They are leaving Baker Street when John notices that Sherlock is wearing jeans. New jeans, solid black, narrow through the leg and to the ankle.

Now he looks, he has never seen that deep crimson shirt before either. It is dark, like a lot of Sherlock shirts, but has a very slight flicker to it. Looks heavy, thick, soft. Is it silk?

"You look ... different," says John. Remembers an earlier conversation about Sherlock's outfit, going on an experimental date with that bloke, the unsuspecting subject of Sherlock's scientific interest.

"Good?"

Gorgeous. "Yeah, looks fine."

"I might get more. Jermyn Street," Sherlock says distractedly,

Only Sherlock would get casual wear from Jermyn Street.


The train journey is uneventful apart from the entertainment of seeing Sherlock gloweringly slumming it with a polystyrene cup of First Great Western coffee. The cab drops them at the end of a short gravelled drive. There is a Victorian villa at the end, some gardens around it. The house is made of Bath stone - appropriately, as they are ten miles from Bath - and rather mellow and welcoming.

"Nice," says John. Sherlock curls his lip.

"Mycroft's not here. We might as well just go in."

"How do you know?" There are no cars, no people, nothing. All the windows are closed.

Sherlock points to a short pole on the roof. "He flies the Union Jack when he's in."

"What?" John has to look to see if Sherlock is winding him up. Apparently not. "No one flies the Union Jack! Maybe the Queen. And isn't that just an open invitation to burglars?"

Sherlock sighs. "Yes, he does enjoy that part. Calls it shotgun practice."

They go inside, Sherlock opening the heavy front door with his key. "He'll be here shortly," Sherlock says. He hesitates. "Want to look around?"

John sees ancient light fixtures, shelves creaking with books, carpets worn to the weave with footsteps over a hundred years. "Where was your room?"

Sherlock bounds up the shallow stairs.

In the bedroom, John looks around. It is just a room, nothing left, no hint of a younger Sherlock, of anyone, really. Just a pleasant room with large windows, overlooking what he wants to call the garden but which comes out in his head as the estate. A single bed against one wall. A lot of empty shelves.

All of Sherlock's stuff is in Baker Street.

So is John's. Occupying about three shelves. Sherlock's belongings smother the rest of the flat.

"Nice room," says John, stepping to the window. "Bit different to my parents' three bedroom semi."

Sherlock waves a hand, shrugs. Seems embarrassed and curious: wanting to see John's reaction.

John is peering out of the window. "Bit of a porch out here, what, back door, is it? An easy drop."

He turns back to Sherlock, eyebrows raised.

Sherlock smiles at last. "I escaped constantly."

There is a sound of tyres on gravel. Sherlock makes a face. "He's here. Go and talk to him. I'll be down in a minute."


When John has gone to occupy Mycroft, Sherlock glances round. The years he spent living here. They are so long ago that now it seems like coincidence.

John noticed the silk shirt earlier. This is good. If Sherlock does a thing, he is does it right. The shirt was for John. Later he will take it off for John, or preferably, let John take it off him.

He blushes as he thinks of this. Puts his hand in his inside jacket pocket. Feels the cellophaned packet. Not that anything will go that far. But still. That he is planning this is... momentous. He is nervous, in a pleasant way. Anticipation more than nerves. He paces the room a couple of times, old familiar route, to calm down.

He is not sure yet how exactly he will initiate the conversation. But he will do it, will tell John that he knows, that he loves John too, and then he will kiss John and ... see what happens. Laissez faire, says a whisper in his mind, from another day, another date. Yes. Exactly.

It has been surprisingly easy to focus the last two days, given the plan he has formed with regard to John. But he has simply sunk into the work as usual, secure in the knowledge that John does not mind this and that John will be there when he emerges. It probably helps that he has made this decision. After all this time, to come back to this.

He rejected this path outright to begin with, yet here he is. People change their minds. And the moment when he thought of him and John, a set, two parts of a unit, was when he changed his. He realised the truth, and then there it was. So simple. Yet it was nothing you could control or force.

There is a chance that John will refuse him. There are options here too, including using the look, the never-fail look. But he knows he ought not to do that to John. The other choices mostly involve talking about it - perhaps necessary but extremely dull - or merely accepting the current outcome, and trying again at a later date.

If there is any chance it will truly upset John - any chance Sherlock has been wrong about it - he will back off and leave it alone, as he did after John originally raised the subject.

It would be better if he were completely sure, sure of John, of the outcome. But even he knows that love does not work that way.