Author's Note: Oh, wow, lots of you seemed to like the last chapter - it was the most reviewed one so far - so I this one can at least measure up to it. But seriously, thankyou so so much. Before the chapter, just a hint of Shameless Self-Promotion from me (But if you can't self-promote here, where can you?) If there are any Merlin fans who like my writing, I've just posted my first Merlin oneshot, so it's be great if you checked it out. Okay, sorry about that, and here is the next chapter. Hope you enjoy.

Chapter Twelve

Remember The Weight Of The World

It took a moment for John to realise that he definitely wasn't in his own room. But, once he'd determined that the uncomfortable thing pressed against his back wasn't his mattress and was indeed the living room sofa, all he really wanted to do was find a comfier position and go back to sleep.

Unfortunately for him it appeared as though team of heavy footballers wearing studs were marching angrily through his brain and making his head pound, ensuring that it was damn near impossible for him to even think the word sleep, let alone attempt it.

Some of the previous night came back to him – small flashes – but they skittered out of his reach when he tried to grab them. So, after a moment of staring at the ceiling, he attempted to pull himself upright. Of course, that was when he noticed the warm, comfortable weight resting on his chest.

He looked down, his eyes blurred and fuzzy from last night's exploits...and blinked. Once, twice, a third time. Nope, he definitely wasn't imagining it. The heavy warmth laying upon his chest was a quite happily snoozing Sherlock Holmes. The detective groaned and tucked his face into John's shoulder, still sleeping, causing John's nose to become mildly assailed by the younger man's inky-black hair.

He couldn't remember how they'd become entwined together over night. Through his admittedly unreliable recollections, they'd been on opposite sides of the large sofa. How had this happened? He even had his fingers tangled through the soft black hair.

The light breaking it's way into the room was enough to light up the soft curves and slopes of the quietly slumbering detective. John looked, feeling quite unable to tear his eyes away. He couldn't help himself, he was fascinated by the man even at a distance and he was even more transfixed up close. Sherlock had such an untouchable air about him, that John was rarely this near to him.

Convincing himself that Sherlock would have definitely done the same thing in this position, probably already had, he took the opportunity to study the mysterious man. His marble-pale face free of the usual calculating fire that seemed to fuel him each day, Sherlock looked quite young curled up against John.

Sometimes John forgot and had to remind himself how young Sherlock really was. He wasn't sure entirely, and took guesses at around mid-twenties, but it was hard for him to remember. Especially when Sherlock had eyes so old, that had seen so much – much more than anyone else.

Sherlock had most definitely become the closest thing John had to a friend. John sighed at his own thoughts, he had a bad habit of being unable to name Sherlock. As though somewhere in his mind he was still a small child trying not to 'jinx' it. It was ridiculous, he knew, but his throat felt as though it were clogging up each time he tried.

As his mind wandered away from the odd predicament he was still stranded in, flickers of memory began playing like a film, looping around inside his head. A picture swept, unbidden to his mind – Sherlock seated on the sofa, knees tucked under his chin, looking up at him with that incredibly relaxed smile that John was seldom treated to. The memory was little more than an image, a flash like a photograph, but it sparked a whole other train of thought.

It was strange, he noted, how not uncomfortable he felt being in such a position with Sherlock. Maybe it was nothing but, a voice whispered in the back of his mind, maybe it was something else.

They spent majority of their time together; watching terrible re-runs of Jeremy Kyle, arguing about the rent, making ridiculous bargains over choices in take-out versus who did the washing-up, racing up and down London after madmen. Aside from the occasional brush with death that they both seemed so fond of, they almost acted like they were a...

He really jolted awake then, his heart hammering as he sat bolt upright. Sherlock tumbled to the floor by the sofa beside him, waking up instantly upon impact with the wood. He groaned loudly into the cold surface and sat back on his haunches, shaking his head in disorientation as he stared groggily at John.

"Ow," He said pointedly, dragging a lazy hand through his hair in a fruitless attempt to tame the rumpled mop on his head.

John shrugged, sitting up. "Not my fault," He lied, standing and heading through to the kitchen. He rubbed his forehead gingerly and peered about the room. "Tea?"

"Yes, please. Did we fall asleep? Stupid question. Pretend I didn't ask that." Sherlock babbled, the stupor of sleep dulling his usually keen senses.

John laughed nervously, somewhat amused by the jabbering detective, as he clicked the kettle on. "Breakfast?"

Sherlock squinted against a wide shaft of sunlight that was leaking through the window, his eyes darting to the clock. "I wouldn't bother with breakfast. It's noon. We should probably head out for lunch." He flashed a grin at John as he stood and stretched, his back arching limberly, and John began to feel extremely uncomfortable.

Then the man almost seemed to snap back into position, his previous lazy grin now replaced by the sombre expression John would expect at a funeral or at the bedside of a grievously ill friend. "We're not going out," He then turned and headed back for the sofa, tucking himself into the corner and pulling a nearby book to his lap, as though this closed the matter.

John, baffled by this serious about-face, stared at the man. He couldn't have gotten the message any clearer even if Sherlock had barricaded the doors and windows shut, but the question was - "Why?" He flicked on the kettle. "You told Lestrade you'd be in to-"

"We're not going out," Each word seemed to be punctuated with an intense stare that John just couldn't figure out the meaning to.

But, considering that the only person more stubborn than him in the whole of London was staring at him through a rumpled mop of hair and an unrelenting gaze, he saw it would be pointless to argue. Evidently Sherlock saw his wordless consent and, satisfied, looked away with a subtle smile that John wasn't meant to see curving his mouth.

Maybe John wasn't going to know why Sherlock was acting this way, but he was willing to agree if it satisfied the other man. "You can text Lestrade. I'm not doing it,"

"Never asked you to," Unsurprisingly, Sherlock was already tapping religiously away on his phone. A flash of something zinged into life across the detective's face, and John caught the tail-end of it before it dissolved without any trace that it had been there in the first place.

Shaking his head, he ignored it along with the feeling of uneasiness that accompanied it. "But you were about to," John imitated Sherlock's sing-song voice, earning a stifled chuckle from the detective. John's eyes appraised Sherlock for a few seconds as he set the completed mugs of tea on the coffee table, before he tutted in amusement. "Sherlock, get changed."

"Hmm?"

"Your shirt," John gestured to the large green stain that was still present on Sherlock's white shirt, courtesy of the gratuitous amounts of absinthe they'd consumed last night.

"Your fault," Sherlock accused him lightly, unfolding himself from the sofa. Again, that same flare of that undefinable something flashed in Sherlock's eyes, and John just about caught sight of it before it disappeared once more along with Sherlock around the corner of the door-frame. He frowned, his spine feeling as though icy fingers were tracing along the vertebrae. Something felt...off.

But he ignored it, making his way to the bathroom to shower.

He sighed in relief as the hot water washed over him, washing away the sticky veneer that the alcohol had left over his mind. He scrubbed shampoo through his hair, trying to clear his mind enough to face another day of Moriarty. Because it would doubtless contain something even worse.

The memories of the faux John Watson flashed painfully before his eyes, like white-hot needles in his brain, and he rubbed harder at his eyes, attempting to cleanse the image away. John switched the shower off and simply stood under the still dripping head for a few minutes, trying to rewire his brain so as not to focus on his dead doppleganger.

He swallowed hard and made to re-dress in clean clothes, padding back into his room to find socks for his cold, bare feet.

It was just when he pulled one of his mismatched socks on, that he realised that it was much, much too quiet. He stood still in his room, listening for sounds of life. Clanking, tinkering, anything. He didn't know quite what to make of the silence.

His feet speeding up without his consent, John rounded the corner back into the kitchen, expecting to see the detective glaring at some object as if wondering how it could dare misbehave.

"Sherlock?" He called, not finding any evidence of his roommate in the apartment. The chilling feeling seemed to grow, wrapping around his chest like a clamp.

It was then that he noticed the shoes. Or, rather, lack thereof. Where Sherlock's shoes had been abandoned last night, side by side with his own, there was now only empty floor space. Heart hammering, he spun. The long coat that was previously thrown haphazardly over the chair, gone. The scarf that had been left to hang lopsided over John's laptop, gone. Sherlock...of course, gone!

He swore, loudly and in a way that would have ensured his mouth being scrubbed out with soap had his mother been around. But there was no-one to hear him. He repeated his oath, as though by repeating it and slamming his hands on the mantle-piece would do him good. In fact all he got as a result was pain in his hands and an even worse mood than before.

"You're an idiot, Sherlock Holmes," He muttered angrily to himself, gritting his teeth so hard that his gums began to ache. His hands were perfectly steady as he pulled out his phone and angrily punched in numbers. Sherlock didn't pick up.

Where are you? - The letters of his text imprinted themselves behind his eyes, stinging him as painfully as if he had inked them onto his eyeballs himself.

Sherlock didn't text back.


The park had always been his place to think, and today Sherlock sought out its calming effects for certain things running through his mind. The weather, typical to the time of year, was chilly with the sun almost completely hidden by the drifting clusters of clouds. Sherlock wandered through the smattering of trees bordering the park, flumping himself down on a nearby bench beneath the shadow of a large tree in silence. He sat, his ankles crossed, his arms wrapped around his chest, and his gaze steadily drawn to clouds passing overhead, as if he was in a trance.

Sherlock Holmes was not, by any stretch of the most fanciful imagination, an idiot. He knew how to recognise a message when he saw one. And the faux John Watson was as clear a message as he'd ever seen - Moriarty had gone straight for the jugular and now, it was personal. How dare he!

Before the flames of his not irrational anger could spark back into being, a body joined him on the bench a foot away.

"Any particular reason you chose a park bench to meet me?" Lestrade asked, a slight disgruntled edge to his gruff voice.

"Beautiful day?" Sherlock offered, not breaking his gaze from the grey clouds that were threatening rain later on. "You have information on the victim?" His throat clamped around the final word, but Lestrade didn't seem to notice.

As Lestrade shuffled a folder from his bag, Sherlock's phone chirped in his pocket and he pulled it out, a strange and unfamiliar feeling of guilt in his chest.

Where are you?

He slid the phone away, almost able to hear the betrayed voice that John would have spoken the words in. Forcing the guilt down, he accepted the files and flipped them open, his eyes trailing the text impatiently.

Stanley Brocklehurst. Aged 39. Unmarried. No children. He skipped past the profile of the victim, moving straight for the forensics report. He caught sight of Anderson's cramped signature, stifled a petty scoff, and continued reading.

No fingerprints found on body. No bruising on body, evidently body was moved post-mortem. Cause of death...hole burnt through centre of chest, straight through the heart.

Sherlock pulled out the photos of the autopsy, studying the curdled and blackened hole in Brocklehurst's torso. Before he could even begin to consider the connotations of the wound, another gaudy bleep broke the silence. This time, however, it wasn't Sherlock's phone, nor the pink phone in his other pocket, but Lestrade's. Sherlock looked up for a second, then returned to the notes.

"What've you done?" Lestrade's voice cut in through the haze of analysis, fact and data.

"What are you talking about?" Sherlock asked, not taking his eyes off of the file.

"Text," Lestrade said by way of explanation. At Sherlock's silence, he elaborated. "From Watson. Asking whether you're with me," At that, Sherlock looked up again.

"When did he get your number?" The question slipped out before Sherlock could stop himself. He looked back down at the file, not seeing the words as he worked on concealing the emotions that kept betraying him.

"You found a partner, someone who'd be able to keep track of you. I wanted to keep in contact with him, since you never answer my texts," Lestrade stashed his phone away. "So what did you d-"

"Is this all?" Sherlock cut him off before he could finish his sentence. He fixed Lestrade with an unblinking stare that told the detective that Sherlock wasn't going to say a word.

Lestrade's eyes narrowed at Sherlock, his penetrating gaze telling Sherlock without words I know something is going on.

Well, I'm glad you do – cause I've got no bloody clue.

"Yes, nothing more. The body's in St Barts Morgue, if you're planning on taking a look," Lestrade told him, breaking the stare first and standing.

Sherlock nodded absentmindedly, tucking the folder into his side and staring back at the clouds once more. He heard Lestrade sigh heavily, his footsteps fade away, and Sherlock was left once again in silence.

He supposed he could head straight back to the flat, which was what he really wanted to do, and check that John was still safe and not roaming the streets of London searching for him. But he'd chosen the park for a reason, a place to think that didn't involve murders, pink phones and intense strings of thought that left him buzzing for days. No, thinking here involved the feeling that of being balanced on the edge of a cliff without a visible bottom, longing to jump off but waiting for someone to push you - not a feeling he was used to, if he were being honest with himself. And he often was. What was the use in lying to yourself?

He was digressing, a habit he was trying not to slip into, so refocused his mind once more.

Sometimes he wished he could just stop. For a day, even just an hour. Just so that all of confusion that was clogging his brain would dissipate and he would know what to do. With Moriarty, with John, with everything. He felt so pathetic. There was so much going on in his life, that the confusion twisting around his mind about such trivial things felt ridiculous. But, try as he might, he couldn't control the convoluted paths of his loaded mind. So if his thoughts led him to John, he had no choice but to follow, he couldn't stop his thoughts from heading back in that direction.

If Sherlock thought for one minute that by leaving John behind would stop Moriarty from targeting him, he would disappear from the doctor's life without leaving a single trace. But Moriarty knew Sherlock's weakness, his only weakness. He'd use John against him even if Sherlock kept away.

But something that Sherlock definitely knew, was that John wasn't aware of how much he meant to Sherlock. And, consequently, of how much he could be used against him.

His phone buzzed again, jolting him out of his thoughts. He pulled it out with some trepidation, fearing another text from John, but was somewhat surprised to see his brother's number on the screen. He wasn't sure whether to ignore the text or not, this was his problem, his mystery. Not Mycroft's.

Do you want me to protect John Watson? - MH

His pale forehead wrinkled as he read the text, before he recalled Mycroft's man who'd been tailing them. That felt so long ago, though it had only been a few days earlier, before the whole business with Moriarty had started.

His hands tapped out a knee-jerk response.

Just because my life is more interesting doesn't give you the right to snoop – SH

Barely seconds passed before his phone buzzed again.

Don't be childish – MH

More so than usual? - SH

He could almost imagine his brother sighing that obnoxious sigh of his, twirling his stupid umbrella and rolling his eyes at Sherlock's immature 'shenanigans'.

I can keep you both safe - MH

I don't need your help – SH

Really? - MH

Deciding not to dignify the final text with an answer, Sherlock buried the phone back in his pocket and folded his arms across his chest. He slumped back in the bench, staring at the clouds as his mind wandered back to the foreign emotion of guilt that had surged in his chest at John's text. He'd left the flat while John had been in the shower, a cowardly act, he had to admit. He could try and convince himself that he left then so that John couldn't follow him, wouldn't leave the house. But, while that was true, he'd also been afraid of seeing the betrayal in John's face.

Finally, he grasped his phone again and tapped in a short message to John.

Stay in the flat, please - SH