It began slowly. But gradually, Sherlock (for it quickly became the case that John could no longer think of him as "Holmes") became more and more a fixture of John's days.

In the weeks immediately following Sherlock's offer in the patio garden, they saw each other only occasionally. Sherlock would surface for the odd meal, book or notebook in his hand and at the center of his attention, or John would come across him in the parlor or the library. At these times, Sherlock would nod in acknowledgement, or sometimes smile, without diverting his focus from the task in which he had immersed himself. Once he appeared ten minutes through the evening meal and proceeded to talk animatedly to John at great length about the movement of some sort of chemical compound through the stem of a daisy. But then he dashed off before coffee was served, and John did not see him for two days after.

Meanwhile John studied the portraits that hung all over the house, and walked to the nearby square to practice sketching the foliage with his new pencils, and endured weekly a half hour spent sitting stiff and uneasy in the parlor at Doctor Trevelyan's before that gentleman would appear and present him with his weekly supply of the substance that kept him silent. A few times a week Sherlock would appear in the library, or the sitting room, or (once) John's bedroom, and demand that John follow him to a glass-house or laboratory – or, occasionally, into the back garden of some stately house or other whose owners he never saw – to draw something. Sherlock rarely spoke, at first; it was not uncommon, on their first few adventures, for him to offer nothing other than bare instructions, until John had finished working.

But once he had John's sketches in hand, he would begin to talk: identifying structural elements, commenting on surface textures, occasionally correcting or even chastising John for minor mistakes in rendering the object of his attention ("Look here, you've got the stamen protruding at the wrong angle. You must learn to quash these sentimental impulses – what is pleasing to the eye is irrelevant to the task of accurate description.") John learned to take these criticisms in stride, once it became clear that Sherlock was not going to throw him off. And sometimes, John's mistakes turned out to be useful ones: Sherlock would cease speaking and knit his brows in concentration, staring at the page until some sort of comprehension dawned, his face lighting up as if a spark had caught behind his eyes. And then Sherlock would talk, rapidly, his whole body thrumming with a burgeoning excitement that it seemed barely able to contain.

"James," he said one afternoon, as they stood by a low and fragrant hedge in the garden behind the Freemasons' Hall, "I believe that correcting your mistakes helps me to better clarify my own grasp of the true situation." John was, by this point, well enough accustomed to Sherlock's corrections that he simply blew out a scornful, long-suffering breath. The whirlwind beside him ceased, briefly, just long enough to offer him a small smile before resuming his energetic critique of John's rendering.

And gradually, after some dozen of these botanically-themed outings, John's days began to involve more regular social intercourse with Sherlock Holmes. Whatever obligations that had kept Sherlock away from the house in the late evenings and early morning appeared to have dissolved; he appeared more regularly at breakfast, and would linger long into the evening in the parlor, reading, brooding, and talking to John in fits and starts. Occasionally he would pull out one of John's recent sketches for them to pore over together, Sherlock advising while John filled in backgrounds or pointed out details. And when, one late evening, John accidentally yawned in the middle of an extended disquisition on spore distribution, Sherlock stopped abruptly to declare, in a wooden voice, "you're tired," John thought perhaps he had broken the spell; but then Sherlock said "we can take this up again tomorrow. I need to go back to the greenhouse, you can come along if you like." And John saw – and saw through – the elaborate look of nonchalance on his face, and felt his heart warm.

Some of the days John and Sherlock spent together were not so pleasant. John's first inkling of Sherlock's darker moods came on a day when they arrived at a particular conservatory where Sherlock had planned for them to spend the afternoon, only to find it closed for the day. After abusing the door-guard for far longer than John could see the reason of, Sherlock had fumed silently in the carriage for the entire return trip, and upon their arrival had shut himself up in his room until the next morning. On other days, Sherlock did not get even so far as the front door, but lounged instead in the parlor – or even in his bedroom – sometimes in only a morning-coat, barely stirring.

"Go away, James," Sherlock said, on the first and only occasion that John attempted to draw him out of his malaise.

John had been lingering by the open doorway, and now he stepped inside in spite of Sherlock's words, unwilling to be deterred by a sour mood and the now-unaccustomed smell of cigarette smoke (Lord Holmes did not permit smoking indoors).

"For heaven's sake, don't be tedious," Sherlock drawled, as John came nearer. "If you must persist in being dull and worthless, kindly do it somewhere else."

It was the cold and detached tone, as much as the words themselves, which cut to John's heart. He felt the world go dark – as dark as it seemed to be for Sherlock, that day – and he clenched his mouth tightly, trying to keep his anguish from his face. He departed with only a brief nod and spent the day pacing first the parlor, and then the streets outside, in distress, his only consolation at the end of the day a worn-out exhaustion that helped usher in an easy descent into sleep.

Whatever the nature of the grief or malaise that had brought Sherlock to the point of such extremity, the spell vanished as unaccountably as it had come. When John found Sherlock hard at his books in the library the next morning, he resolved to put the prior day's exchange out of his head as an unpleasant episode best forgotten, along with and the black humor of Sherlock's that had brought it about. But this was not to be. The black days, as John came to call them, seemed to be a recurrent if unpredictable feature of Sherlock's life, wreaking havoc on the gentleman himself and everyone within his purview.

They were miserable days for John, even after they had assumed a somewhat familiar pattern in his mind, and had learned (more or less) to brush off the cruel remarks Sherlock might make on such a day. He dared not imagine what they were like for Sherlock himself, trapped in this one respect far more deeply than John ever could be. But still, John could not approve of the forms of escape to which Sherlock did intermittently resort.

His first introduction to these came on a rainy afternoon, when inclement weather had delayed his return from Doctor Trevelyan's until well past the dinner hour. After refreshing himself in the dining-room from a tray of cold chicken that the house staff had laid out for him, John had come into the parlor to find both of the Holmes brothers present. Lord Holmes sat in Sherlock's preferred seat, at the writing-desk that looked out over the room; Sherlock himself was stretched out on the couch in the middle of the parlor, staring at the ceiling with a strange and vacant expression.

John paused in the doorway, unsure what to make of this new and singular arrangement. But with no explanation forthcoming, he slipped quietly into the room, retrieved his sketching-notebook from the desk where it lay – uncomfortably close to Lord Holmes's stack of papers – and took his seat in one of the armchairs that faced the couch, where he could keep a furtive watch on his friend, caught as he was in the grip of some strange lassitude.

"Opium," said Lord Holmes, from his place at the writing-desk. He did not appear to have moved, or indeed to have raised his head from his reading. John looked over at him, confused. Ever since John had become close with Sherlock, Lord Holmes had more or less ceased to address him directly.

"He's taken opium, James," the gentleman said, looking up at him. "It's no use trying to – well." Lord Holmes's mouth twisted, his eyes dropping briefly shut. "No use trying to get his attention, anyhow."

John nodded slowly, absorbing this information. He remembered a deckhand that had spent a few months skulking about the docks, when John had been in his early teens. John's father had forbidden him from approaching the man, and it had been easy enough to comply: the memory of the man's ash-green pallor and intermittent twitching continued to provoke small thrills of horror whenever John recalled him, long after the object of that fascinated horror had disappeared. Even now, he had to suppress a shiver at the memory, and fought down the gorge in his throat when he looked over at Sherlock, wondering if this might be his future.

Lord Holmes returned to his work, and John once again took up his sketchbook and endeavoured to do the same. But at last he gave up the pretense and laid the book down in his lap, eyes full on Sherlock's supine form.

"Quite a waste, isn't it." Lord Holmes spoke in a tone peculiarly clear and crisp, as if to pierce the mazy tangle of John's thoughts while he watched his friend dreaming. "A mind like a rare jewel," he continued in still more pointed tones, "let to sit in the muck of a chemical haze." Hs lip curled, as if in disgust. "A man with any self-respect would be ashamed to let himself go in this way."

Lord Holmes had not once looked John's way during this speech, but now his eyes flicked over to the couch where Sherlock lay. John, too, returned his gaze to his friend. But if Sherlock sensed their attention, he gave no sign, but rather lay unperturbed, his eyes afloat to the ceiling, looking nowhere.

Lord Holmes's mouth tightened briefly, but he returned to his work. John watched Sherlock a few minutes longer, his chest tightening, until at last he could not breathe – he had to be elsewhere. Abruptly, he stood. At the sound of his sketchbook hitting the floor, expensive paper swishing as it splayed and creased under the weight of the cover, John bent diffidently down to collect it, though nobody else seemed to have taken notice. Only as John moved to the door did Lord Holmes look up, briefly taking in first John's own retreating form before returning his eyes again to the couch, where his brother lay adrift in chemical meditation. John could not bear any of it, and pulled the door closed behind him.

John did not see Sherlock for nearly two days after the opium incident, and he wandered the house alone, kept inside by a persistent rain, with only Lord Holmes's equanimity to give him comfort. But Sherlock reappeared at breakfast the following morning, as full of vigor as John had ever seen him, brimming with talk of fungus in Hampstead Heath. John was only too happy to follow him out on his explorations, awash in relief that the black spell had been swallowed up by this new project, and the end of the day found him more covered in mud than he had been since he was a small child, but delighted both with the day's adventures and with Sherlock's own evident satisfaction.

Sherlock was himself like a small child in some respects, John reflected, as he listened to his equally mud-covered friend during their long walk home (for Lord Holmes had claimed to need the family carriage that day, and though they had taken a cab up to the Heath, they had been unable to find one willing to take them for the return trip): he needed a steady stream of entertainments to prevent him from sinking into boredom and despair. John resolved that he would do whatever he could to keep Sherlock from boredom.

The fungi samples they had taken from the Heath kept Sherlock occupied for some days; meanwhile, John returned to the task of learning to draw orchids, which Sherlock had set him the prior week, shortly before his grim spell had descended. They were the first specimens that had presented John with any serious difficulty. Some species were simple enough, gentle and stately in their curves and points and slow, predictable flushes of color. But it was the more uncommon-looking flowers that befuddled him, even as they entranced him, startling and grotesque in their improbably ruffled edges and bright hot bursts of pigment. Often the shape of the blooms eluded him as if they were moving beneath his eyes, petals stuttering with strange texture, inner sepals curving in strange gothic grimaces. John drew until his hand ached, and discarded page after page, his fingers unlearning tulips and daisies and roses as his eyes sought a new language that could capture the peculiar beauty in front of him.

When at last Sherlock had set aside his fungus samples, he was delighted with John's progress, and dove back into their earlier line of research with fresh energy. In contrast to his earlier lassitude, Sherlock became intent and focused in a way that took him to the verge of a different sort of self-neglect. Sherlock skipped his evening meal that day and worked late into the night, pacing and lecturing to John, even as the latter struggled to keep his eyes open; when John returned to the library the following morning, he found Sherlock still dressed in his clothes from the day before, hovering over a growing ledger of notes. And though John was deeply relieved that Sherlock's malaise had passed, he could not help but hope that this newfound manic fervor would also somehow be interrupted.

That interruption came, at last, from an unexpected quarter. They were the library together, comparing John's rendering of a Burmese orchid from the prior day to a color plate in a large leather-bound album, when one of the servants came rushing in and handed a small slip of paper to Sherlock. Sherlock took the note, scanned it in an instant and handed it back to the man with a casual toss of his wrist, his eyes already back on John's drawing. "Dull. Tell him no."

The servant bobbed his head and withdrew. After a few minutes, Sherlock appeared to sense John's inquiring expression. "From one of the police inspectors," he explained. "He wants me to come out and inspect a crime scene. He frequently consults me about cases when there is botanical evidence that has some potential bearing on the details," Sherlock continued, as John felt his eyebrows raise still higher. "He used to call in person, but I have made it clear that I prefer a written note. But to return to the matter at hand, do you notice the regularity of the speckling on the lip…."

John returned his attention, somewhat reluctantly, to the album plate. Police work, he could not help thinking, sounded exciting. And so he was secretly pleased when, about forty-five minutes later, a uniformed man appeared in the doorway of the library. John had never seen the man before, and did not know if his was a ruddy complexion, but at the present moment he appeared to be in high flush, either from exertion or excitement or some combination. He entered the library with some trepidation, stopping a few feet shy of the table where John and Sherlock stood.

"I said no, Gregson," said Sherlock, without even an upward glance this time. "We're busy."

Gregson looked curiously at John, as if just now taking note of his presence. "How do you do, sir."

Sherlock now looked up. "This is James Lindsay. James, Inspector Gregson. The Inspector was just leaving to go back to his utterly humdrum murder." John nodded politely and smiled, but the Inspector seemed unable to smile in return, evidently disappointed. John felt a pang of regret, broader this time: not just for himself and the prospect of a day's adventures, but for Inspector Gregson, and for the victim whose killer Sherlock was not interested in bringing to justice. John laid a hand on Sherlock's sleeve, drawing Sherlock's eyes to his. He tipped his head slightly toward Gregson.

The officer glanced between them and renewed his efforts. "Please, Mister Holmes. We'd like something to tell the husband. And we're baffled, as is."

Sherlock sighed expansively. "Yes, of course you are." He pressed his lips together, then nodded slightly. "All right. Where is it?"

"Dunton road, near Southwark."

Sherlock returned his eyes to John's sketch. "We'll follow in half an hour." Gregson said nothing, shifting slightly on his feet, clearly torn between gratitude and uncertainty. "Half an hour after you leave," said Sherlock, rather sharply. "We do have work to do here. Now if you please, James, let's return to the question of pigment distribution, shall we?"

In the end, it was simple: the leaf mulch around the body was a red herring, collected several days beforehand and deliberately scattered. Within two minutes, Sherlock had ascertained that the mulch was a false clue, and worked out the circumstances of its collection, and deduced that the husband had killed his wife and was attempting to frame the gardener.

"You're getting quite a reputation, Mister Holmes," said Gregson, as the three of them stood in the fine-misting rain, watching a pair of officers lead the perpetrator away in cuffs. In the wake of the arrest, the Inspector seemed almost gleeful. "He planted that evidence just for you, I reckon."

Sherlock only sniffed, though John could tell he was pleased. "Not much of a reputation, if he believed that sad trick would confound me." Sherlock sighed in a way that John was beginning to suspect was deliberately theatrical, and turned without a word back toward the road, where the Holmes carriage waited. John sighed a bit, too, realizing it was already over – he had found the entire series of events enthralling and would have preferred to linger longer, basking in the excitement of the scene and in the effects of his friend's penetrating observational skills. But he nodded to Gregson and turned away to walk back to the carriage where Sherlock waited, letting the sounds fade away behind him, not turning back.

Sherlock's eyes skimmed over John as he climbed into the carriage, taking in John's facial expressions and posture as keenly as he had the leaf detritus at the crime scene a few minutes earlier. John had learned to endure these surveys without distress, for it had become clear after those first few days that Sherlock had accepted him as James Lindsay, formerly of Inverness and now settling in London. John did not doubt that he had made mistakes in his carriage and behavior, small slips that could have led Sherlock back to the truth of John's history, had the former thought to search it out. But Sherlock looked at him, John knew, and saw someone honest, forthright, frank in face and gesture where words were beyond his reach; someone to rely upon, even to trust. And so John had been able to relax, because this was his temperament, as well as James's, and he needed no primer. There was only the one lie between them.

"I know an inn, not far from here, if you would care for some lunch." Sherlock's voice brought John back to the present; his eyes, fixed on John's face, were soft. John, still a little crestfallen about their abrupt departure from the crime scene, attempted to return a smile to match the one that lay behind the creases around Sherlock's eyes. He nodded. Sherlock inclined his head in return, clearly pleased, then leaned forward to give Warren directions. John did not think to glance backward until they were almost half a street away, and the milling crowd of officers and curious neighbors had faded behind the general clutter of a moderately busy London street.

This inn, clearly a more official establishment than the one they had visited in that first week, was more typical of what had by now become their habitual outings; a simple but inviting room with large windows that admitted broad swaths of pale-grey London light. They took a seat toward the back of the room, and with a flick of his hand, Sherlock summoned a waiter and ordered beef stew for John and coffee for himself. They had fallen into this routine, by now, which John supposed suited Sherlock's peremptory nature as well as it did his own enforced silence. John could not precisely recall when Sherlock might have worked out how much pleasure John took from a plate of good beef, but he relished it none the less for that.

The girl had barely departed when Sherlock turned and fixed John with an intent look. "The gardener's shoes, did you observe them?" John took a moment to think back to the crime scene, then shook his head; he had, he realized now, been entirely caught up in watching Sherlock work, and had not attended to the details of the scene itself. This realization was a bit discomfiting, but fortunately his friend was off on an explanation, involving a great deal of broad gesticulation, of how the soil deposits on the man's shoes were a clear sign that he could not have been responsible. John discovered himself to be at once attentive and distracted, and on account of the same general cause; and this fact discomfited him further. He was grateful when food and drink arrived a moment later, and it was with many kinds of appreciation that John tucked into his meal. Sherlock ploughed on, undaunted, while John ate, stopping only occasionally to make sure he still had his listener's attention.

A quarter of an hour later, John's bowl stood empty, but Sherlock's coffee and his explanation of the crime scene remained in progress. John had recovered himself somewhat, and managed to return his concentration to the substance of Sherlock's discourse rather than the movement of his mouth and his hands, when Sherlock abruptly ceased in his flow of conversation and glanced up over John's shoulder. John followed Sherlock's gaze and twisted round to look at the figure who had approached their table.

The man who stood just behind John looked vaguely familiar, his face plucking at the edges of John's memory just as his form plucked at the edges of his vision as John sought a posture that allowed him to face their visitor properly. He was, John could see, of a well-formed figure, and dressed in elegantly-cut clothing of a very fine cloth.

The man opened his mouth, but then hesitated slightly before speaking. "Holmes," he said at last, with so many layers of meaning woven into that single word that John was incongruously reminded of Sherlock's elder brother.

"Nottidge," Sherlock answered, rather carelessly. The animation had gone from his voice, and he sounded – not bored, precisely, but certainly differently disposed to this conversation than he had been to the one it replaced. Nottidge clearly detected the change as well, and his posture stiffened. John still did not know why he felt Nottidge to be vaguely familiar, but found himself acutely embarrassed on the man's behalf.

"You are – well?" Nottidge queried, at last. "It's more than a week since I've laid eyes on you."

"Yes, quite well. Busy." Sherlock's eyes were anywhere but on their interlocutor, and the emphasis on the last word of his reply was quite unmistakable. John, much as he disliked this unexpected intrusion on his time with Sherlock, felt a pang of sympathy, for he well remembered what it was like to be on the receiving end of his friend's casual disdain. This man was obviously ill-accustomed to it, and indeed seemed stung by Sherlock's treatment. At this last remark, Nottidge's eyes dropped quickly to inspect the toes of his shoes, and the gentleman had only partly mastered his expression when he looked up again some moments later.

"Are you, ah, still working with the orchids?" he ventured, in a more or less level tone. Sherlock gave only a slight flickering nod in response. With nothing more forthcoming, Nottidge tried again to draw a response. "And how does the work proceed?" The timbre of the man's voice struck a familiar chord in John's mind, and he realized all at once how he knew this man: he had been one of the other gentlemen on the pleasure-boat on the Solent that evening.

Sherlock, who obviously did not welcome the continuation of this line of questioning, took this moment to signal for more coffee. John, caught between curiosity and a sense of sympathy for the gentleman, abandoned elegance and turned his chair around halfway, so that he might regard (and acknowledge) Nottidge properly. He caught only a glimpse of something on Sherlock's face as he turned.

"Forgive me," the man said to John, as if noticing him for the first time. "Henry Nottidge." He smiled politely and extended his hand to John. John dredged up some kind of answering smile and shook it. Nottidge's smile disappeared when John said nothing in reply, and he released John's hand with something like suspicion.

Another uncomfortable moment of silence ensued between the two of them before Sherlock recalled his responsibility. "This is James Lindsay," he said to Nottidge. "Baroness Adler's cousin, from Scotland, in London for medical treatment."

"Oh, yes, I had heard." Nottidge's gaze softened slightly with sympathy. "You are –" But his address to John stopped almost before it had begun, for Nottidge was evidently unsure how to converse with one who lacked the capacity to speak in return. John was reminded that such consternation was hardly misplaced; indeed, it was far stranger that John had succeeded so well for these weeks, speaking as it were without speech to those few people who now populated his life.

"His health is excellent," Sherlock broke in – if such it might be called – with some energy in his voice, for the first time since Nottidge had arrived. "He is no invalid. Although the vocal dysfunction persists, it is no serious impediment to communication."

As warmth had replaced wariness, now something new came into Nottidge's face. "I see where you have been spending your evenings," he said at last, eyes still fixed on John but evidently speaking to Sherlock. John gazed coolly back, for though he was unsure why Nottidge was suddenly subjecting him to such close scrutiny, he would not be cowed by clothing finer than his own, or by the intruder's evident connexion with his friend.

And John wondered, now, about the substance of this history: what lay behind the complicated mix of emotions Nottidge was enduring, as he was confronted with the knowledge that Sherlock was so often up late in the library or parlor, studying books and drawings with John at his side. It was a change, John supposed, from Sherlock's earlier habits, which found him so often away from home in those hours. The thought occurred that the two gentleman had, perhaps, been research partners, and that John had in that manner replaced him. John felt, for the first time in several weeks, conscious of his lack of schooling, of the vast ignorance that underlay his little talent for sketching.

Then Nottidge's gaze cut over to Sherlock. John saw the flicker of raw anguish behind his eyes and felt a fresh and alarming clarity crash over him. His face burned with embarrassment – at the forced encounter with this new and uncomfortably intimate knowledge about Sherlock, at his friend's apparently cavalier attitude toward his own depravity, and at himself in discovering he still knew his friend so little. He discovered that he could not bear to keep looking at Nottidge, and lowered his eyes, ashamed in the face of his relative ignorance, and feeling also a glimmer of anger, hot and confusing.

Fortunately, neither of the other two gentlemen appeared to have taken note of John's disquiet, but seemed rather to be absorbed in the various discomforts occasioned by their exchange. A few other insincere pleasantries passed between them while John regained his composure in the privacy afforded by comparative unimportance. At last Nottidge made to withdraw, and inclined his head briefly in John's direction, while John offered a tight smile in return.

John turned his chair back round to face the table and was met by what seemed to be an empty space that had opened between him and his table-mate. Sherlock stared into his cup, stirring what John suspected to be only the last dregs, and now seemed little inclined to talk. The bill had appeared on the table at some point in the prior few minutes, and Sherlock paid it in silence. They returned to the carriage under the mantle of that same silence, and Sherlock spent the drive home staring determinedly out at the street. John, for his part, was discomfited, and angry, and felt for some indistinct reason very lonely, even with Sherlock only a few feet away. Caught between the desire to know more about Sherlock's history with Nottidge and a powerful distaste for that very information, John made his peace with the silence.

One encounter, however unpleasant, was not sufficient to dislodge the growing ease and comfort that John found in Sherlock's company – and, he hoped, that Sherlock found in his. Sherlock never spoke again of Nottidge, or of any other prior intimacy; John came to realize over time that this silence arose not from shame but from indifference. A few stray comments about the gentlemen they occasionally encountered on their jaunts about town led John to conclude that Sherlock had little attention for other people. John could not help but think uneasily of Nottidge the next few times they moved together in public, particularly when Sherlock took them to dine, in the following week, at an establishment that neighbored the Royal Botanic Society gardens. But even that evening, in the territory of Sherlock's unofficial collegium, passed with only a few brief and friendly greetings from acquaintances, who seemed well content to greet John only in passing, and neither subjected him to a test of merits nor Sherlock to any sort of personal scrutiny. And as the days passed unchanged, their newfound rhythms undisturbed, John's discomfort at the revelation of Sherlock's more dissolute proclivities faded. It seemed that the connexion they had formed, peculiar as it was in some respects, was yet sturdy enough to withstand both this aspect of Sherlock's nature and John's discovery of it.

If anything, their bond seemed the more secure for its focus on less private affairs. Of his botanical investigations, and the sights he had seen in his travels abroad – and even a few of the police investigations for which he had furnished assistance – Sherlock could talk for hours, in even the most inhospitable circumstances, pitching his voice to carry over the clatter of traffic or keeping John awake for long hours in the parlor when even the streets outside had gone quiet. Sherlock's passion for explanation was such that John wondered if the man had ever had a friend before. There were many kinds of silence, he saw now, of which his own was not the worst.

John found himself once again reflecting one morning on the strange balance of Sherlock's character in the course of an unusually long carriage ride. They were headed for a destination about which Sherlock had remained tight-lipped, not quite the typical detached hauteur that carried him over the minutiae of an ordinary day, but a rather a deliberate effort, for Sherlock had dropped a handful of what seemed to be hints (which had not helped John in the slightest, for he could not make sense of any of them). But whatever the specifics Sherlock had hoped to communicate or to avoid, he had done his job: John was eager to discover where they were going.

John glanced over at his friend, but could not long keep his eyes off the view from his own side of the carriage. Their route today had taken them almost directly south along the major boulevards, and the streets were jammed with increasingly grand outfits the nearer they drew to Buckingham Palace. John had never been close enough to see the royal gardens as more than a distant spot of gemlike green, but as he watched the white walls rise into view on the far side of the spreading emerald sea, he realized that the sight of the palace, while certainly stirring, was not nearly the momentous event he would have imagined it to be only a few months ago. How things had changed, he thought, stealing another brief glance at Sherlock, with a surreptitiousness that seemed unnecessary, for the latter was lost deep in thought. He was perhaps brooding over the new findings about seed development in the simpler plants (monkit? manicod? John had heard the word many times, but still struggled to remember it) published last week, which seemed to trouble his own observations; or the question of John's voice and its failure to improve, a matter in which he had recently taken a worrying interest; or perhaps musing over some other conundrum still in its infancy, whose details he did not yet feel ready to disclose. But that he would someday disclose them, open his thoughts up to John for scrutiny and mutual inquiry, John felt certain, and it caused in him a particular sort of quiet delight.

When back in Portsmouth he had dreamed of a greater life, watching the waves from the dock or lying awake while his family breathed peacefully around him, John had pictured solemn halls and great houses, a world of prestige and politics all drawn in dim outlines, for he had scarce known how to imagine what he desired. But never would he have imagined this, serving as an assistant – and friend – to the most brilliant man in London as he explored the very frontiers of knowledge.

John stirred himself from this reverie and realized both that the carriage had stopped and that Sherlock was looking back at him, with an expression of unwonted diffidence. Lifting his gaze wider, in an effort to ascertain some clue as to their whereabouts, John saw the grey-green body of the Thames rising up to swallow the end of the street in front of them, and on the far side the green lawns of Battersea Park. John felt a moment's dizziness as he remembered another river, and Sherlock beside him pale and unmoving; and as he looked back at his friend he saw again, for a moment, that same remote and fascinating stranger, all the elegance of pen-and-ink against the sand in the fading light of sunset. John felt himself briefly swallowed afresh by the flush of fear that had taken him over at the prospect that this astonishing figure should never again stir; but now his friend sprang from the cab all easy fluidity, with a small brief smile that left a lingering shadow of warmth.

John followed Sherlock out of the carriage and across the street, to a wrought-iron gate, all overgrown with greenery, that opened out from a high brick wall. Over the top of the wall, John caught a glimpse of the crowns of several trees. The gate stood open, but in the comparative hush of this quiet set of streets – theirs the only carriage in sight, and the uneven clatter of distant street noise cloaked by the susurration of the river – the black ironwork seemed as much warning as welcome, to screen in its private holdings for the use of the few rather than to extend a general welcome. But Sherlock strode to the gate as if to the door of an old friend, and John squared his shoulders and fell into step behind him.

Beyond the gate, a broad graveled avenue stretched out in front of them, through a band of trees and out amongst low, stretching lawns punctuated by raised beds. The plantings were not repetitive and symmetrical, as John had come to expect from a formal garden, but seemed endlessly various, profuse and cacophonous: here a wild burst of knifelike leaves, there a cluster of flower-coated stalks, with a low spread of round speckled leaves between them. John scanned the beds eagerly, rapidly, having learned with Sherlock that he needs must absorb quickly; but Sherlock's pace had slowed to an even, meditative walk, a pace that John might have (in someone else) been tempted to call a stroll. The strong lines of his face had also gone slow, and his eyes soft. It was not a faraway look – though to one who knew him less well, it might have seemed so – but rather as if what was always distant had been suddenly brought close. John, desirous of allowing his friend some privacy, dropped to a crouch by the nearest bed to inspect the plantings.

But a moment later he felt a touch at his shoulder, and so he rose and followed Sherlock deeper into the garden, until they reached a bench that faced out over the planted beds. They sat, and John took in the changing tones of the planted beds, the drift of a gull across the horizon, the slightly sinister stature of the strange and gnarled tree that loomed to their left, dotted with tiny black fruit. To his right, Sherlock opened his mouth as if to speak, only to close it again in evident perplexity. John regarded his friend quietly, content to wait, even though Sherlock himself seemed strangely discomfited, poised on the razor's edge of speech.

At last, John succeeded at catching Sherlock's eyes as the latter cast about in his distraction. John held his gaze with steady calm, and after a moment Sherlock ducked his head slightly, his eyes crinkling. He straightened and cleared his throat.

"I was eleven when Mycroft first brought me here," he said. "Took me to see the bed of poison plants. Poisons were a bit of a hobby with me at the time." His brow creased with another faint hint of smile. "I had set up a sort of chemical laboratory in the back of the kitchen. Mycroft was likely trying to ease our mother's mind by finding me some other pursuit before any of our dinner guests took ill." Sherlock looked up briefly at John, and then down at his hands. "I had imagined plants to be dull. I was…. Well. I was mistaken."

Sherlock fell silent and set his hands down on either side of himself on the bench. John became, all at once, keenly aware of his own hand where it rested only a few inches away. That sudden razor brightness in his mind melted downward, became a slow thrum that built in his chest as he considered lifting his hand, closing that distance, brushing Sherlock's fingers with his own. He had very nearly resolved to do it when Sherlock abruptly drew his hands back into his own lap.

"People are…. difficult, for me," Sherlock said in a low voice, as if navigating a tight clench in his chest that mirrored his hands, and John felt gripped too by the tenor of intimacy in this declaration. "So much chatter and clutter, and one is expected somehow to care about it all, as if the minor flickerings of our minds and hearts are important. And yet, in all the clamor to be recognized, they still – they lie." Sherlock turned to John, face almost beseeching. "A plant is simply itself, mysterious to us at first because of what we do not understand, but only ever itself. But people lie, James, lie endlessly, and yet one has to navigate the lies, learn how to read them, if one is to make any progress of the sort that is expected." He made a face somewhere between a grimace and a smile. "I've given it up, mostly. There is a certain quantity of conversation and collaboration that is necessary in undertaking scientific investigation, but beyond that requisite intercourse I have had little wish for company."

Sherlock looked over at John and offered him a wistful smile. "Your face reproves me," he said – and then, lifting a hand gently, as if in correction – "even if you do not. I know there are honest men. But the human mind is a labyrinth, an unutterable tangle of confusions and wishes and resentments…." He gave a quiet chuckle and shook his head. "It is no wonder so many people become lost in their own fabrications."

Sherlock grasped his hands in front of him and stared at them. "Long before I knew I wished to study plants, I—" he stopped, frowned, straightened; tipped his chin and began again. "Many ancient philosophers employed a mnemonic technique called the memory palace. Storing the things one learns in various rooms. The idea quite appealed to me when I first encountered it in Cicero." Sherlock paused, pressing his lips together in an almost wistful expression. "And so I sought to make my own. But I found that I could not always move the information about as quickly as completely as I wished – it wasn't always so easy to pluck something off one shelf and put it on another. The older ideas, they became entrenched, were harder to move about."

He gave a quick jerk of his head, and began to speak again, more rapidly. "Not quite the right analogy, then, a palace. But here, there are garden beds for particular classes of medicinal plants; there's the poison bed, of course; beds for all the different counties of England – one for Lancashire, of course; and the glass-house; and might another garden not have a bower, or a gazebo, some other man-made structure to house information that cannot be planted? One can move a particular specimen from place to place, watch it take root and adapt to different soils. So I…" and here he dropped off completely, and was silent so long John wondered if he would speak again.

Mouth still working, eyes still downcast, Sherlock bent down and retrieved a fallen leaf from the graveled walk. "And so I have a mind garden," he said quietly, staring at the leaf as he rubbed it between his fingers. "Quite a large one of course," he continued, dropping back into something more like his regular demeanour, his pace once again rapid-fire. "Two ponds, several greenhouses of course, a handful of outbuildings to house superseded methodologies on the off chance that I need to consult older materials that rely on them." And then the tide of explanation slowed, and Sherlock's eyes dropped again to the ground. "A work in progress, of course, such things always are, but for the most part I am able to keep the world well in order, though –"

Sherlock's speech ended like a snuffed-out match, and he looked up at John almost sharply. "I don't know whether you have ever had occasion to mistrust your own mind, James. My memory is excellent, of course, and I am not susceptible to wishful thinking. But there was a night, some months ago, when I." He paused for breath, which seemed to be coming harder, though John had never seen him lose his wind when walking rapidly through London, and they had been sitting for some long minutes. "I was in an – an accident, of a kind. My life was never in danger, but I was… compromised. I lost consciousness for some amount of time, which…. well, I was alone, and disoriented. But I saw…." He trailed off into silence. John, his heart pounding, did not stop to think or to fret, but reached out and seized his friend's hand urgently, desperate to hear at last Sherlock's account of the evening that had occasioned such a profound transformation in his own life.

But Sherlock only smiled sadly down at their joined hands, turning his own hand upward in John's. "What I saw did not make sense," he said at last, stroking his thumb along the inside of John's palm. "I did not understand it then, and I understand it even less now. But I –" he closed his eyes, as if in pain. "We cannot trust our own senses, sometimes, for they lie to us." He pressed his lips together. "As surely as we lie to one another. Perhaps sometimes, that is why we do it."

He looked back up at John, face soft and vulnerable. "You will not – please do not tell anyone." John nodded, feeling as if his heart might break, and squeezed Sherlock's hand briefly. He was so filled with emotion – his insides astir with feelings he could not name – that it was some moments before the absurdity of Sherlock's request struck him.

Sherlock saw his grin and gave a low chuckle in return. "You are an excellent confidante, James," he said. "I forget just how secure, sometimes." His voice dropped very low, and he smiled shyly. "You do not seem silent to me."

John had to look away. He swallowed and struggled to compose his face, fixing his eyes on a pair of gulls as they wheeled in the sky above the looming, gnarled tree. He felt a sudden and surprising stab of longing for that unfettered state. His breathing calmed as he watched them, sitting here in this garden, bound by touch and by confidence to the friend he loved more dearly than any other in the world, perplexed by his own longings.

John felt the press of Sherlock's fingers against his, tentative. "James?"

The name grated roughly against the tender frontier that had opened inside of him. He released the birds from his sight and turned back to his friend, and offered the best smile he could muster, acutely aware that, for all of his improbable good fortune, there was nobody in his life to speak the name by which he knew himself. Sherlock's eyes were still gentle, but now his brow creased slightly in concern. But it was not the first time they had been so caught, Sherlock unable to inquire as he wished. This time, John was grateful for it. John only squeezed his hand again and released it, and stood up from the bench.

Sherlock stood as well. "I have a mind to show you the Lancashire bed," he said. "They have very poor specimens of the peat mosses, which really are the most interesting feature of the county, but the seed-heads of the bog-cotton are quite distinctive. Although even the bog-cotton does not grow quite properly here; I suspect the acidity of the soil is wrong. " He turned away, caught up in this new line of thought, and walked deeper into the garden, still talking. John followed silently, as he always did.

It was some days after their visit to the Physic Garden when, sitting together at the table in the library, Sherlock leaned across John to retrieve a book. He placed a hand on John's shoulder to steady himself in his reach, and at the soft weight John felt himself convulsed by a deep shiver, once again breathless though he had barely stirred in the past hour. Sherlock's hand lingered briefly, as if the touch itself were deliberate; and as the tightness in his chest twisted sweetly, John's whole life stood open to him as it had not done before. The nature of his feelings for Sherlock broke open in his mind like great cascades, each one fresh and overwhelming. First was humiliation that he had known himself so little, that Harry's first guess at the midsummer fair had been right all along. The next was shock, to discover in himself the ferment of a desire that he had, so recently, found troubling and even repugnant in the very object of his own longing. He had changed, how irreparably he had changed, since leaving Portsmouth. But no, the feelings themselves were not new; he was forced to confess to himself that he had felt them, in some murky form, even on that first evening by the Solent. If he had changed, it was in becoming both braver and more cautious; but even those threads had lain always within him, even if his encounter with Sherlock had set the spark to them. He was still himself, changed only inasmuch as he was no longer deceived about what that meant. And with this realization came the last wave, calm like a thick blanket descending. To have a name, finally, for the inchoate yearning he had so long felt was a great relief, even as he realized that it would never be fully answered. If this was the feeling Sherlock gained from his pursuit of an ever-refined understanding of the natural world, then John now had an inkling of why he sought it so tirelessly.

John looked carefully up at Sherlock, who was narrating his quarrel with the encyclopedia and seemed not to have noticed John's moment of revelation. Sherlock glanced down, offered the brief quizzical smile that meant he was wondering at John's private thoughts, and continued on in his diatribe. John smiled back, tranquil in the renewed sense of his own extreme good fortune. To be the assistant and the friend of so extraordinary a man was already a blessing beyond what John would have ever dared hope for. He would, he resolved, be content with his life as it was – and in this moment, the resolution felt easy, for it was everything he had thought he wanted, and almost everything that he actually did.

A few days after his epiphany in the library, John returned from a stroll in the park to find Sherlock seething in the parlor. John was surprised to find him there, for Sherlock had declared his intent that morning to attend a lecture of some kind, and had departed not two hours before.

"Ah, James!" Sherlock said, with a sort of electric brightness which, John had learned, was a sure sign of foul temper. "It will perhaps please you to learn that you are living with the only competent botanist currently alive in London. Did you know – I would wager you didn't – that it is possible to spend two years in the Amazon and return still convinced of the essential soundness of Lamarckianism?" He slammed his hands down to the armrests of his chair and burst up to standing. "It's useless, it's worse than useless. And at the Linnaean Society! We are a disgrace to the nation, James, to the profession, we are…" He grasped his head with both hands, pulling at his hair with frustration.

John, having recovered himself somewhat from the surprise of finding Sherlock at home, hastened to intervene before Sherlock worked himself up to a full rage. He crossed the room and opened to the latest entry in his sketchbook: a series of drawings of moss. Sherlock had seen some earlier drafts of the renderings that John had copied out from a survey of Lancashire, but these newer drawings were better executed than the first, and next to them John had laid in some small sketches of the moss that collected at the edge of the small pond in the square.

Sherlock took the book from him and leaned in, eyes narrowing. "I see your point about the splaying of the rhizoids," he said, after some minutes, frowning. "Though of course the peat mosses are an entirely separate genus. But you aren't to know that. Stansfield's representations can't really be trusted, he hasn't your eye for the physical traces of development. Half the time he conflates the bryophytes completely." Looking up from the page, he bit at his lips, and seemed to be working something out beneath the ledge of his eyebrows.

"It would be better, I think," he said at last, "if you were to see them for yourself. The peat bogs, I mean. I could take you up to Lancashire with me, to, um. Conduct a study, of a kind." He paused and glanced briefly over at John. "If it would be interesting to you," he added in a careless tone. "Only a thought."

John sensed the careful orchestration of detachment in Sherlock's voice and, setting aside the flurry of practical concerns that had immediately arisen in his mind, he smiled and took his friend's hand. It was easy to smile, for here was an unprecedented intimacy: Sherlock had just invited him to remove with him to the Holmes family estate, to leave London behind. And Sherlock was, if he understood correctly, offering to tutor John in the rudiments of proper scientific study.

He did not know, in truth, how he would continue to supply himself with the tincture that dulled his vocal cords, without Doctor Trevelyan or the Baroness to arrange matters, and of course he could not ask them. He had been silent for so long that it seemed just barely possible that habit, combined with conscientiousness, could keep him from speech. Possible, but still a great risk.

And he worried, of course, about the boredom. John had never been to the north and did not know what he could expect, but it was by all accounts very stormy and isolated. Bogs and moors seemed a poor consolation for the intellectual life of London, even if Sherlock found it wanting. John felt, afresh, the old pinch of anxiety, wondering how his company could ever be enough for Sherlock.

But he smiled, and Sherlock smiled back. "Good then," he said softly, and John knew then that he would do whatever he could to ensure that Sherlock would continue to smile for him.

"I think I'll be wintering at Eldersburg," Sherlock announced at dinner the following day.

Lord Holmes glanced up from the document he was inspecting and raised his eyebrows. "I thought you detested winters in the north."

"I detest winters everywhere." Sherlock set down his wine glass with decisive fervor. "There are some soil studies I'd like to pursue," his tone taking on a note of mocking, "all terribly detailed, nothing you'd care about." He picked up his glass again and took another sip. "I'll hardly be missing anything."

Lord Holmes only pursed his lips and returned to his file, but John thought he seemed pleased.

"Willis will come up with us, I think."

"And why, pray tell, will that be necessary?" Lord Holmes did not lift his eyes from the page this time. "Surely you do realize that Eldersburg is still maintained while we're in town. Just as I continue to eat and sleep while you're away."

"You certainly do," Sherlock returned dryly.

"At any rate, we cannot spare her here," Lord Holmes continued, ignoring this. "Your presence, however great an imposition on your peers and guardians, will hardly overtax the capable hands at Eldersburg. They are certainly well accustomed to your habits," he added delicately.

"One servant to accompany two residents is only practical, I think."

Lord Holmes set the file down.

"How do you mean, exactly," he said evenly, his eyes steady on Sherlock.

"James will be coming with me," Sherlock replied, in a casual tone John recognized as deliberately assumed, his eyes roving the corners of the room as happened when he was uneasy of mind and aiming to conceal it. John, already troubled, had nearly stopped breathing.

"Mister Lindsay's medical treatment is ongoing," Lord Holmes said, his tone still level but each word carved out with crisp, unfriendly edges.

"There are specialists in Manchester," Sherlock snapped. "Surely they are, at a bare minimum, no more incompetent than his doctors here, managing nothing in months, I'm beginning to suspect I could do better myself…."

"Chemical experiments again, dear brother? You would likely end the affliction by ending the man himself." Lord Holmes offered a sour smile. "Probably not satisfactory."

Sherlock folded his mouth unhappily and was silent, glaring down at the table. John was by now accustomed to being invisible whenever Sherlock and his brother exchanged sharp words, but on this occasion the unpleasantness of feeling himself a piece of furniture, rather than a person, brought its own relief. He sensed – in the childish set of Sherlock's face, and in the complacency with which Lord Holmes settled back into his chair with file again in hand – the contours of an old pattern.

But after a few minutes of this stalemate, Sherlock spoke again, eyes still on the table. "Whatever it is, Mycroft, we'll manage it," he said tightly. "I will be sending inquiries to Manchester in the coming week. We will remove north at the end of October."

"Just as you say, brother. I trust you have the matter well in hand." Lord Holmes had returned to reading his document, draped almost carelessly over it with his chin in his hand. The cool neutrality of his voice might have deceived John some months ago, but it did not fool him now. Sherlock's plans, or more particularly his plans to take John with him, had for some reason upset Lord Holmes greatly; and now John feared that the subtle, subterranean conflict Sherlock had somehow set in motion would continue to work its way through the ground beneath them.

John spent the following morning alone – Sherlock had gone to hear a paper at once of the societies to which he belonged, and so John had kept himself busy with sketching in the square, until a light rain drove him inside to page aimlessly through an album of English native flowering trees, which Sherlock had brought home the week before fresh from the printers. But though the prospect of Sherlock's return continued to pluck lightly at the surface of his mind, no such interruption occurred; and when the bell rang for dinner, John entered the dining room with no little trepidation, unsure of his reception by Lord Holmes after the unpleasantness of the night before, in which he had taken no part but which seemed to take him as its object.

His worries were, in the event, unfounded. An advisor sat with Lord Holmes, in Sherlock's usual chair, and cooperated in ignoring John completely as he entered. John did his best to return the favor, and concentrated on his kidney pie while the two men spoke in lowered voices of names like Gladstone and Cardwell that, John realized with dull surprise, he no longer much cared to know.

John was pushing the last of his potatoes around on his plate with his fork when he heard familiar footsteps in the hall. Sherlock barreled into the dining-room, eyes bright with excitement, and barely paused to send a disdainful glance to the man in his chair before pulling up to the table next to John. John turned toward him inquiringly.

"James," he said, voice almost a whisper yet aglow with suppressed energy. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lord Holmes's gaze slide briefly over to his brother before returning to his own interlocutor. "I've been invited to join a, um, a research team. An oceanography expedition. They have need of a botanist. It is an opportunity beyond my wildest hopes, James. We're to sail in the spring…"

John listened without hearing, his heart sinking, until he caught the words "your sketches". Sherlock must have observed the shift in John's posture, for he broke into the steady stream of his own explanation to add, in a gentler tone, "You will be coming, of course. It's not yet decided where we will be stopping along the way, and what drafting supplies will be available, so we will need to make extensive provisions before setting out. Thomson's secretary will put me in touch with the quarter-master…."

"Sherlock." Lord Holmes's voice came like a ribbon of thick grey cloud, swallowing the sun in a half-second's space. "He won't be joining you on the expedition."

Sherlock turned in his seat to square off against his brother. "Don't be ridiculous, Mycroft, of course he will. I need him with me."

Lord Holmes looked back toward to the gentleman who sat, visibly uncertain, in Sherlock's habitual chair. "Leave us, please," he said quietly. The man stood quickly and withdrew as Lord Holmes returned his attention to his brother and sat back in his chair, raising his eyebrows. "You do realize, Sherlock, this isn't a passenger ferry, with space for the asking."

"He is my assistant, Mycroft," Sherlock ground out, "and he is coming."

Lord Holmes smiled thinly. "Yes, I'm well aware. But I believe you overestimate your own importance, Sherlock. Do you really suppose that Thomson has set aside two berths for you on that ship?"

For the second time in as many conversations, Sherlock's face went mulish. "I will demand it – I will inform him it is a requirement of my passage. You will demand it."

"I shall do no such thing," Lord Holmes replied. "Whatever makes you think I have the kind of influence…."

"Oh come off it, Mycroft," Sherlock exclaimed, nearly shouting. "Everyone knows your 'minor position' gives you the ear of the prime minister, and with that any damned thing you wish for is at your disposal…."

Lord Holmes rose to his feet with a whip-like swiftness John had not thought to attribute to him. Sherlock's speech faltered, and John realized suddenly that the rage was only bluster: beneath the shouting, Sherlock was deeply perturbed.

"Sherlock," Lord Holmes murmured, his voice dangerously quiet. "Compose yourself."

Sherlock glared up at his brother. "You are not my only avenue," he said coldly. "I have contacts at the Royal Society. Thomson was returning to Somerset House, after the lecture. I'll find him myself." Sherlock flung himself to his feet, jarring the table violently as he did so, and stalked out of the room without a glance backward.

It was not quite silence, that heavy unspeaking cloud that lingered after Sherlock's departure. John watched his fork as it settled slowly into stillness against his plate in a fading thrum of tintinnabulation against the china. As the small, piercing vibration faded away, an airless quiet descended.

After a moment, Willis appeared at the servant's entrance, looking timid. "Some port, please," Lord Holmes said, not looking, not turning, stiffly upright, his fingertips still resting on the table.

A moment later, Willis returned with the decanter and two glasses. Lord Holmes nodded in dismissal and poured out two glasses. "James," he said quietly, holding out a glass. "Will you join me in the library, perhaps."

It was not a request. John stood and took the glass, and then realized that Lord Holmes was waiting for him to lead the way. He felt the hair prickle on the back of his next as he went the door, down the hallway, through the cold marble foyer and into the warm dark tones of the library. He stood in front of one of the red armchairs, waiting for Lord Holmes to take the other.

But Lord Holmes instead entered as though John were not there at all, and crossed to the far wall to stare up at the portrait that hung there. (Lady Charlotte Vernet, John thought, though he was unsure.) "Close the door," he said. John walked back to the doors and drew them shut, and felt himself unaccountably unnerved at the soft click of the latch. The library had become a place that John shared with Sherlock, a place he could retreat to on his days alone and feel a sense that Sherlock was still with him. But here, with Lord Holmes and without Sherlock, it was a different room.

Lord Holmes stood for a full minute, still staring up at the portrait, with his back to John, until he swung round and fixed John with a chill stare.

"Your history is very hard to track down, Mister Lindsay," he said. "Local records report that the infant James Malcolm Lindsay, born to Roderick and Annabel Lindsay some twenty-eight years ago, died in infancy of the ague." John stared back at him, his insides going cold, as an edge of sour mirth came into the lines of Lord Holmes's face. "Given which," his interlocutor continued, "you are looking remarkably well."

John clamped down on the tremor that had begun in the pit of his stomach. As the months had worn on, his fear of being unmasked had gradually faded, but now the old terror crashed over him as fresh as on that first day. But he set his jaw and looked back at his challenger. Lord Holmes might think nothing of tearing down John's life, but surely he would recoil from inflicting damage on his own brother.

Lord Holmes gave a slow but expressive wave of his hand. "But it doesn't matter who you are, or where the Baroness found you. Irene can play at whatever cloak and dagger game she likes. She does enjoy her manipulations." Lord Holmes's voice had dropped into a lower register, became for a moment confidential, almost warm. "Nothing of substance will come of it," he continued. "As you surely know by now. If one wants to rule the board, one must secure the key pieces." His eyes followed the swirl of the last few drops of port in his glass as he tipped it. "And for that, one must know where to look. Irene isn't clever enough for that, and neither are you." He looked back up at John, his eyes hard. "Even if you are cleverer than you look."

John, indeed, did not feel clever, his confusion matched only by his alarm. Whatever the Lord Holmes was accusing him of seemed far more serious than his actual transgression, posing as the Baroness's cousin. Lord Holmes continued to stare at him with a gaze as intense as any John had seen on his brother's face. John felt a thrill of fear travel up his spine, even though – or perhaps because – all around that penetrating stare, the mild lines of Lord Holmes's countenance had not changed.

Lord Holmes, his eyes still on John, continued to twirl the empty port glass in his fingers. "What matters, Mister Lindsay," he said with dangerous softness, "is that I know what you are." He paused and examined the fingernails of his empty hand. "While I do not tolerate spies, you're clearly no threat in that respect." John, aghast, barely caught his mouth from falling open in shock. "But what is of concern," Lord Holmes went on, "is your new project." Lord Holmes set the glass down on the table with a resounding crack, and when jumped slightly at the sound he jumped also. He was closer to the fringes of his self-possession than John had ever seen him. But he collected himself almost instantly, and returned a cool gaze to John's face.

"For you do have one in mind, don't you," he said softly. "A project. A conquest."

Amidst his fear and uncertainty, John felt a hot beam of wild joy cut through him. It was a feeling absurdly incongruous – as Sherlock might say – with the present danger in which he found himself, and yet the thought of Sherlock vulnerable to him, caring perhaps as John himself cared, for a brief moment eclipsed everything else.

John's face had given away his thoughts, and Lord Holmes's own countenance darkened. "You're quite pleased with yourself, aren't you," he said harshly. He crossed the room in long strides, bearing down on John, looming over him.

"I tell you, Mister Lindsay," he said, in a near-whisper like a stiletto. "Sherlock may be an innocent about human nature, but I promise you that I am not. I know a liar when I see one, and I prefer not to see my brother hurt. He will be removed from your purview, and will have the career suitable to a man of his talents. I will not have him left vulnerable – not to anyone, but especially not to a sneaking piece of filth with ambitions."

John reeled back, shaken bodily by this last speech, by the thought that Lord Holmes – or anyone – should think that he wished to injure Sherlock, to ruin him... He closed his eyes to steady himself in a world knocked out of alignment, himself spinning loose and helpless within it. To be torn from Sherlock in the name of protecting him – it was too much too be borne.

Unthinking, John cried out in protest. No words came – only a harsh gurgle of sound – but Lord Holmes did not miss it. He stepped back from John, face closed up in complacent triumph.

"I thought as much," he said.

Shaken and miserable, John said nothing. Lord Holmes returned to the table, retrieved his glass, and began to address John again as he strolled to the door.

"You will stay here, of course, for the duration of the preparations; Sherlock will not have it otherwise. But when the time comes, he will join this expedition, and you can crawl back to whatever sewer you came from, for he will forget you." Lord Holmes paused, hand on the open doorframe. "And if you try to follow him onto that boat I will grind you into flotsam."

Finally left alone, John collapsed into a chair, shaking with consternation, with rage, with despair. When at last his legs felt steady enough to bear him, he fled upstairs to his bedroom and dropped onto the bed, too shattered even to weep.

John did not leave his room again that day, but sat motionless in his chair by the window, watching the world stream by as it had on that first isolated day. He was again alone. Staring out into the bustle of the street that had in the past few months become so familiar, he thought miserably of Sherlock, out somewhere in the streets of London, in search of a solution that did not exist. Lord Holmes, he was sure, had taken a hand in securing Sherlock a place on the oceanography expedition; and he would, John felt certain, make sure that John himself had none. As afternoon shaded into evening, and when Willis came to tell him of dinner, he sent her away and thought of Lord Holmes downstairs, dining alone, secure in the confidence that he had found a way to keep his brother safe from a grasping and manipulative predator who would interfere with Sherlock's research.

Nor, he thought, as he watched the horizon dim with evening, was Lord Holmes entirely mistaken. Sherlock was a brilliant scientist, and this expedition, however his place on it might have been gained, was only his by right of talent, of training, of skill. But even that was not the whole of it. Sherlock cared nothing for prestige, beyond the success of his ideas; but John had seen him alight with the thrill of pursuit, the vibrant snap of his mind engaged with a problem, the shining enthusiasm whenever he came across the chance to see something new. He had seen that light, in rare and vivid shade, written across Sherlock's features when he spoke of the upcoming expedition. Indeed, the bare prospect of such an exploration made John's own heart quicken. Even his dim and rudimentary studies were enough to enable him to understand that Thomson's expedition was, indeed, the opportunity of a lifetime. John could not stand in the way of it, keep Sherlock at home to fret and chafe at the necessity of relying on the researches of others. He could not forgive himself if he did.

It seemed only a few moments later when John startled to the sound of his door opening. The room was nearly entirely dark, though the lamp on the mantelpiece had been lit, apparently while John had slept. He straightened in his chair (feeling an uncomfortable pinch in his neck as he did so) as the door opened, and half-rose from it when he saw Sherlock enter.

"James!" Sherlock was in a state of high agitation as he half-stumbled across the floor to John. Alarmed, John came to his feet and stepped forward, grasping his friend's outstretched hands.

"James," Sherlock said again. He stood for a long moment, simply staring at John's face. John looked back, drinking deeply, fiercely. The lines of Sherlock's cheekbones were faintly illuminated by the light from streetlamps outside, coming through the window, even as the rest of his form was cast into velvety black by the lamp behind him. John wanted, suddenly, desperately, to touch him, but instead he gathered his hands in on themselves and turned away.

Sherlock seemed to accept this; out of the corner of his eye, John saw him withdraw to lean against the table along the back wall. "It is no good, James," he said, his voice deep and hoarse. "I am… the voyage is fully staffed, fully crewed. I am, myself, a late addition – there was a scholar from Cambridge who took ill and had to withdraw. It is all long in place. Thomson told me himself that he can do nothing."

It was only what John had expected, but it still came as a blow. He nodded, blinking back tears, and stepped back toward the window, retreating.

"So that's it, then." Sherlock's voice came through the darkness, and under the exhaustion he sounded angry as well. "It doesn't bother you, does it?"

John whirled round and stared at Sherlock, his own temper flaring to hear such a thing said. Sherlock stalked to the mantelpiece, took up the lamp and bore it back across the room, holding it up to John's face. John tipped up his chin and stared resolutely back.

Sherlock stared at him, eyes narrowed. John swallowed hard and fought not to drop his eyes, and at last Sherlock's face relaxed, leaving it almost childlike in its uncertainty.

"It is hard for you, too," he said slowly, as if in confirmation.

John could not prevent a small scoff.

"I have… I have not yet signed a contract," Sherlock continued tentatively. "I could…"

John reached up swiftly to grip his arm, hard, and Sherlock fell silent. John pressed his lips together and stared fiercely back at Sherlock, willing him to see how thoroughly John rejected this course, as much as he dreaded Sherlock's going.

Sherlock broke away and pulled at his own hair. "There is no reason why this should be impossible," he snarled. "You would be an, an asset to the entire expedition. You are, you are very…" he trailed off, then stepped close again to touch John's arm. "You are very… useful to me."

John had to close his eyes, then. He would have to say goodbye, to let go, and it was only becoming harder with each passing second. He pulled his mouth tight, reached up to touch Sherlock's arm in return and stepped back, eyes still closed. Sherlock caught him by the shoulder and pulled John back. John's eyes flew open, and he tensed his shoulders, preparing to shake him off, to fight if necessary. He could not be so close anymore, he –

Sherlock kissed him.

It was over almost before John realized it had begun, and then Sherlock was breaking away, hands gripping his shoulders painfully hard, eyes boring into his own.

"James," he said, a bare exhalation of sound, as if his voice were trapped in his throat.

John ached to say his name in return. He reached up and traced a finger along the line of Sherlock's jaw, and Sherlock's eyes fell shut.

And John discovered that his skin, his hands, the touch of his lips were all he needed to speak.

In the almost supernatural stillness after they had both found release, John was still panting quietly when he felt Sherlock slip away, out of bed, only to return a moment later divested of his shirt, which in their urgency they had not managed to remove. He slid a newly-bare arm around John's waist and pulled him close, burying his nose in the curve on John's neck, below his ear.

"So you see," he murmured, "I cannot leave you behind. It is impossible. We will find you a place on that ship one way or the other." He pressed his lips to the skin of John's neck and then chuckled gently, his breath ghosting along John's skin. "I will smuggle you on if it comes to that."

John was glad Sherlock could not see his face, could not see the anguish at war with joy. Sherlock, who had never wanted for anything, had finally found two things that he wanted – and by some miraculous turn of fate John was one of them – and did not yet seem to understand that he must choose. Sherlock, who for all of his vast education knew so little of the cruelties of the propositions that the world would present to a man, when he had the temerity or the misfortune to desire something. John traced his hand lightly along Sherlock's forearm, impelled by equal parts desire and grief, and tried to put out of his mind all the things he knew that Sherlock did not.