Sherlock put off delivering Doctor Watson's breakfast for as long as he could before he started feeling guilty. He still wasn't entirely sure why the doctor's comments the afternoon before had hurt him so badly. He supposed it was because he'd assumed the doctor was like him.

Who was he kidding? John was nothing like him.

Sherlock had had a crush once in high school. Victor had been aloof and disdainful; no-one had liked him and they had taunted the young Holmes, an awkward, gawky child, telling him that he and the much older Victor Trevor would make the perfect couple. Sherlock had taken this to mean that Victor would understand, that he felt the same way about humanity in general as he did, that he would be interested in Sherlock's chemical experiments and ways to slow them down. He had offered his romantic interests not thinking they might be turned away. Certainly not with the cold contempt and sheer disgust they had been.

Maybe what hurt the most was that his feelings when he'd realised that John didn't share his views on the world had brought back so sharply the way he'd felt when Victor had revealed the same deficiency. Maybe what hurt was forcing himself to see that he was as helplessly attracted to the flying ex-army doctor as he once had been to the proud senior student.

Well, it was hopelessly inconvenient. And futile. And laughable. And simply unacceptable.

He snapped the toaster down slightly harder than necessary and the noise brought Molly around the corner, clad in a grey-green dress Sherlock had never seen before with her lab-coat on her arm, smiling good morning at him as she tried to attach heavy-looking dangly things to her ears. He felt his heart sink even further. "Where are you going?" he asked.

Her smile widened. "Jim's taking me out for breakfast," she said happily. Sherlock shook his head.

"I don't think that's a good idea, Molly," he said gently, putting the kettle on. She frowned innocently at him.

"Why not? You can cope without me – I'm sure you're not going to be attacked again this morning."

"No, I wouldn't think so," he remarked idly. "Molly, it's not safe. He's not safe."

The toast popped cheerily out of the toaster, in contrast to the changing mood of the kitchen. Molly's smile had disappeared. "Why do you say that?"

Sherlock took a deep breath. Why was it so hard to tell her? "Because… he's not… it's not… Molly, can you trust me on this one? I don't think you should be seeing Jim Moriarty. I don't trust him."

Her fingers had tightened on the strap of her black handbag. Sherlock tensed. That wasn't a good sign. When she spoke, her voice was high and shrill. "Why not? Why not? Why do you have to spoil everything? Why shouldn't I be seeing Jim?"

Sherlock busied himself buttering and jamming John's toast. Molly snorted herself into a frenzy behind him, and then suddenly calmed down. "Are you… Sherlock, are you jealous?"

He grabbed at the excuse. "If I was – if I loved you, Molly, would you stop seeing him?"

She gaped at him as he tried to hold her eyes in what he hoped was a sincere kind of way. Sherlock wasn't very good at sincere. The kettle boiled behind him; he turned away to make tea, and so missed the moment when her face hardened. "No," she said finally.

He turned around in surprise. "What?"

"No," she repeated angrily. "No! I've been around for years, Sherlock, I've just been sitting here scurrying around and hoping you'd notice me, and you never cared! If you even realised I loved you, you just used it to make me do things for you, and I did them anyway – I've been here forever. If you wanted me, you could have had me then. Now it's too late. Now I've got Jim instead, and I'm sorry if you don't like it, but it's your fault."

There was a knock on the door; Jim. Sherlock fought his goosebumps at knowing he was so close to the criminal. Molly turned around stoically and started to bustle out, leaving Sherlock blinking behind her. He quickly gathered the breakfast onto a tray and followed her. "Molly, please –"

"For God's sake, Sherlock!" She turned back one last time. "Would you just – why do you have that breakfast on a tray? Where are you taking it?"

He shrugged nonchalantly. "Upstairs. Change of scenery."

She narrowed her eyes. "Why? You've been going up there a lot lately. What are you hiding up there?" He looked sheepish, about to open his mouth and deny it. "Don't try and tell me there's nothing up there, you've been sneaking up there for weeks. You're not the only person who can guess other people's secrets, Sherlock. What is it?"

By the end of her tirade she was almost shouting, and so Sherlock shouted back. "I'm keeping Doctor Watson prisoner up there secretly!" he confessed angrily. "And the reason I don't want you to see Jim is because he's a psychopath, Molly, he's the one who attacked me yesterday!"

She stared at him in shocked silence. He let out a long breath. He'd thought it might feel better to have someone else who knew his secret; it felt worse. What was she going to say?

"You think this is all a joke, don't you?" she said quietly, her voice shaking. "This is ridiculous. I won't be back for dinner tonight. Maybe you can sort out what the truth is when I'm gone."

And she turned on her heel and stalked out. Sherlock swore and dashed up the stairs, throwing the door open unceremoniously. He hardly noticed Watson's yelp of surprise and hurried closing of the laptop; he dumped the tray on the doctor's lap and rushed to the window. "Sherlock?"

Outside, through the spun threads of silver, he could see Molly embracing – he suppressed a shudder – Jim Moriarty.

"Holmes!" He looked around at the doctor; sitting up on the bed, fully-clothed this time, clutching the tray and looking concerned. "What's happening?"

Sherlock glared at him for a moment, then looked back out of the window. The young couple were still talking happily. "Nothing," he said finally. Perhaps Moriarty wasn't going to hurt her; at least, not today. With another look full of contempt at Doctor Watson, he turned to leave.

"Sherlock?"

The voice that called him back was the smallest he'd ever heard John use; smaller, even, than his 'I won't stop you' confession in the Westminster chapter-house. It tugged at Sherlock's heart until he turned around. "What?"

John shrugged uncomfortably. "I'm not sure how I offended you yesterday, but it wasn't my intention. I'm really sorry."

Sherlock sighed. "No matter. It was a misunderstanding on my part."

He turned to leave, but John got up and took a step towards him. "What did you misunderstand?" he asked quietly. Sherlock turned his face away.

"I… your comment about never fitting in. I just… the closest thing to a friend I've ever had is Molly, and leaving aside for the moment the fact that I turned her boyfriend into a criminal mastermind with superpowers, she only stays with me because I manipulated her physical attraction to me. I've never fit in even in the slightest, never been remotely liked. But I didn't care, I didn't want to fit in. I liked the way I was." He looked up at John and saw pity on his face and hated it. "I was slightly shocked to find that even though you received more positive attention than I did, you still wished things were different," he withheld in a stiffer manner. John took another step forward; Sherlock mirrored it with a step back.

"I thought," he continued composedly, "that you and I were different in much the same way. I thought that's why we gravitated towards one another. But apparently I was mistaken."

John's face was really quite the picture. "No, Sherlock, please," he started. Sherlock shook his head.

Sherlock had worked himself into a sort of confessional frenzy, and had to keep going, or something might explode inside him. And who was John going to tell anyway? "Allow me to say, Doctor Watson, that the years I spent with you were the best times I ever had." John sat down heavily on the bed again. "John, I… I think –"

A woman's scream split the tension in the room like Ralph Wiggum bending down. Sherlock snapped out of his reverie and ran to the window, all too aware of the doctor at his elbow.

He was just in time to see a screaming Molly Hooper being dragged through the air and away by her ankle, clasped tightly in Moriarty's levitating hand.

Detective Inspector Lestrade sawed gently at his steak, and politely lifted the forkful of tender meat to his mouth. He was so hungry he felt like dropping knife and fork and attacking the cut like a dog, but he was trying extra-hard to maintain his manners.

He was a bit nervous.

His Miracle sat opposite him, close enough to touch, picking delicately at the lettuce in a Caesar salad. His manner was so impeccable as to be almost like a dance. Lestrade felt that he was perfectly justified in being nervous, and wasn't in the slightest ashamed that he was staring.

There was something hypnotic about the Miracle, something that drew and held the eye. He was just so obviously in control, so calm and unflappable that Lestrade felt safer in his presence, but that had been like that when all he'd known was the voice. For some reason, seeing the Miracle in person had been a revelation. He'd been expecting someone older, stuffier, or someone younger just putting on a voice to take the piss. Maybe it was the surety that this man was real that had him so transfixed.

It was made slightly awkward by the fact that his Miracle was staring at him, too. The two men's eyes remained glued on each other as their forks guessed the way from plate to mouth on their own. The DI, always slightly lacking in proprioception, had missed more than once. The third time proved to be too much for his brain, hyped on hunger and nervous energy, and he burst out laughing.

The restaurant quieted as everyone turned to look at the policeman quietly laughing himself into a corner. The Miracle smiled in amusement. Lestrade finally recovered himself and looked around. "Sorry," he said quietly.

Entertainment over, the other guests in the upmarket restaurant turned back to their own conversations. "It's quite all right, Inspector. Although I'd quite like to know what it was that amused you so."

Lestrade frowned. "You can call me Greg now. We're on a date. I don't even know your name and I'm dating you. And I don't care."

The Miracle smiled softly. "I'm glad you don't care." He took a sip of wine, his every movement perfectly controlled and executed. Lestrade felt like something of a barbarian in the company of this exhibition. "And I feel the need to apologise again for my lack of identity."

He shrugged. "I'm just relieved you're real," he admitted. "The whole time, I wanted to believe you but I was so aware that you could be anybody. You could be some teenager with incredible voice-acting skills. You could have been Sherlock Holmes, it seemed like the sort of thing he'd do. And when I let myself get closer to you, even if it was only in my head, I knew that I'd only fall harder if it turned out you were just a practical joke."

The Miracle frowned. "I assure you I am no practical joke, Greg."

Lestrade smiled. "Well, I know that now. And now that I know I just… why did you choose me?"

"I have watched the situation around Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson for its entire duration; I have to say, the death of Doctor Watson was entirely unexpected," the Miracle said pensively. "After it became clear that Sherlock would resist control from other sources, I knew action had to be taken. You have done a fantastic job of heading the Sherlock Holmes Task Force, Detective Inspector Lestrade," he said, quirking his thin lips into a smile. "Considering the few resources you have had to capture such an adversary. I thought perhaps you could use a hand. It turned out I miscalculated slightly the extent of Sherlock's reactions to the situation. Grievously, it may turn out."

"Sherlock," Lestrade repeated slowly.

"I'm sorry?"

Lestrade looked up at him, his gaze stronger. "You call him Sherlock," he stated. "Not Holmes."

The Miracle's thin lips tightened almost imperceptibly. "Yes." He fiddled with his silver fork in an almost awkward affectation. "I had intended to maintain a greater level of distance from you, as befitting the situation," he admitted. "But there's something…" he trailed off gently, not meeting Lestrade's eyes. The DI, never one to beat about the bush, took a deep breath and dived into the deep end.

"Are you attracted to me, my Miracle?"

The aforementioned looked decidedly awkward, but smiled. "I have little experience in the field of attraction, but I believe that may be the case."

Lestrade blinked. This formal, roundabout way of speaking was going to take some getting used to. But he would get used to it. He rather liked it. "That was a yes, right?"

"Definitely." His heart proclaimed its excitement at the word by thumping loudly like an excited child; his brain promptly diverted extra blood and oxygen to it to assure it it was not forgotten and try to calm it down. The outward effect of this was that Lestrade's hand – the one holding his fork – was forgotten in the internal emergency and relaxed its grip, resulting in the clatter of silver on his plate and a bit of heavy breathing to get the extra oxygen to his heart.

"Oh, good," he stammered while his brain tried to work out what had gone wrong. The Miracle smiled at him again. "Me too."

Thankfully, he was allowed a few seconds' respite while the internal clamour was sorted out and all body parts accounted for. His Miracle cleared his throat gently. "I am not the sort of person who asks innocent Detective Inspectors to lunch without being attracted to them," he said, just the slightest hint of sarcasm in his voice. Lestrade loved how he knew that voice so well he could read every emotion in it even when it appeared to show no emotion at all. It didn't look like the Miracle showed much emotion in his elegant face. "But I should warn you, dating and relationships… romance in general… has never been my strong point. I've always considered myself somewhat married to my position in the government."

Lestrade snorted, thinking of all the times Sally had told him he should take an early night and hit the pub. "Me too," he repeated. "Most police officers are. Well, the good ones are."

"And you are one of the very best." A warm, soft hand closed over his on the table; Lestrade looked up in shock. The Miracle took the hand away quickly. "I'm sorry. Was that not appropriate? I just –" Lestrade grinned and lunged for the hand again until their fingers were twined together on the tabletop. Unfortunately at the gesture his heart lost the plot again. "Greg?"

It was a few moments before his mind caught up with the fact that that was his name. "Yeah?"

The Miracle – his Miracle – hesitated. "Can I kiss you?"

At this his brain gave up completely with a small blam like the blowing of a fuse. "Oh, God, please."

His phone rang.

He wondered if there was a God, and if he'd somehow managed to offend Him, and if this was his punishment. Had it been the jazzy notes of a private call, he would have thrown the phone across the restaurant and ignored it. But it was the official ring of the Yard; more specifically, it was Sgt. Sally Donovan. He swore instead.

"Sally, you'd better have a bloody good reason –"

"Sir, someone's broken into the London Penitentiary. We think it was Moriarty. He left a lot of the med-sec prisoners alone, but the SHU was decimated. Sebastian Moran's loose, and Jefferson Hope."

Lestrade swore again, more violently this time. "Why are they calling us?"

Sally's voice was heavy. "Well, sir, they think it's possible Moriarty has teamed up with Holmes."

"Why do they think that? The guy half-strangled Holmes and left him in the middle of the street."

The hand enveloping his disappeared as his Miracle frowned and leaned forwards, attempting to catch the conversation, when his own phone rang, doubtless bearing the same information. He felt a tiny sting of pride that his network, in this at least, appeared to be faster than the Miracle's.

"Irene Adler's loose too, sir."