After being dismissed by Brian Stern, Sherlock and John returned to the flat, picking up groceries on the way. When the cab finally pulled up on the kerb on Dalrymple Street, John noticed a group of teenage boys sitting on a low stone wall on the other side of the street, cans in hand. One of them had a skateboard, a clunky thing that was probably harder to steer than a tank, John thought. As they got out, he heard them call jeeringly to him, or perhaps to Sherlock. Something he couldn't quite catch, but which had ended with Fucking queers!

He ignored it—to even acknowledge something like that was going to cause a confrontation he was in no mood for—but John felt his anxiety spike. This was no longer about people's assumptions about his sexuality scuppering his chances at dating. This was 1983, and being targeted as a fucking queer might well mean not only having a handful of teenagers trying to kick you to death, it might also mean the police showing up to help them. He glanced at Sherlock, but either he too was ignoring the heckling or he genuinely hadn't heard it. More likely the latter, John thought. Sherlock ignored the world around him when he was thinking hard, and he'd said nothing that wasn't 'yes' 'no' or 'fine' since they'd left Central.

He was trying to think his way out of a parallel universe and back into the one he belonged to. And if anyone was going to succeed at that kind of over-ambitious task, it was Sherlock Holmes.

They reached the flat, and John, knowing Sherlock was even less helpful than usual when he was deep in thought, put the groceries away without even asking him. After ten more minutes of silence he was just about to suggest they track down Lestrade for more information on the case when he heard the street door shut downstairs and the jangle of keys in the lock. He went onto the landing and looked down the stairs to where Donna Meade, still half-blinded, bruised and battered from the morning's drama, was standing at her own front door, staring at the door handle as if she expected it to bite her.

John knew that look. Donna had come home and found her flat unlocked.

Without bothering to excuse himself from Sherlock, he went softly down the stairs to intercept her. "He's got himself home, then?" he asked.

She glanced up at him, looking dazed; and, he thought, afraid. "I'm sorry," she stammered. "I don't know—"

"Go on up to my flat," he said. "A friend's in there, but don't mind him, he's… well, he probably won't talk to you. If he does, tell him to make you a cuppa." Because I'm dying to know if he actually would. "I'll have a word with Michael."

But Donna hung back, reluctant, biting her lip. "Don't be too… I mean, don't be too hard on him…"

"Oh, come on. I'm not going to hurt him, what do you think this is?"

With that, she finally agreed to go. John watched her climb the stairs to his flat, waiting a few seconds after he heard the door close behind her. Donna's flat turned out to be a little bigger than his own, with two bedrooms, judging by the doors off the sitting room; but like himself, Donna didn't have a lot. Most of it was shabby and all of it was old. To the right of the front door the sitting room ran straight off into a kitchenette, with cupboard doors painted a thick, glossy cream colour with brown trims. A teenage boy was standing at the sink, a cup in his hand. He was both taller and seemed older than John had expected; pushing six feet, even at only fourteen. His hair was sandy, verging on ginger, but as he glanced up John saw that his eyes were the same violet-grey as his mother's.

"What the hell do you want?" he demanded, with the implied coda of What do you want now? John had never met Michael Meade before, but Michael obviously knew him. He had been one of the boys jeering from across the street earlier.

John pointed at him. "You," he said, quiet and clipped. "I want a word with you. What were you playing at this morning?"

Michael shrugged, taking a sip from his cup to cover his expression. "As if it's any of your business," he said.

"Yeah, you're bloody lucky I didn't make it the police's business—"

"Look, I forgot I had the keys in my fucking hand, all right?" Michael slammed the cup down on the counter with a bang. Black coffee splurted over his hand and over the countertop.

"What? No, it's not all right, actually. I don't give a damn where the keys were, mate, you shouldn't have been hitting her in the first place, and if—"

John had expected the punch from the moment Michael had put the cup down—before, perhaps, Michael had even thought of doing it. He blocked it and swatted his arm away. Michael looked dazed, then tried again. John had predicted he would give up after three attempts, but after the second the boy stared at his own outstretched, stinging hand in wonder.

"That's fucking amazing," he finally said. "Where did you learn to do that, the Falklands?"

"Broomfield Hospital," John replied. "Where I dealt with actual criminals, not pathetic little bullies like you who think you're hard because you beat up your own mother. So don't think I'm in the least scared of you, mate. The next time you touch me, or her, I'll break both your arms."

It was a threat he would not have made before showing Michael that he could have carried it out. To his surprise, the boy just looked at him, trying to work out whether he was really capable of breaking both his arms and eventually deciding he was. John felt the absence of something in Michael's reaction, the absence of something he expected, and it took him a second to work out what it was: he'd made no protest of You're not allowed to hit me or You can't do that, I'll call the police. It was likely that he was already too involved with the police for them to take his side in a dispute with his mother's boyfriend, who worked for them; and anyway, John thought, the police weren't going to help him much even if he was a saint. It was expected, not illegal, for teenage boys to fall into line with a bit of help from the back of an older man's hand.

"You got somewhere else you can be tonight?" he asked him at last. "A mate's place, or a girlfriend's, or something?"

Michael shrugged, putting his hands in his jeans pockets and glancing down at his shoes. "Dunno," he said sulkily.

"Well you'd better know, because I'm giving you one more chance before I just kick you out onto the street. I bet it's cold out there. Think fast."

"There's… Thommo's place?"

John wondered, considering how many people this kid would probably call a 'friend', why he had only one he could crash with in an emergency, and even then it wasn't a guarantee. "Right. Who's Thommo?"

"Just a mate."

"Is he a mate with parents and a phone number?"

John waited while Michael slunk back into his room, finally emerging with a grubby scrap of paper with Tommo and a local number on it. Cradling the receiver between his shoulder and his ear, he held the rotary phone with one hand and dialed it with the other, keeping an eye on Michael, who was wandering aimlessly around the living room and still making an effort to look like a cool teenager and not a scolded child. There was an open packet of cigarettes near the cooker, and he retrieved one and lit it. John, seeing this for the blatant fishing for a reaction that it was, ignored it as he listened to the dial tone down the line. At length, a cheerful-sounding woman answered.

"Hi," John said, "sorry to bother you, but this is Michael Meade's… well, I'm looking after him right now." He was still watching the boy as he paced circles around the room, shoulders hunched. "This is the most demented question anyone's ever going to ask you, or at least I hope it is—do you have a kid living there he'd know as 'Thommo'?"

At this, she gave a little laugh. "My son, Rob," she said. "Why, what have the two of them got up to now?"

"Nothing… together, anyway," John said, trying to gauge this reaction. Apparently, both of them were little bastards and Thommo's mother didn't mind much if he was. "Look, I'm really sorry to bother you with no warning on a Saturday night, but would you be able to look after Michael, just for tonight? It's just that his mum's… uh. She's not in a great way to look after him right now."

"Donna? Is she okay?"

John frowned, feeling he was starting to lose control of this conversation. "Yeah," he said. "Just… had a hard day and needs to be on her own for a bit."

"I can imagine." She sighed lightly down the line. "I suppose he can stay here. Would you like me and Rob to come and get him?"

"That'd be great—I don't have a car," John said.

"Forty minutes?"

"Perfect."

As John finally hung up the line, Michael was still wandering around with his cigarette, though John's failure to acknowledge it had taken the wind out of his sails and his shoulders were sloped at a much more meek angle. "Pack a bag," John said. "Once you've done that, we'll be waiting out the front for you to be picked up."

When he'd finished humiliating Michael Meade and watched as a woman in a blue Ford Fairlane picked him up, John went upstairs to his own flat, honestly apprehensive as to what state he'd find Donna in. Had Sherlock had traumatised her for life, either with some weird experiment or a series of cutting personal observations, the way he constantly did with Molly Hooper? But he found Donna sitting in the armchair, one bare foot tucked up under the other and a hot cup in her hand. He was tempted to ask her if she'd made it herself or if Sherlock, slumped lengthways on the sofa with his feet over the arm and his hands steepled over his chest, had found some common decency from somewhere and made it for her. She turned her head to greet him as he came in.

"Gone to 'Thommo's', whoever that is," he said.

"A friend from school," she said, getting to her feet, as if she was about to leave. John glanced at Sherlock, who hadn't moved. It was something he had yet to get used to, Sherlock's barely moving or speaking for a week on end, interspersed with periods where he was manic, anywhere and everywhere, zipping around the flat like a trapped fly, talking so fast he tripped over his own words. John supposed the explanation for this lay in his drug habit—cocaine, if Lestrade had it right, and after five years of working with Sherlock he should know—but there were other explanations, and John couldn't completely write them off. One of them was that Sherlock was autistic; another that he was bipolar.

"You don't have to go," he said to Donna. "But the flat's clear if you want to. Get a good night's sleep tonight—doctor's orders."

She seemed keen to leave, for what that was worth, so he didn't press the matter. As she passed him in the doorway, though, she squeezed his hand and said 'thank you' in his ear. He stood on the landing and watched her go down to her flat, putting two feet on each step, gripping the handrail with her left hand. Tomorrow, he thought, if she wasn't much improved he was going to suggest a visit to the local A&E. At least they'd be putting in a proper police report about the issue.

Once Donna had disappeared into her flat, John went back to where Sherlock was now sitting up on the sofa, a lit cigarette in his mouth.

"I wish you wouldn't do that," John said, but it was a feeble protest. He was, he had to admit to himself, a horrible enabler when it came to Sherlock's smoking, both in this world and the one they'd come from. He should have thrown the damn packet out altogether by now…

"You were right, which is a refreshing change," Sherlock said, blowing a smoke ring toward the ceiling.

"Hmm? Right about what?"

"You're definitely sleeping with her."

Given the intimacy of her hand in his, her hot breath tickling his ear, this was no surprise. "How did you find that out? Some detail on her shoes or something?"

"I asked her."

At this, John nearly choked. "Sherlock," he said, "you can't just go around asking people if they're sleeping with each other!"

"Why not?" There was nothing sarcastic in Sherlock's gaze. "She seemed to take it well, in any case."

John scrubbed one hand down his tired face. "Okay," he muttered. It had been too busy and stressful a day to bother trying to lecture Sherlock into better social manners. "Let's not do this right now. I'm starving. What do you want for tea?" He opened the fridge and looked through the staples he'd bought earlier, with very little input from Sherlock.

Sherlock shrugged.

"I can do that thing I made last week," he offered, "chicken stir-fry, sesame and garlic?"

"Yes, fine." Sherlock waved the question away with one hand.

But once John had set rice boiling and was heating up the wok—which wasn't a wok at all, but the widest saucepan he could find in the cupboard—Sherlock got up and stood on the other side of the counter, watching him as he cut up raw chicken on one plate and arranged vegetables on another. It was a routine John already knew, and was secretly a little touched by—Sherlock, who burned toast more often than not, had always been in awe that his flatmate could cook, and watched him do it as often as he could spare the time and concentration. Once, not long after they'd moved in together, Sherlock had asked him, "Why do you do that?"

"Do what?" John had been standing over a pan of risotto at the time.

"You know… that…" Sherlock had pointed to the stove.

John had felt a little embarrassed then, as if he'd been caught out. "I like food," he'd explained. "Decent food, when I can get it. Can't afford take-out every night, so who else is going to cook it for me?"

And now, he thought, Sherlock apparently considered a basic stirfry as some sort of culinary miracle, and scrutinised every step of the process, though he doubted he could be bothered ever trying to do it himself when he didn't have to. After all, Mrs Hudson existed. Sherlock continued in his reverie until John handed him a piled hot bowl and fork and he returned to the sofa with them, beginning on the stir-fry before he even sat down, as though he were starving. Which, John thought, he probably was. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd seen him eating a decent meal.

He cleaned up before starting on his own dinner, the two sitting in silence, with so much to talk about that neither of them seemed able to decide what to say first and so said nothing. When John had finally washed up, he wished Sherlock good night and went to bed, barely bothering to even take his shoes and jacket off before he was out for the count.

For the longest three seconds of his life, John had no idea where he was—the room was black—and no idea what had woken him. Finally, he was able to pull himself together enough to realise where—and when—he was, and that the phone beside his bed was ringing. With an exhausting effort, he reached over and lifted the receiver. "Yeah?" he mumbled into it.

"Dr. Watson." The voice down the line was male, British and vaguely familiar, but John couldn't place it. Raspy and low, as if they were afraid of being overheard. "You're needed down at Central. Injured officer. Don't ask any more questions and don't call us."

"Sorry," John said, "who is this?"

"Just get down here will you, before they kill him?"

John sat up. "Kill who? What—"

But he was speaking to a dial tone. The caller had hung up.

He got up, went out into the sitting room and turned the light on. Sherlock, who had been asleep on the sofa, sat up, squinting in its light.

"Get up," John barked at him, heading for the bathroom to splash his face to wake himself up. His limbs felt heavy, and he was so light-headed he honestly wondered if the call had been a dream—after all, it hadn't woken Sherlock, who was a light sleeper even in a comfortable bed. "We're going to the station. Both of us."

"Why?"

"Injured officer. I think I know who it is, and why they're injured."