Sally doesn't come back round, but he is busy with other things and only thinks about her when the disc changer rotates to her CD. He took her advice and has been occupied with a pretty little Goth medical student named Cheryl who never shows any squeamishness about dissections or post mortems. On their first date, he watched her eat dinner as he sipped tea (she giggled about how it's usually the other way around for her on dates.) On their second date, they rented Flatliners and watched it at her flat. She was wide eyed the entire movie, and joked about how in primary school they'd played the "Fainting Game," making each other pass out and then telling each other the crazy things their minds had done while they were unconscious. It doesn't take long for him to convince her to help in his experiment.

He wants to find out how much he can use in a six hour period without overdosing. He also wants to know what this will do to his brain. She consents to monitor his vitals and perform an EEG, but she draws the line at a CT scan because she would need a technician to run it and there's no one she can trust.

Their third date is spent in a darkened lab on a Saturday night, with sensor pads all over Sherlock's head and a heart monitor clipped to his index finger. Cheryl is nervous (she wasn't able to obtain a crash cart) but exacting and efficient. Her bedside manner is soothing. She even procures some pharmaceutical grade heroin (he pays for it but doesn't ask how she got it because he most emphatically does not want to know) so that the results are not marred by impurities. They decide to do a drip, as she is worried about multiple injections sites and because the IV will make it easier to calibrate the doses. It will also make it easier to administer naloxone if his heart rate or respiration become seriously depressed. As she works, the nervous giggles and fidgeting are gone; she just talks to him softly. Mostly about her course work, but also about the other students in her program. She tells him that most of her classmates have done some form of crazy experimenting on themselves or each other; she's just never been involved. She also says that almost every one of them is on cocaine or the new ADHD medication, Adderall. It's the only way to keep up with the course load. He rambles a bit to her, mostly about bees. In the end, they go through 100mg and she has not even had to consider the naloxone.

She comes to his flat a few more times after she delivers his EEG results, but soon stops after she realizes that he is not going to sleep with her.

Sherlock is alarmed by both the EEG results and his incredible tolerance. He is also alarmed by the lovely cream envelope that arrives in the post the same day Cheryl drops off the results. It is an invitation to his brother's wedding. He knows that if he skips out on it, he will be hunted down and sent to rehab. He also knows that if he turns up at the wedding in his present state, he will be shunted off to rehab. As much as he loves irritating his brother, he cannot have that. So he strips his room of everything but a mattress, gives his flat mate Gary a ridiculous sum of money to check on him if he goes quiet for too long, promises him an even more ridiculous amount of money for his refusal to accept any bribes, and locks himself in.

Three days. All the research had said it would take three days, five at the outside. But it has been two weeks, and while he is mostly able to function, has been able to get his room cleaned and back in order, he still feels as though he's fighting a nasty flu. His thoughts are even more sluggish than his body. He spends a lot of time cocooned in his bed, walking through his mind palace and setting things to rights. It is a mess, as though it has been ransacked; some things missing (he hopes temporarily) and others in the wrong place.

He is thus occupied one afternoon near the end of term when Sally barges into the flat without ringing the bell.

"Well, the damned computer lab is busier than a whore house on pay day and I've got a paper to write. Yours has a word processor and a printer, right?"

Her hair is down and the purple streaks have been replaced with crimson. Black dress (hangs on her), black tights (not the ones from their first meeting), black boots (Army Surplus), and looking a good five pounds thinner than when he last saw her. Perhaps seven. It doesn't suit her. She's carrying a canvas messenger bag that may weigh more than she does. She drops it by his desk, powers on his computer and starts moving stacks of paper around. She stops abruptly, turns and looks him over.

"So you've quit, then? Just like that?"

"Erm, no," he says, "Well, yes, cold turkey but, it was—is—decidedly more difficult than I'd imagined."

She starts to speak but laughs softly instead.

"What?"

"Almost suggested you go to meetings but I'd imagine if you turned up at an NA meeting it'd be five minutes before everyone relapsed. Is this all the paper you've got, Freak?"

"Bottom drawer on the right. Is there anything else you need? Dial-up number? Tea? First born child?"

"I'll go halves on Chinese if you'll order it." She puts on her headphones, cracks open a book. "And my CD, please. Just put it in my bag."

He orders finger foods for her, fried dumplings, and egg rolls. Things she can eat more easily while working. He manages most of an order of egg drop soup. He is not currently fighting his appetite, it simply hasn't returned. She remarks that between them, it's probably the saddest Chinese dinner ever.

Her fortune says, "Love is a friendship set to music."

His says, "You like Chinese food."

She introduces him to Alanis Morissette (so illustrative of the psyche of Sally) and he plays her some Rachmaninoff on his violin. Her paper is on moral ambiguities in Crime and Punishment, he offers to write it for her (it would take him two hours at most, what with the current state of his brain) but the music is the only assistance she will accept.

Sally is still working when he dozes off shortly before dawn.

As much time as he's been spending in bed, little of it has been spent sleeping. There are nightmares. He frantically tries to bin whatever it is that may be causing these fractured, suffocating images but they keep coming over and over. He knows that the nightmares are just a result of his brain trying to recalibrate, but that doesn't help the very real terror he feels when he sleeps. He is glad to have her there, silhouetted by the glow of the screen and his desk lamp, fingers clacking away, flipping pages softly and sighing. It is like having Miss Henley in the rocking chair in the nursery, crocheting in the lamp light, but also strangely mixed up with evenings in the garden with a girl cousin whom he'd been dangerously attracted to summer term when he was fourteen.

When he wakes up the chair is empty, but her bag is still on the floor. He finds her in the lounge, curled on the sofa with one of his dressing gowns thrown over her. Her face is so vulnerable in sleep that she is hardly recognizable. He wonders how long it will take for the frustrations of her chosen career to stamp out these last vestiges of softness. She sleeps with one hand under the pillow. He finds it best to let her sleep while he makes tea and toast.

She wakes up just as he is setting everything on the tray. It is instantaneous and she is frantic.

"Oh fuck! Fuck! What time is it?"

"Half seven. You said it's due by nine. Is it finished?"

"Yes. Oh sod. I was just going to lie down for a moment, was too bleary to navigate the Tube and didn't have money for a taxi." She starts gathering up her hair into a ponytail, searches her bag for gum and perfume. Looks down hopelessly at the wrinkled mess of her dress.

"Fucking cotton bullshit," she mutters.

"I don't know how often you'll need to use my computer for all-nighters, but in the future I'll have to insist you take my bed. I'll use the sofa. Gary's harmless but some of his mates aren't."

"Not likely. I sleep with pepper spray under my pillow, and term is over Friday."

"Good thing I didn't wake you myself, then. Do you need to borrow some clothes?"

"I don't know what would be worse. Leaving your flat looking a mess or leaving your flat wearing your clothes."


She ends up in Sherlock's clothes, because in the long run it's just easier than trying to iron the dress or throw it in the drier (what would she wear in the meantime, anyway? Despite Sherlock's assertions of celibacy, she doesn't want to run around in her knickers, especially if the elusive—though supposedly harmless—Gary should turn up. ) She kind of just wants to burn the dress, it's always such a pain, but it's one of the last nice ones she has so she stuffs it into her bag. He lends her a white t-shirt and dark blue jeans.

"Christ, Sherlock. You're not that fucking tall. How are your legs so long," she says as she turns up the jeans a third time.

"The global average for male height is about 1.72 meters or 5 feet 8 inches. Last I know I measured in at right around 6 feet tall. Assuming that my lifestyle of the past year or so has not affected my growth, I may continue to become taller until I'm 25. So, while I may not be extraordinarily tall I am well above average and do have legs proportionally long for my height. As a woman of slightly less than average height, even though you do have remarkably long legs for your height as well, it would make sense that my jeans would not fit you properly, especially as I bought that particular pair with an inseam long enough to turn up."

"Right," Sally says. "Well, I'm off. I'll return them when I can. And, erm, thank you. For, well, everything."

He picks up his violin in answer, and starts in on some Mozart. She recognizes it as one her sister used to pound out on the piano constantly when she wanted to sound like she was practicing but didn't want to play anything she actually needed to practice.

She sprays herself with CKOne, and instead of smelling like an ashtray (Sherlock lights new cigarettes off of the last one in addition to leaving half smoked ones lying around burning in ashtrays) she smells like lightly citrus scented ashtray. She's only going in to turn in her paper today-she doesn't actually have class-but she'd rather not look like she spent last night on a binger. This professor is already enough of a condescending prat.

She pauses at the door and looks him over. He is looking out the window while playing. It has been weeks since she first met him, and he hasn't cut his dark hair, which was already falling in his eyes that first encounter. His shoulder blades protrude like wings waiting to break through his faded dressing gown. His hands on the strings and the bow are long fingered and beautifully shaped.

Sally considers asking Sherlock to come with her to drop off her paper, and then take a walk in Spa Green Garden. He is very pale and has said he hasn't been out at all since he detoxed. His housekeeper has been bringing him tea, bread and cigarettes when she comes once a week. He was vague last night when she asked when he'd last eaten a proper meal, changing the subject to how you could infer the quality of a restaurant from clues on the takeaway menu.

Sally rejects the idea almost as soon as it is fully formed. There is something lost and seeking in his never resting eyes. There is also something desperate and grasping. It is alarming, especially in someone so outwardly beautiful and charismatic. It pulls at that maternal part of her that wants to heal, and soothe, and repair. He has suppressed one addiction but has redoubled his efforts smoking and is frantic for something else to ease his boredom. She wonders if that laser focus has ever been aimed on a person. If he has ever broken down a person into parts (more so than the surface level with which he summarizes everyone he sees) as he does things and experiences, studying the individual pieces then putting it all back together (or not, his mantel clock is strewn out all over an end table in the lounge.) She is curious, or she would never have let him sit with her; never have come to his flat (especially not twice.) She knows that she could have either intimidated or flirted her way into the use of a computer last night, but she came here.

As she leaves, she decides that she should send his clothes back in the post. She is not interested in injured birds or cage keepers. And she's pretty sure he's both.

By the time she drops off her paper and gets home, she is relieved that she went with her instinct and did not invite him along. He would have been exhausting, though at any other time she might have enjoyed his constant commentary on everyone they passed. The last week of exams and papers has caught up with her, and she just wants to curl up on her bed and die for a few hours.

She lives in a subsidized bedsit a mile from campus. Her grants pay for most of her fees, but no room and board, and this was far cheaper than the halls of residence. It also affords her the luxury of not having a roommate. It's basic and dreary, but she really only sleeps here so it doesn't matter. She has one exam to sit on Friday, then a weekend in Yorkshire before the non-stop service drudgery of the summer holidays begins. She kicks off her boots and Sherlock's jeans, but not his shirt (it was buried in drawer so only vaguely smells of an ashtray) collapses into bed with her headphones on, and drifts off to the sounds of her rescued CD. She's only slightly annoyed that she'll now associate this album with him.

It is late afternoon when she wakes up, feeling feverish from the stuffy room and some disjointed disturbing dreams. She opens the window, which freshens the stifling air slightly, then shuffles to the kitchenette. She is fumbling around making tea, trying to get her fingers to work properly, when she notices that something has been slid under the door.

It is a new CD, still in the cellophane. An import from an artist called Poe. There's a note attached, on heavy white monogrammed stationery. In sprawling handwriting it says:

Sally,

I thought you might enjoy this, based on your appreciation for Miss Morissette. Please accept my apologies for holding your copy of Definitely Maybe for so long. I would also like to extend to you an invitation to accompany me to my brother's wedding on 12 July. It will be an afternoon affair, frightfully dull I'm afraid (as most of these things are.) My mother is insisting I bring someone, and you are the only female in my acquaintance who is remotely suitable. Come if convenient. A car will pick you up at 2:00. Formal attire. I'm assuming you have one or two nice frocks left from your former life. Please make sure it reveals the tattoo on your shoulder. My mother will adore it.

SH

P.S. If inconvenient, come all the same.