case, and John had been expecting this.

"Sherlock!" he called, in a gap between gunshots. It did not stop the next one from coming. Sighing, he opened the door of his bedroom and thundered down the stairs, his footsteps not quite as loud as the gun in the living room, though that was not for want of trying.

When he got into the living room, he realised just why the building seemed to have been shaking from his bedroom.

Sherlock was not sitting in his armchair and aiming at the wallpaper, as he usually did – he was lying on the sofa, unloading rounds into the ceiling; the ceiling that was also the floor of John's bedroom.

"What – the fuck – are you doing?" the ex-army medic exclaimed. He was ignored; the detective fired two more bullets into the ceiling then stopped, though only a few seconds passed before it became apparent that the momentary peace was merely due to his need to reload the pistol.

"No." John said with an air of finality, now no longer caring that he was not being listened to. He strode the few steps to the sofa and snatched the gun out of his flatmate's hands before he could get ready to fire again.

"Hey!" Sherlock cried indignantly, turning his head to glare at John – the first time he had acknowledged the doctor's presence since he had entered the room.

John held the gun up loosely, so that it posed no danger to anyone. "I'm going to get rid of this," he said.

"No, you're not," Sherlock replied, shifting on the sofa and crossing his arms over his chest. "What if you need to shoot someone on a case?"

John pursed his lips into a thin angry line, trying to think of a retort. Yet he knew that there was not one, for there would always be the chance that he would need to put a bullet in someone while they were on a case.

"Fine," he sighed, "I won't." He reached behind him and placed the gun on the coffee table. "But this has to stop."

"Then find me a case!" Sherlock snapped, looking round at him again. His eyes were beginning to develop the slightly crazed look that usually accompanied the latter stages of his boredom. He was on the brink of losing it completely, and that was something that John could not allow.

He took a deep breath to calm himself down, knowing full well that shouting would achieve nothing. "There isn't a case," he reminded the detective quietly. Sherlock scowled and turned away.

They lapsed into silence, John taking every aspect of this situation into consideration. This level of boredom was dangerous, and every means to end it had already been exhausted. There was only one real option left, but John wasn't sure how viable it was.

It was been six months since John had found out about Sherlock's shifts at The Kitten Club, and – to the doctor's knowledge – he hadn't been back there since. It was understandable, but the bruises – and bones – had healed and so, he assumed, had the psychological damage. While Sherlock had not talked about what had happened since they had got home that night, the next few weeks had seen him more withdrawn than usual. Eventually, however, he had returned to normal, and John could see no reason to not at least suggest it.

"Just spit it out, John; I may not be able to distinguish your thoughts, but they make one endless drone and it's incredibly irritating."

John sighed, looking away from Sherlock to his left and then back again. "Have you considered calling Vince?"

The look that Sherlock shot him said a lot of things in quick succession; from, 'Are you crazy?' to 'Of course I have' to 'Why would that help' to a look of vulnerability that passed so quickly John was sure that he had imagined it, before his features fell into an emotionless mask once more. It was a few moments before he spoke, and when he did, his voice was slow, low, and cautious.

"I haven't been there since…"

He trailed off, the silence ending the sentence for them.

"Does he know?" John asked quietly. There had been no texts or calls to the owner of the club regarding the reason behind John's summons before they had left that night six months ago, and the doctor had no way of knowing for definite if Vince had been informed since then.

"No," Sherlock mumbled, keeping his gaze fixed on John.

"Were you going to tell him?"

Sherlock didn't answer straight away. Nothing in his eyes or his expression changed to convey what he might have been thinking. When he did speak, his voice was little more than a murmur, as if he was awkward. "No."

John spread out his arms before dropping them, his palms making a slapping sound against his thighs. "Then what's stopping you going back?"

Sherlock said nothing; he just stared. It was as though he was willing John to read what he was thinking without giving any indication as to what it was that was going round his head. It was a look that he gave the doctor more often than he would like, and even though he was getting better at gauging exactly what it was that the detective wanted him to grasp, he couldn't profess to know exactly what he was thinking all of the time. So, in this particular case, he decided to wing it.

"I'll come," he offered, earning a creased brow of confusion from his flatmate. "If you get a shift tonight, I will come and watch you perform."

It was at these words that the look in his eyes changed slightly. It became warmer, as though a crackling fire had been lit behind the icy blue. Yet it was also cautious, like he didn't quite believe that this was happening.

"You would… do that?" he asked slowly.

"Of course," John nodded reassuringly.

Sherlock blinked at him, the corner of his mouth twitching slightly, almost imperceptibly. "Thank you," he said quietly, and was answered with a shrug from his flatmate.

"Just get in touch with Vince," John told him, turning to leave, but taking the gun with him just in case. He was sure, as he turned to the stairs that led up to his bedroom, that – out of the corner of his eye – he saw Sherlock reach for his phone.

He didn't see Sherlock for the rest of the day – they seemed to miss each other constantly, even though neither of them left the flat. It was not a strange occurrence for the two of them, but it was incredibly irritating when one of them needed to talk to the other, and as a matter of principle, John refused to text someone who was in the same building as he.

The only contact that he had with his flatmate after he had confiscated his gun from him was in the form of a note that had been left for him on the kitchen counter, and that he had found when he had made a brief excursion from his bedroom to make a cup of tea. It merely said:

I'm on at 10.30.

As soon as he had seen the note, he had known that Sherlock must have left the flat at some point, but the ink of the note was still fresh-

And he is rubbing off on me, he sighed to himself, crumpling up the note in his hand in frustration but committing the time to memory. He even found himself looking forward to his evening out.

He gave the cabbie the address, rather than the name, of the club, remembering what Vince had told him on the phone last time he had been to The Kitten Club. When the cab pulled up, half an hour later, John stepped out onto the curb and looked across the road to the club, which looked no different than the last time he had been there. The only thing that had changed was the poster stuck next to the door: it had different names on it, though there were a few that he recognised, and it still proclaimed the one-night-only appearance of Bella Rosé at the club.

When John walked through the door, he was faced with the same bouncer that Vince had cleared him with last time: a thickset man with cropped hair and an immaculate navy blue suit complete with a thick black tie. His beefy hands were clasped behind his back, and he wore an earpiece with a curled piece of wire that disappeared behind his head. As his deep brown eyes looked him up and down, John knew that this was a man who was paid to never forget a face – even if he hadn't seen that face for six months.

"Dr Watson?" the man asked, his voice deeper than John had been expecting; it almost didn't sound real.

"Um, yes," he confirmed, unsure as to why the bouncer would know his name.

The bouncer reached into his back pocket and produced a lanyard with a card attached that had the letters 'VIP' on it, and handed it over to John.

"You can keep it in your pocket, if you want," the bouncer explained. "Most people do."

John stared down at the pass in disbelief. "Is this right?" he asked, looking up at the bouncer, who nodded.

"You're on the list. Added this afternoon by one Bella Rosé. If you would like to follow me."

As the bouncer walked through the beaded curtain into the main part of the club, John felt a smile tug at the corners of his mouth. He'd never been a VIP before…

Once John had followed him through, the bouncer took a red rope that was attached to the doorframe from which the beaded curtain hung, and pulled it across the doorway, attaching a golden ring at the end of the rope to a hook on the other side of the doorframe, before turning back and leading John to a roped off area at the very front of the club – practically on the stage – that he hadn't noticed the last time he had been there. The bouncer unhooked a purple rope from a similar hook to the one in the doorframe – though this time it was on a pole raised from the ground – and gestured to John to take one of the ten seats within the roped-off area.

"Thanks," he nodded to the bouncer, who inclined his head in response. The chairs in the VIP area were clearly more comfortable than those outside; these were plush, practically arm chairs, compared to the simple wooden chairs that those outside of the roped-off area had to sit on; chairs that John suspected had been left over from when this placed used to be a pub.

Once the bouncer had left him, he took the seat furthest into the VIP area, which was nearest to the very centre of the stage, set about five feet away from the edge of the raised platform, and checked his watch. According to his timepiece, it was only five minutes before Bella Rosé would take to the stage, and it was being prepared for the next act before his eyes.

The stage was, at this present moment, shrouded in darkness, though John could see people setting up, taking props away from the last performer's act, and replacing them with a single microphone stand, the microphone set at the perfect height for Sherlock to speak into. Music was playing from somewhere, something to fill in the gaps in conversation. It was about five minutes until it faded away, and the lights came up on the stage, illuminating it and making everything else seem incredibly dark in comparison.

The only thing that was on the stage was the microphone stand, yet a few moments later, a figure emerged from the shadows at the back of the stage.

The last time John had been to The Kitten Club, he had not seen the full Bella Rosé effect; he had merely seen Sherlock mid-transformation, rather than fully in the persona of his alter ego, and he almost had to take a double-take that it was the same person.

Bella was wearing a completely different outfit than the last time John had seen her attire. A luscious red satin dress, strapless, flowed to her ankles, ending just high enough so that her high heels were visible: a pair of silver shoes with straps criss-crossing over her feet and culminating in a thin strip of material curled around her ankle and held in place with a small, silver buckle. Her hair – which had been black before – was now as flaming red as her dress, cascading in soft waves over her shoulders, and her face…

Well, it was only really when John looked properly at Bella Rosé's face that he remembered that it was actually his flatmate standing there.

Bella wasn't wearing much make-up: only some mascara and red lipstick. Her face was as pale as John remembered, that glow-in-the-dark quality to her cheeks that John had thought of as synonymous with Sherlock Holmes. Yet out of the whole persona, the most shocking thing was Bella's eyes.

Her eyes were that unique ice blue, shining from her face and glittering in the lights that were illuminating the stage. If the eyes were the windows to the soul, then when John looked into those eyes, he did not see the soul of Bella Rosé: he saw the soul of Sherlock Holmes.

And he looked terrified.

John watched as Sherlock looked over the room, soaking in the people who had come to see him perform as someone else, and with each person he saw, he seemed to get more and more scared, until finally – after what seemed like an everlasting age – those blue eyes fell on John sitting in the front row, and the fear within them dissolved, replaced with a relief and a gratefulness that seemed to banish his nervousness completely.

John gave him an encouraging smile, which he returned. Somewhere in the background, a piano began to play, and then, almost out of nowhere, Sherlock began to sing.

"How can you see into my eyes like open doors?
Leading you down into my core, where I've become so numb."

John blinked in surprise, not sure what he had been expecting, only that it hadn't been this.

Sherlock's voice was still deep, only one or two octaves higher than when he spoke. He wasn't trying to sound like a woman, but no one else seemed to mind; the doctor supposed that, if you didn't know what he sounded like when he was talking, his singing voice would merely sound husky rather than male. As he moved onto the next line, the piano was accompanied with drums and guitar, the musicians hidden somewhere from view.

"Without a soul, my spirit's sleeping somewhere cold,
Until you find me there and lead me back… home."

His voice was so smooth, flowing over the music like water over porcelain. Now that he had started singing, all his earlier nervousness seemed to have evaporated, replaced with the confidence of one who had done this many times before. Since the first word had left his lips, he had been staring out into the darkness of the club, over everyone's heads, but not – John noticed – at the Baskets in the back, yet as the music swelled into the chorus, his piercing blue eyes returned to John.

"Wake me up inside, wake me up inside,
Call my name and save me from the dark,
Bid my blood to run, before I come undone,
Same me from the nothing I've become."

The grin that John hadn't noticed until then was plastered fully on his face stayed until the song ended, with a note so strong and – there was really no other word for it – beautiful, that it filled the ex-army medic with such a powerful sense of pride it nearly brought tears to his eyes.

As the music faded away, a round of applause rippled through the club. Sherlock gave them a shy smile and a small nod, before backing into the shadows and disappearing. The lights on the stage went down again, and suddenly the shadows were filled people once more, taking away the microphone and replacing it with props needed by the next act. The room was filled with conversation and the sound of wooden chair legs scraping on the floor as people rose to get more drinks. It was only a few minutes after Bella had left the stage that a hand was placed on John's shoulder.

He turned to see a man wearing a thin suit with a black waistcoat but no jacket – John assumed that it got too hot in the club to warrant the wearing of one – standing next to his chair.

"Dr Watson?" he asked. John nodded. "You've been called backstage."

He was not surprised to hear those words from the waiter, but nevertheless pretended to look surprised as he rose from his seat to follow him out of the VIP area and around the chairs and tables – passed the Baskets, which he refused to even glance at – and to the all-familiar door that led to the corridor off of which the dressing rooms led.

It was rather disconcerting to be led down the same corridor in much the same fashion as before. He half expected to be presented with the door to Bella Rosé's dressing room and be greeted with the same dejected, "Come in, John" that he had been last time. So all-consuming were his thoughts on the matter that they had reached the door to the dressing room before he knew it, and the waiter politely knocked three times upon the wooden pane.

"Dr Watson to see you, Ms Rosé," the waiter called through the door. John had to almost hide a smirk at 'Ms Rosé'.

"Thank you," came the reply, and John was almost half-surprised to hear that Sherlock hadn't changed his voice; then again, he assumed that the staff, at least, would know that Bella Rosé was not actually a woman, and Sherlock did not profess to be one except when on stage.

The waiter nodded briefly at John before disappearing down the corridor again. Not quite sure of the convention behind such interactions, John decided to knock again, rather than just burst in.

"Come in," the call came, and John opened the door.

Unlike last time, Sherlock had not half-changed out of his Bella Rosé persona: he was still fully in Bella's attire, complete with the wig and the little make-up that he was wearing. Yet the most notable difference from last time was that he was smiling; it was a shy, awkward smile, but nothing like the depressed expression he had been wearing before. He didn't speak until John had closed the door behind him, and they were truly alone.

"Thank you," he began quietly, "for coming to see me. And for the flowers." He gestured behind him at the far corner of the make-up counter, where there stood a bouquet of pink chrysanthemums, with no card.

"How did you know they were from me?"

"You know my methods," he replied shortly, inspiring a smile from the doctor that matched his own. He took a step forward – which was really more of a stride with his long legs – and bent down to press a kiss to John's cheek. The soft impression of the lips against his skin sent a flurry of embarrassment fluttering down the doctor's spine. He found his gaze drawn to the counter, where, last time, they had shared a proper snog.

Ever since then, Sherlock seemed to have opened up a bit more; he seemed more content to show appreciation through kisses – though he never kissed John when there was anyone to see, for if he did then it would have been near impossible for them to deny that they were together. For it was still clear to both of them that the pecks on cheeks or foreheads or – very occasionally – lips, were only expressions of friendship, nothing more.

As Sherlock pulled away, John cleared his throat, slightly awkwardly.

"You can really sing," he told him. Sherlock looked away, a pink hue tinging his cheekbones.

"Thank you," he murmured. "It's one of my favourites."

They lapsed into silence, not quite looking at each other. In the end, it was John who spoke first.

"Do you need to get changed?" he asked, taking a step backwards towards the door to give him some privacy.

"Uh, yes," Sherlock muttered, suddenly looking rather flustered, as though he had been interrupted from deep thoughts. John made to leave, but he was called back. When he turned back towards his flatmate, Sherlock was holding out a card to him. "I was asked to give this to you."

Confused, John took the card from Sherlock. It was about the size of a credit card, a creamy colour that made the black ink scribbled on it slightly more legible. It had two lines of text on it: 'Rosalyn', and a phone number.

"Rosalyn?" he asked, looking up from the card at Sherlock. "Who's Rosalyn?"

"One of the other performers," Sherlock explained. "She said you saw her last time; she was wearing… feathers."

The memory from the last time that John had been to The Kitten Club was dragged from the back of his mind: a woman wearing a feathery outfit which must have been itchy walking down the corridor outside of this very room which John waited outside for Sherlock to get changed. She had waved at him, and he had smiled back, and now she was asking Sherlock to give him her number.

"Does she know about..." John trailed off, gesturing to Sherlock.

Sherlock's brow furrowed slightly, but he quickly recovered from his confusion. "That Bella Rosé is, in fact, a man, who only performs at a burlesque club when all other sufficient distractions from the constant lure of cocaine have been exhausted?"

"Uh, yeah," John nodded, not wanting to go into quite so much detail.

"Yes," Sherlock replied. "She does. Everyone who works here does. They have been sworn to secrecy, regards the patrons."

John nodded absent-mindedly, looking back down at the card in between his fingers. A smile broke out on his face.

"I've got a date with a burlesque dancer," he grinned, looking back up at Sherlock, who was wearing a similar smirk.

"Well, you already live with one."

A.N.3: The normal version of 'Bring Me To Life' is a duet, but the acoustic version isn't, so what Bella sings is actually the lyrics of the acoustic version with the music of the normal version. If that makes sense...