Sherlock awakens with a start. Knows he is alone without looking around. Daylight floods the room. Golden. Morning or afternoon? Afternoon. Body: mild headache, slightly queasy, muscle aches, no erection. Thirsty.

He goes out into the flat. Gary is dozing on the sofa and Cheryl is sitting at the kitchen table, one foot propped in her chair, wearing one of Gary's tie dyes and smoking a spliff the size of a fountain pen. She offers it to him and he shakes his head. No sign of Sally. He looks toward the bathroom door. Open.

"She left," she says. "Hours ago. We had a nice talk first, though."

This was definitely not the most fortunate of occurrences, though he shouldn't be surprised.

"Manage to scare her away, then?" He tries to keep his voice casual with a slightly mocking undertone.

"I think you'll manage that all on your own," she says. He laughs, a short exhalation through his nose, and starts making coffee.

"Did you get any sleep?" He asks, because he is always curious about how drugs affect other people.

"A little. Not feeling the Adderall much anymore, but the E's still there. Hope my serotonin level doesn't fall off too quickly. Don't want to be sobbing on the bus."

"Oh, I'm sure Gary will spring for a taxi for you." She shoots him a mocking glare and lights a cigarette off of her spliff, passes it to him.

"Have you ever tried E?"

"No. I don't think that would be a wise experiment." He leans against the worktop and inhales. He immediately feels his head begin to clear.

"You're probably right," she says. "They used to call it Empathy when it first hit the streets. "

"Dull," he says and looks in the fridge. The plums are all gone. The bastards.

"You had it wrong, you know," Cheryl says.

"Oh? About what?"

"I'm not still expecting you to shag me. I gave up on that ages ago, before you started ringing me again. I can be really stupid about blokes but I'm not that stupid."

"I only wanted—"

"I know what you wanted. And you never had to pretend you were interested in me. Even from the first. And yes, you're right fit, I really did want to get in your pants at first, but that's not why I helped you, then or now. "

"Why did you, then?"

"Because you're a right weirdo and I'll always help out other weirdoes."

He looks at her. Her hair is a mess and her eye makeup is smeary. Her lips are swollen and beard burned. He has never been remotely sexually attracted to her, but for an instant, with the marks of another man all over her, he feels a vague territorial stirring. He sets it aside to examine later, why someone he rejected should seem so appealing once she's out of reach.

"If you just wanted to help, why did you stop coming 'round?"

"Well, rejection still hurts, Sherlock. And it's still embarrassing."

"Oh." He sits opposite her with his coffee. Stares at it for a full minute before adding sugar.

"If you didn't talk about me, what did you talk about?"

"Oh of course we talked about you, dummy. Not the whole time, but we did. Of course at first I wanted to know how you met, and also wanted to know if you'd shagged, because I'd never in a million years have imagined I'd see a girl or anyone coming out of your room in the morning. But she said you just talked and you were still talking when she fell asleep. So you basically, like, had this really beautiful girl in your bed and you talked her to sleep, Sherlock. "

"I wasn't trying to-seduce her. I needed to think aloud but not to myself. Besides, she can hardly stand me."

Cheryl tries not to laugh and chokes on the smoke she is holding in. When she can breathe again, she shakes her head.

"Seriously, why the hell is it that the cleverest people are the most stupid? Don't look at me like that. Of course she likes you."

"Did she tell you that?"

"No! Don't get me wrong I'm not saying she fancies you, exactly, and I do think that she probably likes you in spite of herself, something I can completely understand, but do you think you'd have ever seen her again if she didn't, just a little, no matter that she was completely out of clean knickers and totally broke?"

"No—"

"But Sherlock, you've got to be careful. I think that, and you can chalk this up to the spliff or whatever, but just be careful with her. I like her. She's a little bit of a weirdo, too, though she'd never own up to it. She's got to be to not have washed her hands of you already. And I wouldn't be worried about her, because I think she can take care of herself, except that you like her, too. Now just shut up and hear me out. I'm not saying that you fancy her, either. Exactly. It's just that, sometimes, people on the outside, can kind of see it, when two people are circling each other, feeling each other out, and I only saw you together for a few minutes and I saw it. And you sure as hell never cared enough about my wellbeing to let me stay over. But I just think that there's something in you that can't do anything by halves, once you decide that it's worth your time, and I haven't known you long but I've seen what can happen when you put your mind to doing something. It's, like, one thousand percent devotion, yeah? Like the times I've let you into the lab on a Friday night and had to drag you out, half raving mad on Sunday night. And as much as people say that's what they want, it's really, really not, all the time. You know? And also, well, you also have this tendency to just forget about something once you've figured it out. And that's really not good, either."

He looks her over again. Her eyes are half shut and she looks sleepy and subdued. She always gets philosophical when she smokes. Sometimes it's amusing, especially when she gets talking about the meaning of life, but this is irritating.

"Glad to see your psychology courses haven't gone to waste, Doctor," he says. "But please don't worry about me or the state of my-heart."

Cheryl laughs softly and shakes her head. "Right, fine. So, what do you have on for the day?"

He squints and considers. "Shower, shave, convince you to go out for groceries, possibly sleep for eight more hours or so, determine the chemical makeup and purity of the MDMA you and Gary ingested. Why?"

"Well, you were right that I have done quite a bit for you, getting you lab access and all. So, I figure that since I don't have use for your prick anymore, I could probably make use of your massive brain."

"You have my attention."