Ex Files

exile noun:

a prolonged, usually enforced absence from one's home or country; banishment

a person banished or living away from his home or country; expatriate

Greg Lestrade handed Sherlock his third black coffee of the morning. A hand reached out from the pile of blankets. He sat up, as the blankets puddled around his waist. Still clutching the spare duvet around his thin shoulders with one hand, he took a sip, with his eyes still closed. Dishevelled long dark hair made him look a bit feral, but Greg considered it a step forward. When Sherlock had arrived on his doorstep late last night, soaked to the skin, shaking like a leaf, and muttering incoherently, the Detective Inspector took one look at him and told his wife that they were going to have an unexpected house guest camping overnight on their sofa.

Over her protests, he bundled the young man into the bathroom, with strict instructions. Strip off his clothes, get in the shower and warm up, before hyperthermia really set in for good and he would have no choice but to take him to the hospital. At the mention of that word, Sherlock had growled he'd rather die, but the fit of coughing that followed only alarmed Greg more. The soaking wet jeans, t shirt and hoodie had been thrown in the washing machine as his wife argued about the stupidity of doing this. She threatened, cajoled and argued, but Greg just got on with it, telling her that he had no intention of letting the young man die of the cold on the streets of London. She stormed off and told him that he could "share the fucking sofa with the cretin" if it mattered so much to him. He followed her into the bed room and rustled in the closet for every available blanket, duvet and throw he could find. He pulled a set of warm pyjamas out of his drawer. Without a word, he dragged his pillow off the bed from where Louise glared at his every move.

He'd force-fed the young man the tomato soup that he warmed up in the microwave. Every time Sherlock opened his mouth to protest, he was confronted with a spoon of soup. Every time he refused, he was told in Lestrade's best don't mess with me; I'm bigger and tougher than you are command tones saying "Eat, or it's hospital!" Over the years, Greg had learned this was the warning of last resort. Nothing else seemed to work. He tried not to use it too often, but in this case, if he couldn't warm the young man up enough, it was not far from the truth.

He was woken up this morning by an angry wife who stalked through the living room with a small suitcase. Her last words to Greg were uttered through gritted teeth. "I am not overly fond of your willingness to give strays a place in our home. I'm going to my sister's for the next two days. If that …person… isn't out of this house by the time I get back, then you and I will have to have words about who is going to be leaving for good." She slammed the door on the way out, which woke up something in the lump of blankets on the sofa enough to groan.

Greg stood up and groaned himself. He was getting too old to sleep in an arm chair. His neck and shoulders hurt like hell, and his back would not straighten. "I'm going to try to get functional by taking a hot shower. If you can be bothered to move, you can fix us both a coffee."

He got out of the shower, shaved and brushed his teeth and dressed in some fresh clothes, by which time he was feeling more human. He headed to the kitchen, but neither saw not smelled evidence of any coffee. The hand he put out to pat the side of the kettle came back cold.

He walked back into the living room and looked at the pile of blankets, which had not moved an inch since he'd departed forty minutes ago. "Sherlock."

No reply.

"SHERLOCK!" This time, Lestrade thought the blankets just might have flinched.

"Don't make me try to wrestle all those blankets off you. It's time to get up, or at least tell me that you've survived the night. If I'm going to sacrifice my wife's good will for you, then you'd better tell me that you haven't died in the night so my act of generosity wasn't a total waste of time."

The blankets shifted and a tousled head peered blearily out. "I thought virtue was its own reward. You really want me to say 'thank you'?" This was uttered in a rather croaky voice, as if the very thought of it was ridiculous.

Greg looked carefully. Pupils were normal and equally reactive. The face looked a little flushed, and the raspy words made him worry about chest infections. He stomped off to the bathroom and came back a moment later with a thermometer.

"Stick that in the appropriate place and keep it there until it beeps. If you don't do it, then I will consider an insertion in another portion of your anatomy where a temperature can be taken."

A thin hand emerged from a blanket and took the thermometer. Sherlock's face screwed up in displeasure as he contemplated the thermometer after what Greg had said. "Has it been sterilised?"

Greg laughed. "Yes, your lordship. You won't get infected by common folk germs. Just stuff it in the cake-hole and be quiet for a while. If that is remotely possible."

Sherlock looked sourly at Lestrade, sighed and then complied.

He must be under the weather if he's done this without more of a fight. Over the years, Greg had developed a sense of when Sherlock was off his game, a sort of scale of sarkiness. A few times, he'd been in such a bad way that all the bratty arrogance and intellectual superiority stuff just melted away and left a shockingly vulnerable Sherlock who just looked like he expected to be shouted at, abused or kicked out. It hurt him to see that Sherlock, and to know the depths of despair that the young man must have been driven to before that truth would leak out.

Beep.

Greg removed the thermometer and grimaced at the reading. "Right. Two paracetemol and water coming right up. You have a low grade fever of 38.3. Let's make sure it doesn't get any worse."

He returned with the tablets and water and held them out to a glowering Sherlock. "Take them, or leave."

Sherlock sighed. But he did take them. Then he just looked away from Greg. "What?"

Lestrade was sitting in the armchair, just staring at Sherlock, who still wouldn't meet his eye.

"What?!"

The older man made a decision. "God knows, Sherlock, I've not spent a lot of the time we've known each other sticking my nose into your business, even though you can deduce almost everything about me if you wanted to. But, this one has got me stumped. Why did you turn up on my doorstep, soaking wet and sick? What's happened?"

"I got evicted three nights ago."

"Geez, Sherlock, you only moved there six weeks ago. What did you do this time to get banished?"

"It's not like the last time. No experiments in the kitchen went wrong; I swear! I wasn't high or buying drugs, either, so you can get that look off your face right now. You know I'm clean. No, it turns out that the landlord doesn't like me playing the violin. I did ask before I signed the lease. Just seems he doesn't like WHEN I want to play."

"Which is in the middle of the night, no doubt." Greg took the lack of a reply as agreement. He sighed, and then asked in a weary tone, "What have you done with your stuff? Your violin?"

"It's in a safe place. I can't keep it with me when I am sleeping rough; it's not good to expose it to the elements and someone might nick it if I fell asleep. I keep it at a left luggage at Kings Cross Station. I can retrieve it easily when I want to busk."

Greg just looked at the young man in front of him. "There are hostels, you know. Shelters that will keep you warm and dry when the weather is doing its usual autumn forty days and forty nights of rain routine. "

"Nooooo, I can't stand those places. They drive me wild with their rules and fixations on rigid routines. Lights out, sleeping- when I don't want to or can't possibly. The smell of the food, the cabbage, the other people; I want to throw up the moment I cross the threshold and smell that boiled cabbage and sweaty feet scent. And, if they don't smell of that then the places just reek of disinfectant. I'd rather be on my own."

Greg just pursed his lips in disapproval. "What you'd rather do, and what you might have to put up with are two different things."

Sherlock just shook his head. "It's the people. I can't stand them. The other 'residents', as they are euphemistically called, and the administrators, I honestly don't know which is worse."

Greg just sighed. "What are you going to do?"

"Once I feel better, I will busk enough to earn another deposit. The landlords always refuse to return my deposit; well, not just mine, anyone like me loses their deposit, because they know we can't take them to court. It'll take me a couple of weeks. Then I might go back to Montague Street. I didn't get kicked out there; left of my own accord when Mycroft got too nosy."

Lestrade pondered the problem. "That means two weeks or more of living rough on the streets while you earn enough to pay a deposit. In this weather, that could make you seriously sick. I know your brother must live in a house that's big enough to share. I don't suppose you'd consider it, even for two weeks?"

Sherlock's eyes grew enormous. "You must be joking, Lestrade. I'd rather sleep on a bed of nails than do that again. I was forced to spend time in Mycroft's townhouse when he wouldn't leave me at school or university during the breaks. He hated it, I hated it; we hated each other. After uni, and then again when I was released the first time from Rehab, he insisted on sharing again. It was open warfare, and eventually he exiled me to a rented flat. That didn't work out either, because the insufferable git kept trying to run my life from a distance, being just as annoying with his rules as he had been when I was under the same roof with him."

His shoulders slumped forward and he blew his nose again. The pile of tissues by the sofa had grown during the night into a mound of sizable proportions.

"I will never, ever willingly do that again; rather end up in a morgue."

As if to emphasise just how horrified he was at the thought, Sherlock put his coffee cup down, and burrowed back into the blankets, disappearing from view again.

Greg sighed. "Well, playing ostrich won't help. Something has to be done, because I can't keep you here for more than another two days. You heard her; this is a very short lease, I am afraid. Let me lend you the deposit money."

The bundle of blankets just groaned. Then a muffled voice said "No, Lestrade. I am not a charity case. It wouldn't be professional. I won't accept your money- and if your wife found out about it, she'd never let you forget it. Just leave me be, Lestrade. Once I shift this cold, I will be out of your way again; I promise."

oOo

The next day, over a toasted cheese sandwich and a bowl of mushroom soup, Greg scrutinised Sherlock. The fever was down, and his nose and eyes looked less red. He was coughing less. On the mend, then. Sherlock had dressed in his newly washed and dried clothes. He was still wearing the duvet around his shoulders. Greg had offered a wooly jumper, but Sherlock refused. The DI guessed that there was something more comforting in the duvet, but Sherlock would probably dismiss that as sentiment, and give him a little mini-lecture on the TOG differentials of duck feathers compared to sheep wool.

"Sherlock, we need to have a serious discussion. Your brother obviously has money. That hand-tailored three piece suit costs enough to pay a deposit on a flat in Mayfair, let alone your sort of bedsit. That smugness is old money talking. So, rent can't actually be an issue. My guess is that you don't like the strings that come attached. Why don't you have access to some of that family money?"

"Because Mycroft has power of attorney over my financial affairs- and he uses it to try to blackmail me, to extort behaviour he wants from me. I won't do it. If the price of getting access to my money is slavery, I willingly accept exile to the streets of London than pay his price."

"How much time have you spent truly homeless?"

"Why does that matter to you?"

Greg shook his head. "Don't deflect. Just answer the question."

Sherlock gave it a moment's thought. "If you count it all together it's nearly four years, even if the longest stint has only been 8 months."

Greg was shocked. He had never realised it was so long. "What a waste!"

Sherlock looked at him oddly. "Why would you say that?"

"To be banished from home, from family, from friends- I don't know, even away from food, and warmth and shelter. It must be awful."

Sherlock looked at him puzzled. "It's nothing of the sort. Yes- it takes more effort, but food and shelter can be found. There are people who I know and respect amongst the homeless- sometimes I think that there are more there than in the so-called normal world. All in all, sleeping rough has its benefits, which often outweigh the disadvantages."

Greg looked askance.

"When I am sleeping rough, I am truly free, Lestrade. You have no idea what it means to have been looked after all my life. People making decisions for me, telling me what to do, when to do what they want me to do, ordering me about, saying what I mustn't do. Family, doctors, carers- 'normal' people run their lives to a clock of conventionality. Being homeless means total freedom for me. I don't have to pretend to be someone else, live up to someone else's standards of behaviour. Best thing of all, people leave me alone. No one makes eye contact with the homeless on the streets; suits me perfectly. Once I convince other homeless people that I can defend myself, they ignore me, or interact with me on my terms. Far from being an exile from 'normal' life, in fact, it is amazingly liberating."

He wouldn't look at the DI, but he did carry on talking. "Don't think of me as an exile- no one has banished me. In my case, it's a voluntary expatriation- I chose to leave the conventional life, in exchange for freedom."

"So what pulls you back?"

"The work, Lestrade- it's always down to the case work. Without a fixed address, cases won't come to find me and you won't work with me. And eventually, life on the streets gets boring. So, as long as there is interesting work to be done, I will put up with living more conventionally."

Greg considered that. "So, if I were to hand you now a half dozen of the oldest, coldest cases the Yard has got on its books, would you accept payment for giving us a few leads?"

Sherlock locked eyes with him for the first time since the conversation started. "Oh, God, YES!"

Greg smiled. "Good, that's a deal." Welcome home, Sherlock.