Author's Note: Enormous thanks are due my splendid betas, Pat_Is_Fannish, who figured out why this chapter was kicking my arse, and Strangegibbon, who always makes things better (in spite of her indiscriminate slaughter of gentle commas). Please shower them with praise and sympathy, because they have to put up with me. All mistakes, blunders, and errors in judgement are my own.

Thanks as well to every single person who reviewed, favourited, subscribed, and lurked. I'm deeply grateful.

Chapter 2: Environmental Influences

His heats had stopped.

John stumped through the park, hard and fast, driving his cane into the pavement with every step, perversely satisfied with the shots of pain each jolt sent through his shoulder.

His goddamned shoulder. His goddamned leg. Both his motherfucking careers. And now his heats. One fucking bullet, and everything that made him worth anything at all, gone.

No-one could tell him how much functionality he might recover, or when, or if. He'd clearly never be a surgeon again, but he hoped he might one day be able to zip his trousers with his left hand and walk without a sodding cane. But hope—well, hope was the most dangerous emotion. Hope made soldiers and patients fight losing battles as if they could win. Better to know from the outset if there was no hope, and plan accordingly.

It started to rain, the slow, steadily increasing sort of drizzle that meant it was settling in for the day. Again. London had not had one full fucking dry day since he'd returned. His shoulder would ache tonight, what with the weather and the pounding he was inflicting on it. His bedsit already reeked of damp and depression and pain-sweat even to his sorry nose, and this wasn't going to help matters.

Suddenly the thought of going back to sit in that dank, dark cell and eat beans on toast by himself was intolerable. At the least, at the very least, he was going to eat something he could smell, damn it all, something spicy enough to cut through the stuffiness caused by the goddamned mould, and he was going to eat it in a brightly-lit place with other people around. Curries were cheap; he could do a curry.

"John! John Watson!"

Oh, fuck this, John thought. I just want to get in out of the wet. But he turned anyway.

The man was vaguely familiar, but John couldn't quite—"Stamford, Mike Stamford," he said, offering his hand, and now John could place him. "Heard you were abroad somewhere dry and sunny. Why on earth did you come back? Come on, come on, get out of the rain. I'll buy you lunch and we can catch up, if you've nothing on."

# # #

Footsteps outside the door brought Sherlock's attention away from the slide with the tiny green flakes that confirmed the victim's brother's guilt. Could no-one on the Met be bothered to use their eyes? This didn't even require rudimentary brainwork, just a set of working eyeballs. Impossibly dull. Indescribably dull. Possibly fatally dull. His brain might actually rot if things went on much longer like this.

Furthermore, Molly was being especially persistent today with the—he could only think of it as tidbitting behaviour, bringing coffee and biscuits and and lingering with obvious intent in spite of the fact he was a different species than she, and it was annoying. Oh, God, why did people have to be so consistently boring? Nearly all of them were vastly more appealing with railroad spikes through their cerebella.

"Bit different from my day," said an unfamiliar voice with a likewise unfamiliar footfall pattern that came in with Mike and oh, this could be interesting because just this morning he'd mentioned—

"Mike, can I borrow your phone?" he interrupted.

"No," Stamford said immediately. Surely he wasn't still upset about the pornography download? It had been for a case. His wife should have understood.

"Here, use mine," said the stranger, and that spoke of either stupidity or a love of risk-taking, given his friend's emphatic refusal. Stamford would never have brought someone stupid to him as a potential flatmate.

He inhaled surreptitiously as he took the phone. Flat, sterile scent beneath cheap human shampoo and soap, none of the complex richness of alpha or omega. Body language rigidly military: not re-acclimatised to civilian life. When distracted, the man placed weight evenly on both legs despite the bad limp when walking: psychosomatic, then. Traumatic injury, other post-traumatic symptoms now that he knew to look for them: wounded in action.

The phone was a cheap, low-end model with little memory. Clothing good quality but outdated, likely from a consignment rather than charity shop, and slightly loose on his frame despite having been recently purchased: money problems, more than just the difficulty of affording London alone on an Army pension. Gambling, not for money but because he was bored and chasing a thrill. Oh, this man was interesting.

"John Watson, Sherlock Holmes," said Stamford.

He handed Watson back the phone and baited the hook. "Afghanistan or Iraq?"

# # #

John stood rigidly as the lab door slammed shut, the words "Oh, and the impotence is just a post-traumatic symptom, like the limp. Nothing to be concerned about. I imagine you'll begin having spontaneous nocturnal emissions a few weeks before achieving voluntary erections, so watch for that, if it's of any importance to you" hanging in the air.

Mike cleared his throat awkwardly. "Yeah. He's always like that. Just like that, actually."

Then the lab-coated woman in the corner of the room made a sympathetic little noise, and John promised himself he could punch the shit out of something back at his bedsit.

# # #

Sherlock tucked the skull onto the mantle, shifted it six centimetres to the left, one and a half back to the right, rotated it twenty-six degrees anti-clockwise, and then took his hand away even though the skull wasn't optimally positioned because he was not arranging a den for his new flatmate.

Exciting, that: his new flatmate. John Watson was a locked-room murder, an undiscovered poison, a hidden motive, and Sherlock would be living with him, able to observe closely and tease out all his secrets. He shivered with anticipatory delight.

He shifted a pile of journals from the chair seat to the floor, then from there to the top of another stack on the desk. That left him holding the headphones, about which he dithered momentarily before tossing them onto the newly emptied chair because he was not arranging a den.

And oh, wouldn't it just boil Mycroft's blood to hear his baby brother was living with a beta?

Gleefully, he snatched up his violin and skirled ecstatically until Mrs Hudson came up with tea and sandwiches ("Just this once, dear, as you've not had time to go to the shops.") and asked if he knew any Glenn Miller.

He ate a sandwich in four bites and absently hooked the headphones over the antlered skull.

# # #

John had no sooner hung up his sodden jacket and opened his laptop to do a bit of research when the bedsit's street door (the one he knew damned well he'd bolted) creaked gently open. Part of him had been expecting this for weeks, and he was glad that at least he'd be dressed, sitting up, and facing the fuckers when they did him in. He'd been more than half afraid it would happen in the shower, or on the toilet.

He didn't try to go for the gun under his pillow. He'd never make it, not with his leg, and the thought of being shot in the back was more than he could bear.

The doorway was empty.

After several long minutes of nothing, John levered himself to his feet with the cane and stumped out onto the pavement. A woman looked up from her mobile, blinked at him vaguely, and said, "This way."

The brand-new black saloon idling at the kerb was upholstered in leather, so it probably wasn't going to be where he died. The abandoned warehouse it pulled into, on the other hand, seemed just right for the purpose.

Omega arrogance radiated from the sharp, thin figure leaning ostentatiously on an umbrella, leaving no doubt as to his race and sex. With the detached hypervigilance that had slid over him when the bedsit door had opened, John noted the bespoke tailoring that could not conceal a gun, and the empty chair—just one—offset to the right. There were three points in the room at which an unseen sniper could be positioned. Of course, it could be they'd just go for a close-range shot in the chair once the suit left.

Not in the back, he prayed, exhaling deeply, lifting his chin, squaring his shoulders, and stumping forward. Just don't let it be in the back.

"Dr Watson." The omega was all smiles and solicitude. "Do sit down; your leg must be hurting."

"Not at all."

The omega regarded him briefly, head cocked to the side, raven-like, and his smile changed. "I wonder if you realise that's true."

Oh, fuck this, he thought, because twice in one day really was just too much, and snapped, "Get to the point. Why am I here?"

The suit tsked reprovingly. "Patience, Dr Watson. There is a rhythm to these things. First I put on a show of intimidation, next I explain how I may be of service to you, and then you to me. And then the stick, should the carrot prove inadequate. You've created quite a stir in certain circles. You have enemies in high places. You need friends in similarly lofty places. I could be your friend, Doctor."

"In exchange for what?"

"Your therapist," said the suit as he reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and withdrew a small brown notebook, "thinks you have suicidal tendencies stemming from depression. For God's sake, get rid of her. She can't even tell that the reason you're losing weight is that you've inadequate funds for meals."

I have nothing to be ashamed of, John told himself fiercely as a flush crept up his neck. Nothing.

"The reason you're fatalistic and reconciled to death is because you recognise that it is a perfectly plausible outcome. You're quite right: on your own, you can do nothing to stop those whose interests would be advanced by your disappearance. You need me for that."

"And what do you want in return?"

"Information. Nothing indiscreet, nothing you'd feel uncomfortable with. Certainly nothing treasonous, as you're likely imagining. Earlier today you met someone: Sherlock Holmes, my younger brother. I worry about him, constantly. It would ease my mind considerably to—No, no, don't answer me now, you'll only refuse. You feel manipulated and threatened, and you won't allow anyone to have that power over you. You have," the omega consulted the brown notebook, "trust issues. No matter. I can tell by your left hand you'll be moving in with him. We'll see each other again, John, and perhaps you'll have reconsidered my offer by then. He's perfectly hellish to live with; you may come to feel you deserve some compensation for it."

The suit had sauntered halfway out of the warehouse, twirling his umbrella, before he called over his shoulder, "Oh, and Captain? Your service sidearm really will not suit. You can do better than that."

Even knowing it was exactly what the omega wanted him to do, immediately he'd been returned to his bedsit, John checked under the pillow for his gun. The Browning was gone, and in its place was a used and meticulously maintained SIG Sauer.

His phone pinged.

If my brother offers you money to spy on me, demand cash in advance. I need a pancreas and you've lost your rent money playing poker. SH

They're both nutters, he thought. This sort of shit doesn't happen in real life. But his life hadn't felt real since the Incident, and despite knowing the dangers of hope, he wanted to believe there was a chance of survival.

The bedsit was cold and damp, so he climbed into bed under the blankets with his laptop and searched out everything he could find on Sherlock Holmes. The Science of Deduction was...well, it was either sheer genius or the biggest load of bullshit John had ever seen. He was leaning towards genius, but honestly, left thumb?

His ears flamed when he recalled how that lanky sod had announced John's sterility as if remarking on his brand of shoes. Mike's surprise had been bad enough, but the pathologist's pity—

Damn the arrogant bastard.

He was right, though. He'd been right about quite a lot. Maybe he was right about the limp, too.

Treacherous hope.

When in the small hours of the morning he fell into a fitful doze, he dreamt of a t-shirt, rank with the stench of terrified alpha, undertones of piss beneath apocrine and adrenaline, and barely rolled off the side of the bed onto his hands and knees before he vomited bile.

Heart slamming in his chest, he rested his forehead against the bedframe and swallowed until his stomach stopped heaving. I did the right thing. I don't regret it, and I'll be damned if I let them kill me for it.

Once he'd cleaned the mess and washed up to make tea, he sat with a mug and an untouched apple and realised he'd decided to fight after all.