The Dancing Man Part 4

By GE Waldo

Rating: Mature.

Pairing: John/Mary and Sherlock/OMC (sort of), and eventually Johnlock but probably nothing especially sexually graphic. Take warning though just in case!

Summary: Mycroft and John square off on a quest to keep Sherlock safe from what Mycroft see's as his brother's reckless judgement which he believes is endangering his brother's life. Plus two murder cases that not only challenge Sherlock's incredible abilities but pushes him to his mental limits. A continuation of The Glass Heart. (Slightly AU (In this universe Irene Adler and Moriarty are dead for sure and the story is set during a time of limbo after Sherlock is back from the dead but before Watson and Mary's wedding. Duration: several months at least)).

Disclaimer: Not mine but a fantasy never hurt anyone. Edited though I'm confident I missed things. Please do tell and I shall repair.

XXX

Sorry for the lateness of this. Winter is my busy time, but spring/summer is my really busy time. Plus I will finish the Stargate:Atlantis fic - Promise!

SHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSH

"Inevitable?" John repeated for the third time blatantly ignoring the flash of disapproval on Sherlock's features due to his - John knew the detective would have undoubtedly voiced if given a sufficient interval to remind him - needless repetition of questions already voiced. "You make it sound like falling in love with me – if that's what's going on, though I have no idea because it's you we're talking about - was some sort of unavoidable accident."

"Simply a natural progression – a pheromone-al conscription as it were."

In trying to figure out that one John decided fuck it! and instead just asked "Sorry - a what?"

"We have been subjected to each other's proximity - working together in and outside of this flat for more than two years. It is a matter of course - via somatosensory, visual, olfactory and other evolutionary responses - that our bodies each would eventually become...accustomed to the other. As a matter of course sooner or later one or both of us would, to use the vernacular, 'fall in love'- a common but sloppy definition of sexual arousal - at least to some degree." He indicated the indefinite-ness of some by a lazy wave of his right hand.

John rubbed two infinitely patient fingers over his brow. "'Evolutionary sexual conscription'...to some degree? Mmm...yes..." Watson scratched his chin whiskers. He needed a shave. And a dictionary. And a drink the size of the Thames.

And a fucking psychiatrist. "Why that's...charming Sherlock." With no little sarcasm – "You've just titillated the bloody breeches off me. Lucky me to have become smitten-ed over by the world's greatest sociopath." Although John had decided himself a long while back that the jury was still out on that last. John clasped his hands together in a gesture of summation. "So what you're trying to say is you falling in love with me – and again I still have no idea if this has actually happened because, well, again it's you - was something totally beyond your control – that because we share tea and laptops your annoying human pheromones mixed together and like an evil villain took over your libido and kidnapped your penis?"

"Ah...using humour to mitigate your discomfort with the situation, interesting." He said with a hint of scold, "though if I'm not mistaken somewhat inappropriate." But to John's astonishment Sherlock was dead serious. "However it is no secret that the aforementioned stimuli and perhaps bloody crime scenes and dangerous situations attract you - which really should not come as a surprise to you John, you hardly went to war for three years because you wanted to build sand castles. You like war, and dead bodies." And then Sherlock crossed his legs, placed his four primary fingers beneath his nose as though he was praying to the God of Deduction and readying himself to deduce his working partner down to his individual John Hamish Watson molecules but then gave a start. "Your blush is out of place - love is nothing to be ashamed of."

John stood up, walked around in a tiny circle, not certain whether to be angry or flattered or simply solve the equation by banging his head into a solid wall repeatedly until he was blissfully unconscious. "I am not ashamed of this – Christ! – Whatever this is that we're now talking about which – and don't think I didn't notice your attempt to change the subject of our discussion – and that was you we were originally talking about, you sly git! We're talking about you in love with me, not the other way around. And just so we're clear I am not turned on by death."

"But you are attracted to me."

John stopped his tiny, frantic back and forth across Sherlock's much abused carpet and shook his head trying to clear it. He raised a stern finger of warning to his clearly crazy friend. "Shut it. Just. Shut. It." He had a suspicion he would be saying a lot of that in the next twenty minutes or so. "Yeah, I suppose I am, like a moth is to an open flame I'm beginning to think, you contrary, manipulative prat."

Sherlock frowned. "Why do you always resort to calling me names when we're having a difference of opinion?"

"Because you make me murderous – that's why!" Watson slumped in his chair, took a deep clarifying breath and looked at his friend. "Sherlock, it's a simple question although I realise – because it's you – the answer might defy all the wisdom of mankind. But it really is simple: Are you or are you not in love with me?"

"There is a possibility however you needn't concern yourself with it. I have devised a method of testing my hypothesis. I've devoted an entire room to it."

"Hypothesis...and a room...?"

"Yes." Sherlock cocked an eyebrow as though John was showing his all too slowness by not keeping up as expected. "That is what I said – a room, in my Mind Palace. I am certain that given sufficient time and positions I should be able to deduce the answer."

"Positions?"

"Of course. As unsanitary as it is, one must have in place particular parameters in order to conduct a scientific experiment with this sort of thing."

"Parameters...experiment... Are you hoping to dissect me? Because I've got a bit of a problem with that."

Sherlock blinked as though at the frankly stupid. "Of course not - I propose that we have sex."

John closed his eyes and rubbed at them. The world's worst migraine hinting its impending hammer of pain. "You...me...sex? In this room, or in your mind palace? Because if it's just in your head, go at it mate."

"You know my mind palace is where I have stored all my data on you and I have catalogued no fewer than seven women with whom you have dated since I've known you. With all of them you ate dinner, with five of them you got drunk or nearly-"

"Sherlock..."

"With four of them you had sex, and with two of them you had anal sex and/or cunnilingus..."

"Alright – stop! Now how in hell could you know that? Any of that? I never brought any of those women here."

"You brought Sarah here."

"I never got beyond a snog or two with her because of your damn Chinese-circus-karate-arrow-shooting-assassin-murderers."

"And you brought yourself here of course, afterward. After that it was hardly difficult. The odors alone-"

"Stop."

"And by the way "Chinese-circus-karate-arrow-shooting-assassin-murderers." would have been a better title for that particular investigation on your blog, a bit wordy but never-the-less more accurate than "The Lotus Mystery". I advise you log in and change it." Sherlock replied reasonably and also a bit insulted. "And anyway they weren't my murderers."

"To this day she's scared of me. At work she texts me from the next room. She probably thinks your insanity rubs off." John dropped his head into one hand and willed his headache to please go away. "I see. So..." he felt like crawling into bed and having a good cry, "we take off our clothes, we have sex and then...?" He left the floor opened for Sherlock.

"And then these feelings you have for me will either intensify or go away. Simple."

"Right, simple. A man who is in love with me – and don't bloody deny it you posh git! – and who has never had sex with anyone in his life has devised an experiment involving me having sex with him to cure me of wanting to have sex with him."

John cleared his throat and took a moment to convince his vascular system that, no, he was not having a heart attack but, yes, they will soon be down at a pub where they can share a frothy pint in celebration of losing his mind. "We're not going to do this. You're a master at twisting everything back around just so it lands somewhere besides at your size twelve's." John tried to stare down his bewildering friend, daring him to challenge the assertion.

"Eleven's." Sherlock was utterly unflappable. "You don't wish to participate? I fail to understand your reluctance. I interest you and even if you don't love me you do like having sex don't you? After we first met you started chatting up every female in sight -"

"Christ!"

John's heavy footsteps were on the stairs and descending faster than humanly possible. The outside door shook the whole house as he slammed it shut after him.

XXX

He was into his fourth pint by the time Sherlock tracked him down.

He stared up numbly at his detective friend who slid into the booth opposite him. "Took you long enough."

Sherlock cocked an eyebrow. "You only have four favorite drinking establishments; this one was farthest from the flat. Hardly more than a game of hide and seek." Sherlock waved an approaching waiter away. "You are upset with me."

John shook his head. "I'm upset with me."

"What for?"

"Because my fiancé broke up with me yesterday because even she knows I'm in love with you, you gorgeous, sexy, irritating bloody mind-boggling bastard."

Sherlock, to his own continued good health, did not argue the point. "Oh." His heart beat a startling crescendo against his rib cage, a little fluttering bird trying to get out of its cage. Only a pressing of lips together betray the staccato going on below his sternum. "But I'm right? You are turned on by danger, by the hunt, by the thrill of chasing criminals and solving crimes but most especially by catching vile people at the end of your service weapon, and of course – for you – saving the life. You find it sexy as a matter of fact and therefore sexually arousing."

From behind beer-watered eyes John stared down his crime solving, thoroughly insane genius friend. "'Course I am you idiot. And, yes, you are an idiot. An idiot faced with a question, an important question put to you directly, and you don't want to answer because it'd be like admitting it might be true. The whole thing scares the hell out of you, doesn't it?" John recalled the women he had taken after shortly after meeting Sherlock Holmes. And the many physical encounters spent dreaming it was Sherlock's rippling muscles and creamy skin beneath him instead of Sarah's or Nancy's or Rachel's or Whats-'er-name or Who-ever-the-fuck's. Over-compensation. A denial of desires. A refuting of night-fantasies he had silently and steadfastly denied in the light of day.

"I've never been scared of anything in my life."

Lucky bastard only he didn't believe him. "Shite! Were you scared of me dying?"

Everything in the pub shifted because a short, blondish earthquake called John Watson had just dropped a mountain on the floor before Sherlock's feet which stiff backed detective blinked, unable to formulate a single word, and then took refuge in looking away.

It took him another five or six seconds to answer, a virtual eternity for the witty detective, which meant the question had thrown him just enough to cause a mini apoplectic fit inside his head. "Our physical systems came to accept and then expect the presence of the other. A certain level of chemical attraction was only natural."

"Jesus, you can't say it, can you?" Watson drained his pint and waved for another.

Watson was staring and rubbing a palm over his mouth. Sherlock watched, fascinated, intensely curious to know what sort of sensations he would discover if it were his fingers there, or his lips. He had never been properly kissed before – if there was indeed a proper method, and he himself had never kissed anyone. Not the way it was always being done on television, not with passion, not anyone he had wanted to kiss. Not willingly. Not so it felt nice and left him warm all over afterward and counted.

Except for a kiss that then arose in his mind un-summoned, one from long ago. A warm memory originally, as he recalled, from a time when he was barely more than twelve (after Mycroft had the year before gone off to achieve greatness at College and left his younger brother to cope with Daddy's scowls of worry over his "decidedly odd" second son and Mummy's fears over his "frightening abilities"), and where-by the opinions and words of doctors and psychologists he had been assigned the status of Highly-Intelligent-But-Emotionally/Socially-Disturbed-Child (the label not officially recorded because the professionals he had been taken him to and who had suggested it had been righteously refuted by Mummy with threats of civil suits and wished to protect their careers more than actually help a child understand that dissecting road-kill was not usually 'done' and why. Sherlock would have studiously ignored their advice anyway and continued his experiments. He hadn't actually killed anything after all, merely appropriated carcases already devoid of life - what was the problem?), a label he had then torn off from the front door of his Mind Palace with a well placed mental pry-bar and replaced with Genius-Gloriously-Rebellious-High-Functioning-Sociopath-Who-does-Not-Need-Them-Or-Anyone-Else.

Anthony Geils, a young man who had become that rarest of things- a friend - had tried to kiss him nearing the end of the school year - Sherlock was already in the "Advanced" programs along with students older than him by three years including Anthony, a clumsy, wet contact of lips behind the Rugby bleachers which had taken Sherlock by surprise but had not, at first, been altogether unpleasant.

But Anthony, encouraged by the younger Sherlock's lack of resistance, had quickly presumed upon much more than a kiss however and Sherlock had then felt grabby, insistent, uninvited hands at the front of his trousers and inside his zipper. Waves of fear and loathing had erupted in Sherlock's stomach and then in his legs as he had fought the older lad off and escaped to the school loo.

The kiss had felt rather nice with the promise of more nice. The attempted molestation had left him feeling betrayed, and then contaminated, by his very own body. Frightening, illogical sensations that had taken him many days to expunge.

"So your love for me comes from your inner beaker of inadvertent attraction? I'm - what – an unfortunate accident?"

Sherlock realised he had let his attention slip a bit and had to drag his focus back to the sarcastic words coming from John's mouth. But he had managed to gather the gist of what john had been saying and also suspected that John was looking for complete honesty. Unfortunately he found himself having to hunt through mental rooms for the correct words. When people asked for honesty he, with much unpleasant past experience, noted that honesty wasn't always what they actually wanted to hear. Often they were hoping for words that matched what they had already determined in their own mind to be the correct ones, and reacted negatively when his did not meet up, which had been most of the time. "Essentially but I would not have put it so...coarsely. You are hardly an experiment, John. On the other hand physical love is hardly more than that – electro-chemical reactions, not much different than two electrodes forming a completed circuit."

"Again - very romantic." Said with humour but Sherlock felt a sharp pang in his chest at John's watering eyes.

"I don't understand why you're upset. I care for you, John, perhaps not in the traditional sense, but you have become very useful to me and a valuable colleague, and I have expressed before that I love you. Perhaps I need to rephrase..."

"Sure. Like the way you love tea and your violin." John grabbed at his hair with both fists until little tufts were sticking up everywhere through his fingers. "Jesus Christ." Then he grabbed the others man's hands again, this time gripping them fiercely until the blood in the tips of Sherlock's fingers was squeezed out until they turned white and cold. "Sherlock, do I mean anything to you? I mean really mean something, something deep, something important; something so important that you went off for two years playing dead to protect my life. You did that Sherlock – you – Sherlock Holmes gave up everything for my life – for me. I can only imagine that you suffered for it. You must have suffered during that time for me, so I am going to ask you one more time and if you will not give me a straight, truthful answer, I will walk out that door and..." He took a deep shuddering breath. "I'm not sure I will ever speak to you again."

Sherlock was staring; his mouth had clamped shut half way through John's monologue and he could feel the tremor in the detective's hands. Sherlock, not for the first time ever, but certainly to John at least it was as plain as day – had been rendered speechless.

"Sherlock..." John scooted just a bit closer, his feet reaching out and hooking themselves around Sherlock's legs beneath the table. He could feel Sherlock's strong calves stiffen although he did not pull away. "I want you to search your feelings, not your bloody mind palace, not your thoughts, your heart. Please for Christ sake, for my sake, please give me a straight answer. I promise you there is no wrong answer but I absolutely need to know: Are. you. in. love. with. me?"

Sherlock's phone rang and the detective extradited one of his hands from John's, slowly in the hopes of perhaps not to startling John into a premature leap up and escape through the pub's exit, and then held up his index finger to forestall anymore conversation. He spoke for a moment into it, closed it, and then slipped it into his dressing gown pocket. "That was Lestrade." He said, smiling across the table at the object of his involuntary love, not yet spoken aloud, not yet, no, but soon, when the time was not so taut with emotions and feelings and things he could not pin down to a board like his insect collection when he was seven and examine under a microscope at his leisure. So elusive, feelings were. So a jumble of conflicting thoughts, so ethereal and insubstantial and utterly confounding!

So not his area.

He fixed John with a narrow grin; a few polished teeth were showing. John caught its significance. Visible teeth indicated glee. "Crime scene?"

Sherlock jumped up. "Lestrade has more bodies for us. We must go."

And then a text came in as well. And Sherlock read it." No smile this time. Puzzlement, though – a narrowing of his eyes though not in the pleasantness of surprise at someone else's unexpected observation or cleverness. "And Rupert Straite has escaped from prison."

Even John was willing to forego any further discussion of feelings for the moment, to Sherlock's everlasting relief. "Perhaps we can further examine this new phenomenon of our conscripted love for each other via a crime scene setting?" Sherlock suggested like it was something he had done before and had just plucked the idea out of his bottomless experiences of love in its many life-settings.

John snorted but Sherlock remained un-discouraged. "Should prove enlightening – don't you agree?"

John was not quite willing to drop the previous subject yet. Not entirely. "You care for me – right?" He asked.

Sherlock studied his friend. What answer would make John come along? Stand at his side and be the support and quiet, deadly strength that he so sorely needed now in his life and within his work? He stood, staring down at the very drunk – but sobering up - Watson from his imposing height which might have intimidated a lesser man. But John Watson was nothing if not singular.

The thousandth man in fact. Sherlock's eyes upon his good friend were tender. Perhaps, in this instance, the truth would be welcomed? Truth was so much simpler after all than dissembling. "How could I not? I may be a sociopath, John, but I'm not stupid."

XXX

Greg Lestrade looked askance at Watson and he could feel the inspector's curious eyes shooting back and forth between him and Sherlock who was presently bent over another eviscerated body – this time a woman – whose left leg was bent at the knee. The rest of her limbs lay close to her body. Her bloodied blonde hair was fanned across her face. Both arms showed trails of injection marks painted by blue and yellow bruising. "She was a user." Lestrade pointed out the obvious. "Stabbed multiple times." He added in between gum chewing. "Purse is missing. She's a known street walker. Stays at a local cheap bedsitter – sort of a half-way house type place."

He spoke in his customary telegraphic style; clips of words weaved into a loose but plausible theory. "Lots of con's live there, in an' out. Looks like a John robbery to me that went a bit wrong, or maybe her pimp got a bit angry. Some o' these girls keep back a bit more of the profits than they're s'pposed to."

Sherlock acted as though he wasn't listening although both of the men knew he was. This time Sherlock was examining the dead body instead of simply photographs and an alleyway stained by days-old blood. Watson had done his usual examination to determine the cause of death. Lestrade's man Anderson had been correct. Stab wounds, two striking deeply enough Watson suspected it had nearly bisected her liver and one slicing even deeper into her kidney. The blood loss would have been rapid and, even had intervention come in time, most likely fatal in minutes.

Sherlock nodded, accepting the assessment, himself no slouch when it came to evaluating a cause of death but he was also intelligent enough not to question the expertise of two professionals at face value. Not unless he found sufficient reason to. "Attacked from behind and her right leg moved after death." He pointed to the blood smears on the concrete next to her left leg. "You see here and here, where the blood had dripped down her legs before she fell. Someone then moved her right leg into this position, leaving her knee pointing in a westerly direction," He lifted his eyes to follow his own trail of thought and John watched him. The two things – eyes and mind- were connected by an invisible string. Sherlock's deductions – his very thoughts – connected to his body which sprang into action as though having been barked at. I an instant he was in motion.

He set off westerly. Ahead lay a short row of ramshackle houses, several boarded up. At one time they had been someone's homes, the bright, sunny paint-jobs that once were indicating families had lived and grown here among new yellow paint and shiny swing sets and manicured lawns, but were now sagging husks of neglect, the paint peeling, the lawns overgrown with weeds, the porches heaved up in some spots and falling in at others.

The nearest one of the four was Sherlock's focus and Lestrade and John followed, Lestrade indicating Anderson tag along with as lift of his chin.

Sherlock bent as close to the rotting wood of the outer wall as he could without actually touching it. He was sniffing the wall as high up as he was able and then crouching down to near the level of the weeds. At once he began tearing at the weeds, clearing a spot away from the mottled paint. "Here." He announced.

John, and even Lestrade, knew what to do by now and while Sherlock stood back and watched as they began tossing hand-full's of dirt at the area until an image appeared.

Watson took out his own phone and snapped a few photos while Anderson, with his expensive forensic camera, took dozens of the same from every angle.

Sherlock meanwhile had taken a mental image for his own brain files and spoke. "Another dancing figure," he said. "This one is the same as the first I found," he said. "The outline of an "S"."

Watson repeated, knowing it was a bit stupid. "Another S?"

Sherlock nodded, a tiny puzzled line settling between his brows. "We have two S's now and a T."

Lestrade raised his eyebrows but offered no insights other than "Maybe you'll get more letters at the other murder. Come on."

But a noise – a dull thud – interrupted their retreat.

Lestrade looked at Anderson and raised his palm in a signal that meant You stay here. He withdrew his weapon and approached the porch of the tumbled house, and Sherlock followed with John taking up the rear. Anderson watched with a pissed off expression because he was told he wasn't wanted.

But Watson knew Lestrade doesn't care about tit about Anderson's feelings right now because there's a possible killer inside the shit hole and his steps are making the old boards groan under his weight. Watson feels the comforting presence of his own military issue side arm against his skin at the waist of his trousers, hidden at the back beneath his jumper. He knows better than to draw it while at an official investigation with Lestrade but it still felt good to have it.

Lestrade finally reached the door of the house. With one heavy boot he kicked it hard. The rotting wood gave little resistance as the door flew open in a shower of dust and splinters, and then sagging on its side, clinging by one sad hinge like a torn lip.

Inside in the middle of what once was a sitting room where children played, lay a man curled up on his side with blood running from a slice across his waist. In his one hand was clutched a lethal looking knife with a curved blade. Nearby, next to his soiled trainer lay another, smaller knife, also smeared with blood.

Lestrade approached the prone man with weapon drawn and aimed and kicked the smaller blade aside. He, carefully keeping his weapon dead-enter to the mad's chest, pressed the sole of his boot to the man's wrist until he dropped the second knife, which Lestrade then scooted away across the filthy planks with another well placed toe-kick. "Doctor..." He said, inviting Watson for a closer look.

Watson dropped to the man's aid, checking his wound with sure hands. "Wound's not too deep, but he's lost a lot of blood. He'll make it as long as we get him to a hospital soon."

Sherlock was already speaking into his phone after dialing nine-nine-nine. After he was finished barking the street address and pertinent details into the tiny speaker he cut the call and dropped his phone back into the depths of his coat pocket, all the while staring at the prone man oddly.

Lestrade, however, appeared a bit more optimistic at this turn of events. "What say to this being our killer?" He asked rhetorically and sounding quite pleased about it. "At least of the latest girl."

But Sherlock merely stared at the bleeding man, offering no comment and about which John didn't like one bit. It wasn't usual. Not that Sherlock was in any way remotely a usual person, but still. Sherlock should at least be refuting Lestrade if he disagreed and by the workings on his face, there was something regarding this up-turning that he did not. "Sherlock?"

But Sherlock only turned away. "By all means Inspector, let us determine what this man is doing here at all."

XXX

The other murder held no surprises other than a new dancing figure painted nearby in the shape of something approximating an M, the figure contorted into a shape only a gymnast might accomplish while standing upside-down on one hand, but it was after all just a painted figure. The only thing that was unusual...

"Why'd they use actual paint this time?" Watson asked staring at the photo's he had taken with his own phone, sipping tea he had located from a machine after they returned to Lestrade's office. Bright orange paint coloured the dancing figure, the hue one might find in a public bathroom or on a plastic road barrier. Serviceable but ugly. Offensive to the eye.

Sherlock answered though his mind was clearly in more places than one at that moment. He continued to stare at the earlier crime photos. "Because our killer knows I know what to look for now so there is no more need for subterfuge. Easier to carry a can of paint than a jar of grease and a brush."

Reasonable as always, John thought. "What's bothering you?" He asked, out of the earshot of the others, standing close to Sherlock's side - closer than he needed to - Lestrade's office was not that small. Sherlock noted the unconscious behavior without comment. Having John close had never bothered him and less so now than ever. In fact it felt...comforting - familiar, like an old blanket, one well-used but kept safe; a grandmother's quilt perhaps.

Or an old hand-knit jumper lovingly made just for you by someone who cared.

Sherlock shook away the unproductive lines of thought and viciously turned his mind back to the crime-scene photos.

Several more crowded into Lestrade's office, including Donovan and the officer who was delivering lunch by way of take-away sandwiches and coffee. Sherlock declined both but John took up what he was offered and bit into a concoction of sprouts, cheese, ham and mustard. It was heaven. Plus it would go a long way in soaking up his earlier alcohol binge.

"Nothing makes sense." Sherlock said to John as his friend chewed. The sharp smell of mustard stung Sherlock's nostrils and he snuffed to dispel it. The very act of eating during a case was something about Watson that had always irked him. "How do you think with your stomach full?"

"How do you not waste away with yours so empty? And what did you mean before?" John asked around a mouth-full of bread and meat.

"That our serial killer would turn out to be a simple-minded pimp-er of flesh, and apparently one who could not hold his own against a woman half his size." He pointed out.

John swallowed, adding before the next delicious bite. "Seems to me if he's willing to pimp, he might also be willing to be a worse bastard and stab a few girls."

"And all of the victims were not girls." Sherlock groused.

"But all of the murders happened less than three miles from each other." Lestrade reminded him, chewing on his own layers of bread and meats. "Maybe he's taken up a new hobby?" He suggested, half believing it. It would be so much easier. "Maybe these aren't his first killings? Maybe he started elsewhere? Maybe he got a taste for the wet work a long time ago? And since you never work on the simple cases because they're 'too boring', for your information not every killer is a clever killer."

"Yes." Sherlock snapped. "Otherwise how would the Yard catch any of them?"

Lestrade overlooked the insult, accustomed to dismissing fifty percent of whatever Sherlock said in a heated moment or it would have been impossible to work with the man. "At any rate, we'll know soon enough if the weapon and the blood are a match for the victim and our suspect. In the meantime," he said directly to John, "take your grumpy room-mate somewhere far away from my office." Lestrade looked pained by something and the point was underlined when he reached into a desk drawer for a bottle of paracetamol tablets, shaking out a small army of them into his palm, and washing them down his throat with the remnants of his, by now, cold coffee.

In the cab ride back to Baker Street Sherlock was quiet.

"What's wrong?" John asked in a sigh, not really expecting an answer. Sherlock's funks could go on for days. Really the man had perfected The Great Sulk.

"Lestrade is a fool-"

"He's really not."

"I was speaking in general."

"In general he's really not."

"If you must - then in specifics - the case, Watson, the case! Our killer seems to have more purpose than merely 'liking the wet work'."

"Lestrade was saying it as a possibility, Sherlock, that's all."

"It's lazy deduction. Hardly more than guessing."

"It's been a full day. Some people actually need rest. Lestrade looked like hell. I'm sure the Commissioner's putting huge pressure on him to solve these murders, the bloody papers are full of them and people are scared."

Sherlock sat silently but Watson chanced a look. The detective's irritation had smoothed out, somewhat, to a mere frustration, mixed perhaps with a grudging acknowledgment that humanity – which of course in the detective's mind excluded himself - is rife with frailties and that Lestrade no doubt fell somewhere within that category. Possibly it had not previously occurred to Sherlock that the Detective Inspector might have such weights on his shoulders. "Perhaps..."

It was ridiculous how Sherlock's tiny commiserations (usually after the fallible and fragile human condition of someone close to him was once again heavily pointed out), made John's heart glow, which then made him feel somewhat of a man who had become accustomed to not expecting too much in the way of fellow feeling out of his room-mate and best friend. But, John reasoned to himself trying to ease his sharp disappointment in Sherlock, the sociopath, if that's what Sherlock was, was actually learning what it was to feel sympathy. A bit.

Perhaps enough.

Good enough anyway.

For now.

XXX

"John, I'm bleeding."

John tore off his jumper, bunched it up and used its less than satisfactory wool-blend fibers to try and staunch the puncture wound in Sherlock's lean torso. The blood refused to stop its warm escape into the cool night air. "Yes, I know Sherlock, just lie down and keep still."

He pushed against the detective's attempt to rise from his prone place in the dirty alleyway, surrounded as they were by dark and fog and now blood. Anyone coming upon them might be reminded of a scene out of a cheap novel of intrigue. It was actually ridiculous. "Shit! Sherlock, roll onto your side – I'll help you. Come on, that's it. Good, now stay still." John instructed gently and then snarled his own idiocy to no one but himself.

The killer, whoever he was, had, to use a phrase from his latest detective novel, 'got the jump' on them or more specifically Sherlock who had taken four inches of a blade to his body before his attacker escaped.

John pulled Sherlock's white dress shirt (the silk one that looked as good as any silk could ever look when draped over all that lean muscle and ivory skin), from inside his trousers, which shirt was rapidly turning darker with the colour of life – really almost looking black – in the feeble light of the one street lamp thirty meters away, and now Sherlock's blood was soaking through the jumper and beginning to pool beneath the expensive suit jacket and trousers. Even when faced with running down dark lanes chasing a murderer, Sherlock dressed to kill – metaphorically at least.

"Your suit's going to be ruined – sorry." John muttered as he tossed aside the jumper and pulled his own shirt off popping the buttons as he did, not caring where they flew. It helped though, the cotton of the checkered shirt doing a much better job as a temporary bandage than the loose weave of the jumper.

When Lestrade and his men, followed by the ambulance, arrived on scene, John was bent over Sherlock; bare chest smeared with blood not his own, barking orders at the emergency technicians like someone with the authority to do it. Like a doctor.

XXX

Here we are once more.MH

John ignored the text from Mycroft Holmes – 'Here we are'? Mycroft Fucking Holmes had not been to the hospital yet – the miserable sod!

He turned his attention to Sherlock lying unconscious on his left side in the hospital bed, looking pale and decidedly not a bit good. This time with a stab wound to his lower back that, had it been two inches higher, would have all but bisected his right kidney and internally bled him to death. As it was he lost a lot of blood en-route to The London and needed transfusions by the time they got him there. John had not remembered his gun and his own hands, no matter how strong, had not been long enough or quick enough to prevent the injury. He should have suspected the man would be carrying. Sherlock should also have suspected it of course but Sherlock was not the soldier – he was. John had gone over it in his mind a hundred times and he should have known. If he had been the criminal in question – any criminal - he would have brought protection as well and tucked it into his belt beneath his shirt ready to snatch and strike.

John had even agreed when Sherlock wanted to seek out the suspect themselves, to make sure they were on the right track. Stupid! He ought to have called in Lestrade as soon as the words had escaped Sherlock's mouth. He ought to have been smarter. He was a soldier for Christ's sake. He understood how to be prepared for danger and had let his guard down. He had been enjoying himself too much.

Blind luck had led them to a fresh crime scene – blind luck or some fresh depth of genius-cum-guess-work on Sherlock's part – one that bore all the personal mark's of their serial killer. Even Sherlock had not expected to run into the killer himself still lurking at the scene like a ghoul. Hidden, yes, but not invisible. Not to Sherlock.

John bit his lip at his own foolishness. The very things he was always warning Sherlock about he himself had dashed toward whole-heartedly. And because of that Sherlock might have died. Would have died had they not been in the city.

"What happened this time?"

Mycroft. Standing at the door, his tone conveying half a life-time of weariness and worry over his reckless, injury-prone younger brother. "Did he jump in to save you?"

For a moment John would not dignify the elder Holmes with an answer, but then it seemed futile – and stupid – to avoid it. Undoubtedly Mycroft already knew. He had the yard in his back pocket. "Not...exactly."

Mycroft tapped his umbrella on the polished tile and sighed. There really was little left to say between them and the older Holmes brother seemed to sense that as well. "Do you really love my brother John..?"

Watson bit his lip, his eyes never leaving the O2 prong stuck up Sherlock's nose to help him breathe and assist in the healing of his body once again.

Jesus yes. Angels in heaven help him he loved the insane fabulous freak of bloody nature and God. Christ he loved him so goddamn much he could hardly breathe around him most days. Un-fucking-equivocally yes I love him you ball-busting fuck!

John said none of it to Mycroft. "You have to ask..?"

"No." Mycroft said softly. "No I don't." He cleared his throat and the feeling moment was over. "The doctors assure me he will recover enough in a few days to go home. Will you be there to...assist?"

"You know I will." John said. "We have a case..." Not a good reason to continue to ignore something that was making more and more sense to him. He was bad for Sherlock's long-term health.

"And once this case is over..?"

John didn't answer aloud or directly. 'The Dancing Men.' That's what I'm going to call it, this case, when I write it up. When he solves it."

"The Dancing Men?" Mycroft repeated without scoff. "But you didn't answer my question doctor."

"You want me to abandon him."

"I want you to do what is necessary to keep him safe."

Oh how even the idea of leaving made his chest ache. Great waved of agony all contained in the space of an organ the size of his fist. One more word from Mycroft and he was going to beat the man unrecognisable. Fuck! But in the next minute didn't raise a finger to Mycroft because the prick was making some sense. Fuck the prat for being right. Fuck him! "What if I can't?"

But John realised, and hated, that the decision was well on its way to effectively being made for him. He knew what he needed to do now. Didn't want to – God – no he didn't. How much would it hurt Sherlock? How would his face look when John packed his things and walked out? It seemed impossible, what Mycroft was asking him to do. It seemed like the most impossible act to ever carry out by any human over all time.

Stop loving Sherlock.

No, not stop loving him, stop trying to protect him. Stop causing him injury through his failure to do just that. Stop breathing then? Is that all? "I don't want to..." He whispered it. I love him so much. And he couldn't even explain why, not entirely. None of it made sense. But I love him all the same. God please help me, I love him. I was supposed to, wasn't I? Why did you send me to him if not for this?

God ignored him as usual and John mentally flipped Him the bird.

"The Dancing Men..." Mycroft repeated again. "Do it for his own good, John, or do you think that I cannot make my brother waltz?"

XXX