A/N: Could it be? Is this story back? Yes, it is! Finally! Please feel very free to review (seriously alleviation, you got my ass off the couch) because at the moment it feels like reviews are what keeps me going! Hope you like it as the story goes on.
Chapter 10: Unhinged
When the taxi finally stopped again, John was very surprised to find himself outside his own home. He had thought they were somewhere around Acton, but then again, he'd not really been paying attention to where they were going. The first thing he noticed was that the lights were on in the upstairs flat, meaning that Olivia was home. A rush of guilt washed over him as he realised that he hadn't spared her a thought after ditching her in the restaurant. He hadn't even felt terribly bad about it, which now only made him feel worse.
"Fuck", he groaned as he rubbed his face in his hands. This was not going to end well. He slammed the door of the cab shut and slowly moved up the small path to the front door.
That was when Sherlock passed him, reaching for the door.
"Hang on," he said suddenly, grabbing hold of Sherlock's sleeve. "You can't come up with me. Don't you have a place of your own?"
"Not really," Sherlock shrugged. "It got shot at a few days ago. It's very draughty now."
"Your flat got shot at?"
"Yes, well, flat might not be the word I'd use, but, you know. Yeah, I think they thought I was in there," he said with an almost affectionate smile, as though talking about the antics of children.
"But you can't stay at my place," John protested, getting in the way as Sherlock again reached for the door.
"Of course I can. I've even got the keys." He pulled up a set from his pocket.
John felt for his pockets.
"Those aren't even mine!" he exclaimed when he realised that his keys were still safe in his jacket.
"No, they're the landlord's."
John decided that even that was too much information, and made up his mind not to ask for any more. Instead he tried to focus on what he should tell Olivia when they got up there. He opened the door and started to climb the stairs when he turned back to Sherlock. "Can you please try to act like an old army buddy? Just try."
"Are you already lying to her?" he asked with an almost conspiratorial smile that did not make John feel any calmer about the situation. "I like that."
"No, I'm not lying to her. A lot. Just about… you."
John heard exactly what it had sounded like, and regretted it immediately when he saw that Sherlock had too. He almost fell backwards trying to evade Sherlock, who'd taken three steps in a stride to grab his jacket, and was now pushing him roughly against the wall. He leaned in, pressing himself up against John, until he could actually feel his breath against his ear. Was that his leg pressing against his crotch?
"And why did you feel the need to lie about me?" he whispered with a dangerous voice that was clearly meant to be sexual, but the moment was about as erotically charged as doing the recycling. It was Sherlock going through motions he'd seen others do, without even beginning to fathom the motivation behind it.
"Normal people don't have friends who fake their own deaths," John said coldly and pushed Sherlock off of him. He let go immediately. "And my life with Olivia is normal. And I'd like it to stay that way, please."
"So boring."
"Yes, maybe, but then again, my home hasn't been the scene of violent gun-crime recently. You win some, lose some, I guess."
"Seems like lose, lose to me."
"It would, wouldn't it?"
One of the doors on the landing above them opened and Olivia's concerned face looked out. She had probably just looked out to check what all the noise had been about, and probably to tell off the neighbours, but when she saw that it was John, her face turned from 'what's-going-on-out-there' to 'fuck-off'. She slammed the door shut, and John heard her turn the locks.
"Please, Olivia, I'm sorry!" he called, sprinting up the last couple of steps, knocking on the door.
"You're not coming in here," she yelled through the door.
"Can't you just open, and we can talk about this!"
"I don't want to talk about it!"
"Don't you get it? He's unwell! He's fucking deranged!" John yelled back, then turned to Sherlock with a slightly apologetic look, as he felt that these words were truer than he would like them to be, so he added under his breath: "Sorry 'bout that."
"I could break down that door," was Sherlock's response.
"That's not the point!"
"You can sleep at his place!" Olivia called through the door.
"It'd be easy."
"We're not breaking the door down! It's not just about getting into the flat, Sherlock! She's my girlfriend, I want to put this right."
Sherlock just looked at him as though he was speaking another language – one of the few he didn't know.
"You're not putting it right by dragging him here!" Olivia yelled.
"You don't even know him!" As he said it, John realised that this might not be a detriment.
"We wouldn't even need to break the door in. I have the keys, remember?"
"Please, Sherlock, back off. This is not about physically getting into the flat. Olivia, honey, please open the door. I promise he won't come in with me."
"I won't?"
"No, you won't."
There was a long silence before John heard the locks open, and the door open ever so slightly.
"You've forgotten the chain," he began, but trailed off as he saw his toothbrush being poked through the crack of the door. "Olivia, please."
"Take it, and then piss off."
John had half a mind to try to put his hand in the door, to reach for her, to calm her down, to hold her, but there was something in her voice that made him think that she might slam the door shut on his fingers, so he didn't. Before he'd managed to make his mind up, Sherlock had darted in and grabbed the toothbrush. The door slammed shut immediately afterwards, and the locks turned again.
"Excellent. We'll have another adventure," he said with the same cheery face as last night, before he headed down the stairs. "Aren't you coming?"
John felt very uncomfortable. He was fairly certain that Olivia wanted him to send Sherlock away and keep grovelling for a while, and then maybe he'd get to at least sleep on the sofa. He wasn't supposed to actually do what she said and piss off; he was supposed to keep haggling the terms of his return to the flat for a while. But Sherlock stood bouncing on the balls of his feet at the bottom of the staircase, looking very impatient and excited. He knew that whatever Sherlock was offering was bound to be better than a night on the couch, so after a rough minute of wavering on the landing, he headed down the stairs, hoping he could salvage the situation tomorrow, when they were all rested and the incident in the restaurant wasn't quite as fresh.
About an hour later, John and Sherlock were sitting in an uncomfortably fashionable bar in Crawford Street, surprisingly close to their old flat in Baker Street.
"I'm really not in the mood for this," John pointed out as he sipped his second beer. "I really need some sleep."
Sherlock didn't say anything. He hadn't been saying much in a while, he'd been looking around the crowd with growing intensity, and now seemed barely to hear John.
"Are you listening? I thought you lived in Brixton as well."
Sherlock made a vague, non-committal nod to show that he'd heard.
"Where is your flat, exactly?"
"I don't have one."
"You said it got shot at."
"It wasn't technically mine."
"You've been squatting?" John didn't know why he wasn't more surprised.
"Squatting might not be the word I'd use."
"What word would you use?"
"I think 'prolonged burglary' would be more accurate."
"Dear God."
Sherlock suddenly got up and walked across the room towards the bar, where he stood for a moment without even trying to attract the bartender's attention in the crowd. He then returned empty-handed and sat back down.
"What did you do?" John asked, alarmed. Something did not feel right.
"I found us somewhere to stay tonight."
"What did you do? What's that?" He pointed to Sherlock's pocket. He removed his hand to show that it was empty. "No, in the pocket, not the hand."
He pulled up a small phial, not unlike the one he usually kept his cocaine in, but this contained pills.
"What is that? Did you put that in someone's drink?"
"It's two milligrams of flunitrazepam, and I put it in her drink," he said and pointed over to a moderately attractive girl in her late twenties.
John felt his stomach knot up. "Flunitraz-…You roofied her? Please tell me you're joking."
"Get your coat," Sherlock instructed, but John couldn't move. He buried his face in his hands and sat frozen at the table.
"Why on earth would you do something like that? Is that what you were stopping off to get?"
"We needed somewhere to stay the night!"
"I thought you had a flat!"
"I don't, but now we have somewhere to stay. Come on, she's nearly finished her drink. We have to leave before her, people never think they're being followed if you get there before them."
"They never… Do you mean you've done this before?"
"Never with her," was Sherlock's only response, as though that made everything better. "Come on!"
John didn't know why, but he got his jacket and followed Sherlock out of the bar and walked half a block away.
"Why her?" John asked when they saw the girl walk towards them.
"She was stood up by her date and lives just a block away."
"What?"
"She's done her hair, and dressed up, and kept checking her phone. After a while she started drinking at a quicker rate, probably around the time she understood her date wasn't coming. The shoes are worn, but she's clearly not used to wearing heels as high as that, meaning it was one of her first dates in a long while, and she wouldn't have been able to walk very far in them. Did I always have to spell everything out for you?"
The reminder of 'before', the time before… everything, sent a sharp jolt of pain through John's stomach. He'd been trying so hard to block all that out that to remember it, even now when Sherlock was back, was painful.
"Oh," was all he managed to say.
Sherlock suddenly nudged John to start walking, and they began walking around five paces in front of the woman. This did not feel right.
"You're not going to… do anything to her, right?" John asked after a few yards of hearing the stumbling of high heels right behind them.
"What?" Sherlock asked shocked, looking down at John as though it was he who was the weird one.
As the sound of the heels stopped, they slowed down dramatically. There was an inexpert rattling of keys in a lock, and Sherlock started to very slowly walk backwards, pulling John with him, until they were level with the woman struggling with the keys. She was clearly not feeling great, and after repeatedly dropping her keys, Sherlock swooped in and caught her under the arm before she finally slumped against the wall. The door was unlocked.
"Get the keys, John," he whispered as he 'helped' the woman inside.
After checking her wallet for the name, Sherlock found which flat was hers, and let them in, dumping the weight of the woman onto John. The flat was very small, but nicely decorated; it clearly belonged to someone who knew a thing or two about interior design. John would have been impressed, had not that someone been hanging limply from his arms.
"Her bed is through there," Sherlock instructed, pointing further into the flat. John dragged her through, and put her on the well-made bed. After removing her shoes, he covered her with a blanket from the foot of the bed and closed the door behind her. She looked very peaceful. Of course she looked peaceful, John wanted to scream at himself, she's just had two milligrams of Rohypnol.
When he got back into the main room, Sherlock had already stretched himself out on the sofa. John sat down in a large armchair, putting his feet up on a stool. In an interesting reversal of roles, Sherlock was asleep almost as soundly and as quickly as the woman in the bedroom, while John sat wide-awake, staring into space. What the fuck had they just done? Why on earth had he gone along with it? Why hadn't he stopped it? They could've gone to a hotel! This was just so wrong that he didn't even find the words for it. He was starting to feel sick. The knots in his stomach were even tighter than before.
He wasn't that plagued by their criminal activity that he couldn't be distracted by his own mounting domestic problems. The last thought that crossed his mind before he too drifted off to sleep was that he had a lot of things to try to smooth over with Olivia in the morning.