"We have to go find them!" Laurel insisted, as she excited the bathroom, dressed and squeaky clean.

"Don't be silly." Sherlock said, as she wrapped his scarf around his neck. "She's with the Widow and whoever else she called in for backup. Sara is fully protected and if we just go out and find them we'll be putting ourselves in their line of fire."

"Sara's my friend!"Laurel said, clearly pissed, she glared at Sherlock.

"And bringing you two back together for a second time will only put you in danger of Moriarty and Loki." He fought back, trying not to wither under her angry stare. There wasn't a single woman he'd ever met who affected him the way she did, but he'd be damned if he let her prance back over to her friend who was clearly mixed up in beyond the wrong group.

"So you want me to just leave her in the line of fire!?" Laurel shot back, using his words against him.

John stepped between them, "Come on you two, you were making the beast with two backs only a few short hours ago, how about we make friends and try to figure out a solution to—"

"The solution is to go out for dinner tonight and try to accept that this case is none of our business." Sherlock cut him off.

John shrugged, "Dinner would be good and I know this great place that—"

"Don't be foolish, Jawn!" Sherlock said, refusing to let him end one sentence, "you're not invited. This dinner is for two."

"A date?" John asked, looking completely shocked. "A date." He said again, confidence in his voice this time, and then he started laughing, "You're going on a date?" Sherlock rolled his eyes, refusing to answer the doctor. "I was wondering why you were so keen on taking Mycroft's advice and stepping back from this case, but it all makes sense now." He said, looking at Laurel and giving her a warm smile.

She smiled back. "Dinner does sound nice..." She admitted.

"What?" Sherlock looked shocked, and turned towards John, "How did you do that? She was angry only seconds ago!" he was completely in awe of John's powers of being able to calm women down in times of stress and anger.

John looked at the floor, shaking his head, "We'll have a talk later, and until then...you'll just have to try to get the hang of it."

"I'll help out where I can." Laurel volunteered. "I've had a lot of practice with first timers."

Sherlock looked at her suspiciously, feeling something he'd never felt before. It wasn't quite anger or annoyance, more anxious and almost afraid...was this jealousy? "Lots of practice? How much practice?"

Laurel fidgeted awkwardly, "Rule number one, do not ask a woman the morning after how much sex she's had."

"Well, this has been sufficiently uncomfortable." John said.

"You held up well." Laurel congratulated him.

"Yes, well it's the British in me. We do very well in horribly awkward positions. Give me a cup of tea and I'll quietly sit by while a couple has a very nasty row." He admitted.

"Tea, that sounds good." Laurel said. "Let's go get some...at wherever Sara is."

Sherlock let out a groan, "We've already talked about this we are not—"

"Rule number two!" Laurel said, grabbing his scarf and pulling him close to her. "The woman is always right." She gave him as light kiss on the lips, clearly leaving him yearning for more. "I promise we can go for dinner tonight after we visit with Sara and Natasha and make sure they're ok."

"Natasha?" John said. "Oh, yes, that sounds like a splendid plan. I agree with her."

Sherlock let out a deep sigh, knowing that he could never convince both of them, when they had such odd gleeful looks on their faces. "Fine. We will go and check how this troublesome girl is and then we will leave."

"She's my best friend, not a troublesome girl." Laurel said, vowing to attempt to make Sherlock like Sara...but then realized Sara didn't seem like much of a fan of the detective. "She's not overly pleased by you either, come to think about it." She said, hoping to force Sherlock to spark and interest in her.

"Most people don't like me." He said, with a nonchalant shrug. "I couldn't care less."

Laurel began to walk towards the hotel door, dragging Sherlock behind her by his scarf. "Rule number three, if you want in my pants you has to make nice with my friends."

"But...what?!" Sherlock looked to John who nodded, proving Laurel to be correct. "Fine." He hissed, "I'll try."

"Laurel turned around and gave him another kiss. "Good boy, she's been through a lot and doesn't deserve to have an angry detective who doesn't like her roaming around fucking her friend." She bit his lip as she pulled away from yet another kiss. "Now use your sexy detective ways to find them." She ushered him forward, in front of her, slapping his ass as he passed her. He tensed, not knowing how to react, she and John only laughed.

"I regret everything at the moment." He said, wishing that he was in on Laurel and John's little normal human jokes.

"You'll catch on." John promised, pressing the elevator button to go down. "Until then, I'll be very entertained."

Sara woke up in the morning to the sunlight slanting through the blinds of the bedroom she had run into last night. She immediately wished she hadn't finished that bottle of wine all on her own. Clutching her head and moaning softly, she rolled onto her side and into the fetal position, hoping that she could fall asleep until this pounding headache passed. Perhaps she could call for some water and an aspirin, or something, anything to get rid of the feeling of hammers marching on her skull.

"Oh man, do I ever know that feeling. Trust me, it never gets easier. Best to give up on that stuff altogether and stick to the green."

Sara sat up in the bed, almost falling over as she looked all around the room. Big mistake... she fell back towards the pillows, whimpering and clutching her head ever harder as she screwed her eyes shut. "Who are you? Who's there?" She managed to gasp.

As she slowly opened her eyes, she found a man dressed in an all-black outfit that seemed athletic in an off-hand sort of way standing over her, smiling down at her in the bed. He had a quiver of arrows strapped to his back, but he wasn't holding a bow in his hands at the moment. So this is Clint, she thought to herself, the famous Hawkeye. He looked into her eyes, his own filled with a compassion she hadn't been expecting from one of the more bad-ass assassins on the planet.

"Heard you had a bit of a ride these last few days. Seems we have something in common."

Sara snorted, turning her head away from Clint as she started to blush. "Trust me, the only thing we have in common is meeting Loki. After that, things start to take a definitely different path."

"I'm not so sure about that. He used us both pretty bad... I still can't think for too long about all the things I did when I was under his control. It doesn't matter to me that he had me under that spell, or whatever it was. I should have been able to stop myself. I'm Hawkeye, dammit."

Sara rolled back over to face him, propping herself up on one elbow, a surprised look on her face. Was it really still affecting him that much? "Natasha must have told you what I did, though..."

"As I see it, you didn't have much choice in the matter. What would he have done to you if you said no? Probably something worse. And so what if you enjoyed it. We can't help it when our bodies go renegade on us sometimes. I enjoy every shot I take with my bow, and yeah, I enjoyed every kill I made whilst under Loki's spell. Even the ones I felt horrible about afterwards. I still liked the killing part. Always have. I'm sorta fucked up that way. So don't feel too badly about what happened."

Sara sat up in the bed slowly as Clint made his way to a chair in the corner by the door, seating himself and leaning forward so he wouldn't crush his arrows. She felt herself blushing from the frankness of their conversation, but did her best to shake it off and ignore it. "Did Natasha send you here to talk to me?"

"No, actually. She talked to me about what happened last night and I told her I was going to come talk to you in the morning. She's been through a different sort of hell with Loki than us two. He was behind a thick glass wall the whole time he was torturing her; he had his hands on us more directly. Um, moreso on you, so to speak..." he coughed and looked down slightly, as if noticing his hands for the first time today. "... still. I don't want you to feel terrible anymore, if you can help it. Try to move on. Learn from what happened. Who knows? Maybe you can use Loki's obvious liking for you to our advantage. You'd be great as bait now if we needed to lure him out."

"That sounds an awful lot like work for a spy to me, not a lonely librarian."

"You did pretty damn good for a librarian when you got captured."

Sara smiled, despite her pounding head. "We're being pretty forward with each other for our first time meeting."

"The way I see it, may as well get the awkward crap out of the way first when you meet somebody you know some strange stuff about. We both know strange stuff about each other, and now we've talked about it, so it should be easy-peasy to get up and go to a very late breakfast with Natasha. She's waiting for us in the dining room, if you'd like to join us in a bit."

Sara grimaced at the thought of seeing Natasha after how last night had gone, but nodded all the same. May as well get it out of the way. Clint's right about that much, she thought to herself.

"Sure. Give me a bit to get myself put together and I'll come down."