Long Chapter Alert! Long Chapter Alert! Prepare for an extremely long chapter! THIS IS NOT A DRILL! THIS IS NOT A DRILL! (I did promise longer chapters ya know...you get what you ask for)


John awoke fresh, if not a bit hungry, to the grainy filtering of sunlight peering through his curtains. Each golden thread placed a spotlight across his crème covers, which he counted as he stretched mightily, toes curling, shoulders arching, face smiling.

He sat upright in bed, throwing his arms into the air and bending his back in a continuation of his first, glorious stretch, fists curling behind his ears, fingers clutching at the ceiling.

He paused, the stretch failed to bring him comfort as he realized with a sinking feeling he felt too free.

He snatched up his covers and peered between the sheets.

"Where…" he thought, flabbergasted "…are my underpants?"

He blinked away his shock and organized his initial question into a handful of smaller questions:

"When did I go to bed last night?"

"How did I go to bed last night?"

"What was I doing last night?"

He felt that these were all wonderful, applicable questions that sorely deserved an answer. He ran his fingers through his messy hair and yelped as he roughly jostled his bruise.

Suddenly it all made sense to him; the amnesia, the headache, his clothes: he'd been drinking. It was the only explanation for all three phenomena. He'd gone out to have a few with Mike probably… and then what? Forgot his clothes at the bar? Fell and hit his head? Something wasn't right, if he'd been drinking why wasn't he hung over? He mulled this over and let it sink in. Drinking explained everything, but it didn't explain it well.

Hunger pecked at him like a nervous bird and he rolled out of bed and scavenged around for a pair of underpants, meekly opening his drawers and ignoring the unpleasant draft.

He stared at the open drawer and for a horrible second felt himself becoming like Sherlock in the slightest, almost unperceivable way. His underpants were disorganized, and observably ruffled, as though someone had lifted them up without unfolding them and placed them back.

John rummaged through his drawer, checking for anything that might have been hidden beneath his boxers. There was nothing. He dressed quickly, feeling foolish.

Next John searched for pants and made a new discovery: two pairs were missing.

He owned ten pairs of pants, not including his lonely, dusty suit. Five pairs needed to be washed, while the other five pairs should have been in his drawer. There were only three.

John crinkled his nose and decided on a cursory search of his dirty clothes hamper where he uncovered the jumper he recalled wearing the day before. It was stretched out in the arms, covered with a crusty substance and wrinkled into a strange, animal shape. Definitely not something he would do to a jumper.

He abandoned his search for the missing pants and settled on a simple pair of blue jeans and a red shirt, catapulting himself downstairs before his stomach consumed itself.

"Morning." He called into the darkened room. Silence met him. John slowed down and trotted to a halt. Sherlock was always awake before he was, if he wasn't answering, he was either busy or gone. Or something was very, very wrong.

John stepped quietly through the room and peered at the shape amassed in his chair. It looked suspiciously like Sherlock, which is exactly what it couldn't have been. Sherlock never slept, and if he did sleep he either slept on a dangerous pillow made from his lab equipment, or, sporadically, in his bed.

John stared at his flat mate, for that was exactly who it was and marveled at the rareness of the vision that appeared before him like a mirage: Sherlock sleeping slouched in his chair.

He tip-toed to the kitchen and tried not to wake his exhausted friend, until he beheld the apocalyptic ruin of the kitchen and was forced to reconsider.

His hallow stomach snarled at him viciously as he beheld all of their cereal scattered across the floor, the miscellaneous ooze splattered over the fridge and most of their food stuffs spoilt.

"Mrs. Hudson's not going to like this." He said aloud, half-hoping to wake Sherlock so he could angrily demand an explanation. Sherlock didn't stir, and John decided to let him sleep. Evidently he'd been busy last night.

John paused only to grab his wallet and stormed from the flat, irritated and hungry. He flew out the door and straight into the café for breakfast. He furiously ordered the breakfast sampler, which was a large meal which featured a bagel, waffle, pancake, fried egg, two sausage links, three strips of bacon and a wedge of cantaloupe. He made a lot of enemies in the café that morning when he changed his order to two and made them to go.

With the tantalizing seduction of food wafting through his head, John was in a much friendlier mood when he walked into the flat. He didn't even mind noticing the plaster speckled across the floor, or the fresh bullet hole in the ceiling. He absently wondered what had happened and appreciated the perfect triangle it made with the other two bullet holes that had pock marked the ceiling long before their brother had been added.

He carried his Styrofoam bounty to the table in the living room and fished a clean fork out of a pile of magazines and set to work killing his hunger. He ravenously gnawed away at the bacon strips and had begun shoveling the egg into his mouth when he realized he was missing jam for his pancake. While he was up he retrieved milk, honey, syrup, cream cheese and butter and tossed them all onto the table with a mighty clatter (except for the milk, which he held carefully in a glass).

Sherlock sniffed and stirred while John feasted. John silently watched him rouse himself from his stupor, folding the jam-smothered pancake and feeding it into his mouth greedily. He felt as though he hadn't eaten the night before, which, he reminded himself, was entirely possible.

At last, John nibbled contently at his bagel and Sherlock's eyes fluttered open dreamily.

"Good Morning." John said, sipping his milk mildly.

Sherlock started at him fixatedly.

"What?" He sputtered.

"Good Morning." John repeated patiently. He would have plenty of time to be mad at Sherlock for the mess in the kitchen and the bullet hole downstairs later.

But first, "I brought some breakfast from the café." John said holding up the gutted remains of his own take-away box.

Sherlock stared at John, eyes eating him apart with their usual shrewd observations. Finally Sherlock threw his legs over the leg of John's chair, righted himself with a massive bound and leapt up to John, snatching his bagel out of his hand and shaking it at him angrily.

"What is this?" He asked accusingly.

"It's a bagel." John said with his practiced flat tone. It would take extremely odd behavior from Sherlock to make him react with any measure of incredulity.

Sherlock tossed the bagel over his shoulder where it spiraled to the floor hopelessly.

"Hey!" John rose up; it was his turn to be accusing. "I was eating that!"

Sherlock responded by seizing John by the head and turning his confiscated head this way and that, like an antiques appraiser presented with an unusual piece of china.

"What are you doing?" John asked placidly. Then he looked up and noticed the ugly purple raised welt just above Sherlock's left eye.

"Sherlock!" John cried in surprise "What happened to your eye?"

Sherlock stopped straining John's neck and squinted into his eyes.

"Don't you remember anything?" he asked carefully, slowly.

"No." John deliberately made his response as blunt as possible, and the effect was as desired: the news hit Sherlock like a sledge hammer to the face. He released John, who staggered backwards and rubbed his neck angrily.

"What happened last night? Why is there a mass in the kitchen? Where did the bullet hole in the ceiling downstairs come from?" John spat out each question after a thoughtful pause in which he eliminated the hundred or so questions he had wanted to ask down to the pivotal three.

Sherlock stared at John, the glimmer of hope returning to his eyes, the spark of discovery burning behind the contours of his face.

He pulled out his phone and scrolled through the messages.

"Didn't you hear me?" John said. "What happened last night?"

Sherlock crossed the room and reclaimed his place in his own chair.

"Sit down John." He said quietly.

John hovered over to his chair, feeling like a child being called before a headmaster. He almost smiled, but something in the exhausted seriousness of Sherlock's posture struck him with the same vein of somberness.

"You don't remember anything that happened last night, correct?" Sherlock asked; his fingers folded in front of him officiously.

"No." John had to force himself to hold back the sarcastic 'Sir.'

"Would you believe me if I told you that you spent most of last night in the presence of Moriarty?" Sherlock said in the same quiet, emotionless tone.

A cold fist of fear clutched John's heart. His heart responded by doubling its leisurely tempo to a fevered jogging pace. His mind raced through its immediate memories, only finding nothing reassuring and spinning into a panic. He realized that he was saying nothing and the pause was becoming awkward, but his mouth felt unreliable. He took a deep breath and rolled his thoughts back to a crisp winter night standing by a glimmering pool beneath the thick layers of a winter coat and bulky blocks strapped to his vest. It all seemed so… divorced somehow from his headache and amnesia.

"I don't know… maybe." He said truthfully.

Sherlock eased back in his chair, subtle twitches of anxiety rippling beneath the surface of his face. John's fear exploded quietly, eliminating the infrastructure of his inner security and killing the joy he'd felt early that morning.

"Why?" He pressed, "What happened?"

"Does your head still ache?" Sherlock casually slipped, eyes searching for confirmation, eating John's insecurity and shocked expression with a subtle relish. John wordlessly placed his hand over the raised lump on his head, his face frozen in a mixture of awe and fear.

"Would you think me mad…?" Sherlock started, lulled over the term fancifully and then drove onward to his conclusion. "…If I said you spent most of last night as a toddler?"

John sat paralyzed, struck dumb by the question. His instinctive reaction was to say "Yes, absolutely." But something halted his initial reaction, the faint recollection of a small boy covered in red sauce sitting at the coffee table. He realized, with a detached sense of embarrassment that his mouth was hanging open. Then, suddenly all of the circuits in his mind clicked and he made the pivotal connection.

"Oh."

Sherlock sank back, his sanity was defended, his hypothesis correct, his fears confirmed.

"Yes John, 'oh.'" He said hungrily preparing the next question, trying to keep it from sounding too accusing.

"So, could you tell me why Moriarty has been texting me, telling me he knows about my toddler experience?"

John studied his knees, feeling very, very much like a child called into a headmaster's office. There was a right answer, and he knew it. He just was finding it hard to say it. Sherlock would no longer doubt him, and that was a big relief, but now he would have to face his deceit.

"I should've told you sooner…"

"Yes, you should've!" Sherlock boomed causing John to jump. The excuses he'd been building neatly collapsed and withered inside of him.

"Do you realize a murderer is more upfront to Moriarty than you've been to me?" Sherlock said sourly. "What does that say about us?"

John clenched his teeth. "You wouldn't have believed me before today."

"Maybe not." Sherlock snapped, "But at least I would've been prepared when I found a baby where my flat mate used to be. A baby, John!"

"Alright!" John said, the knot on his head rocking with the force of the blood being squeezed through the inflamed flesh.

"What was I supposed to do with a baby John?" Sherlock ranted throwing his hands up and leaping to his feet. "I can't care for it, I can't handle it!"

"Excuse me?" John said angrily, "If you found me, why did I end up with Moriarty for most of yesterday? That's what you said, didn't you? What, did you just leave me lying around until he took me off of your hands?"

Sherlock froze, stunned. "It wasn't like that."

"That's what it sounded like." John finished coldly.

"Well that's not what happened."

"Then tell me what happened!" John shouted, flinging himself out of his chair. "Tell me why I'm missing the rear end of yesterday! Why my head hurts! Why I'm missing clothes! What happened with Moriarty?"

Sherlock frowned, glancing down at the rug. For the second time he muttered "Sit down, John."

John was ready to protest when the doorbell rang. They shared a brief look of oh-what-now and both marched primly downstairs to answer the bell.