The first thing that they did when they got home was file into 221B, one after the other. Emili and John both grabbed their laptops. Emili took hers into the kitchen and let it turn on again while she was getting herself a Starbucks drink from the fridge (she and John had quartered off different parts of Sherlock's fridge for sanitary food storage). Hers was newer and booted up before she was even back in her seat, and John gave up on his laptop and joined Sherlock in looking over her shoulders.

The way to catch the Black Lotus – or, at least, Zhi Zhu – would be to find out what they were after and get to it first. They knew it was most likely an antiquity, so Emili opened up an internet browser and went online to a popular selling site which wasn't managed by any branch of the government. Its private ownership meant that as long as they took a percentage of the profits of any given exchange, they weren't going to ask too many questions.

"Check for the dates," Sherlock pressed impatiently while she was still waiting for the page to fully load.

"There's a filter for that," Emili replied. She wasn't about to scroll through who knew how many pages to find one that went too far back, then go back up again. As soon as it loaded, she opened up the box for filters and checked one. "All within the last week." They knew it had to have been stolen during the smugglers' last trip to China. After she clicked on the search button, the page reloaded with the items listed according to posting time instead of popularity, and she scrolled down. "Now go past the ones that are too recent…" Anything that had been posted after Lukis' death wasn't going to be it. She found the post that was put up about two hours before his body was found and stopped scrolling. "Here we are."

Emili slowed down and actually looked at the pictures and posts. The first one was a tiny little carved box, which she thought might be a puzzle box or something similar. The wood carvings looked amazingly detailed, but were chipped and rough with age. Another was a photo with a plain white background of two vases which looked like very old ceramic. The third was actually listed in Chinese, which Emili couldn't read, and didn't have an item picture to go with it.

John put his hand on the back of her chair and pointed at her computer screen. He was careful not to let his finger touch. "Two Chinese Ming-era vases."

Emili knew she should probably remember how long ago the time period was from school, but it was escaping her. She clicked on it and brought up the website for the post. The picture was twice as big on the new page, and there was more space for information, but the majority of the space was unused. The profile picture of the seller was a plain, average grey profile.

"Arrived from China four days ago." Sherlock looked at the date with his sharp eyes and stared at the vases. "Anonymous. The vendor doesn't give his name. Two undiscovered treasures from the east…"

Things very valuable to smugglers, for sure. Suddenly Emili remembered Sherlock going through the suitcase, and her passing on the opportunity to root through some guy's dirty clothes. He'd said there'd been something relatively large crammed into the luggage. "That's what left the marks in the bag!"

John nodded. "One in Lukis' suitcase, and one in Van Coon's." They were too big to both fit in either of the men's suitcases.

Emili opened up a new tab. "Let's look at auctions," she suggested while going ahead and doing it. Neither of them objected. "Those should be public record, right?" She opened the right page and did a key word search. Then she narrowed the results by choosing more tags and filters. When she hit the search button again, the results omitted anything too recent, anything that didn't have the tags "antique" and "Chinese", and anything below fifty thousand euros.

John left the table briefly while the page loaded and he came back a few seconds later with Lukis' journal and the copy of Van Coon's pocket-sized planner, which Sherlock had gotten from his secretary. He opened them both up to compare the travel dates.

There were a couple posts online that were marked as old, but clearly weren't on the list. Most of the rest looked like they could be legit, and before going far down on the new list, they were already back by several months. Sherlock pushed his hand in the way and scrolled the list upwards again, ignoring Emili's annoyed huff.

"Here's another one," he pointed out, hovering the mouse over a picture of a dull green-colored elephant with one of the ears scuffed and cracked.

"Ceramic statue, sold last month for four hundred thousand euros." Emili couldn't mask the surprise in her voice. She didn't think she'd pay four hundred for that hunk of old clay. It wasn't particularly nice-looking. Then again, shapes didn't matter much to worth if something was made of a precious enough material.

John nodded and pointed out a second one, two below the elephant. "A month before that, a Chinese painting went for half a million."

Emili looked at all the results on the page, but there weren't even links to blank profiles. "None of them have any supplier records. It's all anonymous." She clasped her hands under her chin. The situation reminded her of a TV episode she'd seen once, where an FBI agent investigated an art theft and found that it had been sold abroad days before the heist for obscene amounts of money. "They're stealing them from China and selling them in England – they probably have the buyers lined up before they even take them out of the country. It's faster and safer than putting up ads during or right after they're smuggled." With that logic, maybe they should look at the newer listings. Van Coon and Lukis couldn't be the only smugglers, and if nothing else, they should tip off Interpol.

John looked up from the datebooks and nodded at Sherlock. "All of those auctions coincide with Lukis or Van Coon travelling to China. How do you know that bit about getting buyers first?" He asked to Emili, looking down at her, sounding a little alarmed and exasperated like he had when she broke into the banker's apartment.

She hesitated for only a second. "American crime-drama television," she admitted with a shrug. Luckily, John didn't ask which one – if he asked too many questions, Emili might have to admit that the main reason she watched it was because she thought the main character was one of the most gorgeous men alive. Sherlock would never let her hear the end of it.

"What if one of them got greedy when they were in China? What if one of them stole something?" Sherlock hypothesized.

"Then…" Emili shook her head slowly. They already guessed something had been stolen, but if it had been stolen after being sold, no wonder the Tong were willing to off their own people. They had to send a message. "Then they've lost a buyer and they're not as reliable on the black market."

"That's why Zhi Zhu's come," John sighed, putting his hand on Emili's shoulder as if reassuring himself she was still alive.

The suddenness of the whistle up the stairs made John and Emili jump, though Sherlock remained unfazed, as per usual. John closed up the planners and put them down on the table. Before the landlady saw what they were looking at and asked too many questions, Emili closed up her laptop. Mrs. Hudson was very sweet, and Emili didn't want her to worry.

"Ooh, boys!" Sherlock had left the door open behind him. Mrs. Hudson poked her head in to look around and when she saw that they were still home, she let herself in, wearing one of her pretty lavender dresses with a cream-colored apron she liked to use when she cooked. "Are we collecting for charity, Sherlock? Oh, hello, Emili, dear," she greeted with a fond smile upon noticing the teenager.

"What?" The look of confusion on Sherlock's face in the brief second before distaste set in was one Emili would cherish.

Mrs. Hudson stepped further inside and pointed down the stairs she had come up. "A young man's outside with crates of books!"


Dimmock delivered on his word. Two other officers from the Yard traipsed up and down the stairs of the apartment, carrying entire crates chock full of books into 221B. John and Emili struggled to clear enough space to sit them where they wouldn't have to stand on top of each other and block more of the crates. Both of the men had been avid readers, or had at least liked looking like they were.

"So the numbers are references," Sherlock reflected, standing and facing the old hearth, which they never actually used for anything except her brother's sulking and brooding. He looked up at the Polaroids they'd pinned up before Lukis died, as well as ones he'd added more recently with photos of the cipher at Soo Lin's museum.

"To books?" John confirmed skeptically, looking around in dismay as their apartment, which he struggled to keep clean, was being overrun with ugly plastic boxes.

"To the words on the pages," Emili specified, nodding. "With the exact numbers, you could convey thousands of different messages with a single book." She rolled up the sleeves of her sweater in preparation to start. She had always loved books, so this was going to be one of the more relaxing tasks she'd ever done in an investigation. It was certainly going to be better than climbing up to a rooftop.

"Right, so fifteen and one, that means…" John picked up a copy of a paperback with a blood red cover and white summary on the back.

Sherlock filled in, "Turn to page fifteen and it's the first word you read." Emili hummed and looked around. The crates were all marked with which books belonged to whom, but it would be hard to remember who had what if they had to keep everything in crates. She bit her lip, trying to think of a way to do it.

"Okay. So, what's the message?" John questioned.

Emili almost rolled her eyes. For a smart doctor, that was one of the dumbest things she had ever heard him say. "If we knew which book to use, we would actually be able to see the table." It was covered with boxes. The boxes were large, so it only held five, but the corners of two of them weren't entirely on the table.

"That's the cunning of book code." Sherlock admired in the subdued, controlled way that he did. He never really seemed to get exciting over anything but a new challenge. This wasn't a challenge – it was just going to be time-consuming. "It has to be one that they both owned."

"Okay, right." John sounded chagrined for having had to ask, like he realized his mistake after he had already said it. He looked around at all of the books, sighed deeply, and sarcastically commented, "Well, this shouldn't take too long, should it?"

"There has to be a better system for this," the pink-haired girl mumbled, reaching up and scratching her head. Her soft hair rubbed on her hand and made her wish she'd thought to get a ponytail holder. "It's too bad this isn't all computerized. By the time I did it, it would have just been faster to do everything ourselves…"

"What do you suggest?" John asked, clapping his hands together and trying to force himself to be optimistic. He looked to Emili for leadership, which reminded her again of one reason why she enjoyed working cases. She was trusted by her coworkers, not relegated to simple tasks, and the things she got to do utilized her brain. It didn't exactly pay great, since they only got a consulting fee and it was divided over three people, but it was well worth the sacrifice.

She looked back towards the door briefly when she heard more footsteps, then dismissed them and returned her eyes to John. "Well, Mr. Photographic Memory over there can handle it on his own," she said, gesturing with her thumb over to Sherlock, who was already taking out books, looking at their covers, and then closing and returning them. Unlike Emili and John, he'd remember the titles and recognize a duplicate in the other's belongings. "We should look for common books and make piles. Then we can narrow it down further by checking publication information…" There wasn't too much else they could do but try and see if things made sense after that. "Different years, different prints, they'll all have an effect on the message, so if they own books of different makes, then we'll know which ones it's not."

Dimmock had entered the room while she was speaking, but had mindfully waited until she was done to pipe up. He also held up his arm, holding photographs. "We found these at the museum." He tried handing them to John, whose hands were already occupied, so Emili took them back before the inspector got awkward. "Is this your writing?"

She turned them around to see them and recognized the images immediately. They were the printed copies that Sherlock had taken to show Soo Lin. They even still had the crease in the middle where they'd been folded to fit in his pocket.

"Yes," she said flatly, looking up at the other investigator. "You see, we have forsaken pencils and now use cans of spray paint to write." She hoped that that put his question in perspective for him.

He just winced, doubly uncomfortable. He was treading carefully since they'd showed him up at the station. John looked over to confirm the pictures were what he thought they were, then directed his focus to the books he was starting to look at again. "We hoped Soo Lin could decipher it for us. … Ta."

The brunet pursed his lips and rocked up on his toes, standing taller to look over at Sherlock. "Anything else I can do?" He asked, protesting essentially being told to shoo. "To assist you, I mean?" The addition made Emili raise her eyebrows and look away – it seemed uncharacteristic.

Sherlock was, as always, predictably short and blunt with his reply. "Some silence right now would be marvelous."

Dimmock stayed standing around. Emili put her back to him to take a handful of books out of the crates. Then she realized how to make it easier on herself and the veteran, and she put them back, instead going to the desk. Neither of the men really used it, but she still found a couple of pens and a stack of still-wrapped sticky notes in one of the drawers, along with a half-used roll of Scotch tape, paperclips, a stapler, and other writing utensils. She brought the notes and the pens back with her, put them on top of one of the boxes off to the side, and indicated them to John, who acknowledged.

When Emili opened the plastic packaging, she caught sight of Dimmock's face again. The annoyance she felt at him just standing around uselessly after being dismissed melted away. He looked frustrated, and humiliated, and upset, but not with them. She didn't want to think about how it must feel to have a ragtag group like them doing a better job than he was at his own career: a former drug addict, a soldier with PTSD, and a teen without even a diploma. She had thought his pride was stinging from being one upped. Now she realized that it was probably a lot more serious than that.

She bit her cheek and decided that Sherlock could take boxes to his room or put on headphones if he really wanted the inspector to leave. He was probably having a bad enough day as it was, and their jobs weren't supposed to be in competition with each other.

"Actually," she said, and almost felt piteous for him when his head picked up quickly. He was so eager to help and do something useful for the case, redeem himself or something like that, that it made Emili feel bad. "There are really a lot of books here, and extra help couldn't hurt."

She looked at John to see if he was on board. She could write off Sherlock's attitude as Sherlock, but if John wasn't civil, then her actions would be see-through. John just nodded his agreement and shrugged at Dimmock.

"Look through the crates and find all of the books that the two had in common," Emili instructed. "If you have to, mark them with a post-it on which books belonged to whom." She moved the sticky notes to a different box, where they were more accessible to their new assistance. "Then give them to me, and I'll check if they fit the cipher."

"If you know it's a threat, what do you need the exact words for?" Dimmock questioned of her. Despite that it sounded like he thought the books were a waste of time, he also appeared genuinely interested in why they were doing what they were doing, and he compliantly pulled off a small portion of sticky notes and took a pen.

"We found more of it down past South Bank," she stated briefly. She didn't want to get into the events at the train station again. "Without the book, we can't tell what the Black Lotus is actually after, or what they're telling their operatives to do."

"Right…" Dimmock quietly said, understanding. He opened up another of the boxes and looked down at them determinedly before he started working.

Once the work had started, the apartment became quieter than Emili was used to. When Sherlock wasn't making noise, he usually wasn't at the apartment. At night, he played orchestral music or took up his violin, or made noise with his experiments, or turned on the television to guess the culprits before the on-screen characters and jeer at them for being stupid.

Dimmock worked just as diligently as the rest of them. Emili took a short break after she had drawn the letters "VC" so often that they no longer looked like they actually had any sort of meaning. Her eyes looked over all of her partners. Sherlock was still standing close to the hearth, moving his hands quickly through books, flipping through each one to see if the words made any sense and if the title was worth remembering. John had taken a seat on the floor, cross-legged among a ton of books, making piles that encroached on him like he planned on burying himself. Dimmock had taken control of the bookshelf by the door and carefully moved the lamp and candelabra off to free the space for his own book sorting.

She stared at the officer's back without turning her head to face him, so she could look away before he could catch her. He kept working, as immersed in the problem as John was. She bit her lip. He wasn't looking like an arrogant, bossy jerk so much anymore. She just kept seeing him in her imagination the way he'd presented himself in Van Coon's apartment: holding himself tall, pushing up his tie, acting like a hardass. The more she thought about it, the more she realized that it could also be interpreted as trying to get a foothold. Anyone who talked to Lestrade probably knew coming into the job that Sherlock, though a fantastic source of information, was an asshole who did what he wanted, and any decent cop wouldn't want to let a consultant run over them doing whatever they felt like. Not to mention that it was hard to get the respect of people like Anderson and Donovan, particularly without clothes that fit right.

When did I become Sherlock? Emili suddenly felt like she'd been hit with a ton of ice water. Instead of seeing something and keeping it mind, she used it to draw her judgments, just like Sherlock had, and the result was being biased against someone she didn't even know. She had misjudged a good policeman just because she didn't like that he'd been a little too confrontational while managing difficult people, and used the things she saw – like a coat and posture – to justify that. It was just like how Sherlock made judgments about people before getting to know them and treated them the way he imagined they would be from what he could deduce by appearance.

She admired her brother, but only in some aspects, and she certainly didn't want to become him. This was definitely not a characteristic that she wanted to emulate. She looked back down to her books, frowning. She knew that her new life had changed her, but it hadn't occurred to her that it was doing much besides making her sharper and more resourceful.

The sixteen-year-old was so disturbed by the realization that she looked back down and forced herself to get back to work. For the next quarter of an hour, the only time anyone spoke was when Sherlock found a potential match and read the words "cigarette" and "ashtray" off the fifteenth page, then deciding it wasn't a match and couldn't be the book.

Eventually, Emili was interrupted by Dimmock, picking his way over boxes as high as his knees to bring a couple of hardback books to her. "What about these?" He asked. His eyes darted to Sherlock and he dropped down into a library volume. "Same book, both hardcover."

Emili put her books down and took one of Dimmock's. "Turn to page fifteen," she guided, and waited for a pause while he did so. The detective's lips moved slightly as he read the page numbers, flipping to the right one. "What's the first word?"

"Imagine," he read off.

Though not totally surprised, she was still disappointed. "Mine's fiscal," she shared, closing hers up. "Must've been published differently. They're not the same, so it's not the book." She gave it back to him so he could put the books back in their respective boxes, or at least off to the side somewhere. "Now you can do that yourself."


She knew it would take a long time, but she hadn't imagined it would take as long as it had. Van Coon and Lukis had a ton of books, approximately, and Scotland Yard hadn't wasted time in getting all of their belongings, even the ones in storage. Emili kept looking at the clock, more and more frequently as she grew more tired, and all she could do was watch the hours tick by while she was stuck working on a case she had decided to fully commit to.

John realized he couldn't keep going when he almost fell down, literally falling asleep standing up. He retired to his bedroom a while after one to get some sleep. Dimmock tried hard, he really did and Em could see that, but by the time four in the morning came around, he had fallen asleep leaning against the wall in one of the few spaces that remained big enough for a human being. Emili herself had to continually drink caffeine to stay awake, and had pulled on headphones with upbeat pop music to stay alert. While the older men were going to bed, she started chewing on things to stay awake, going through a pack of gum and a box of cookies. Sherlock, of course, had no issues with staying up. Emili knew he was an insomniac, but this was taking it too far and it was rubbing it in her face.

She ran out of Frappuccino glasses in the 221B fridge at about the time the shower started running. Sherlock made a displeased hum when it began but kept his thoughts to himself. Twenty minutes later, John came out, dressed and tired but able to think clearly again, and said goodbye to Emili while he left for the clinic. Emili was ninety percent certain that he was mostly motivated to go instead of sleeping in by Dr. Sawyer.

Not long after, she finished the crate of books that she had been working on, "organizing" books into piles with sticky notes patted on top of each copy. When she found duplicates, she put those back in boxes when they didn't fit, but one of the men was a banker and the other a journalist, so although they had some interests, either professional or personal, that lined up, the majority of their book collections were not the same.

At that time, she yawned again, felt her jaw pop, and squeezed her eyes shut. Fatigue was starting to make her feel kind of queasy, and she admitted to herself that it might have been a better idea to sneak a few glasses of water in with all her iced coffee.

The teenager trudged on over to Dimmock. She nudged his thigh with her foot. He rolled his head to the other side and she coughed loudly, giving him a firmer little kick. The detective startled awake and raised a hand to his head.

"Where…" his raspy, just-woken-up voice sounded a few notes lower than his usual tone. He swallowed and cleared his throat, forcing a frog out before speaking again, and it sounded more normal. "What time is it?" He looked up at her and blinked several times. He realized he had a neck support pillow on his shoulders and took it off in confusion, probably not remembering when Emili had woken him up just long enough to give it to him.

"Time for humans to be awake, according to the sunlight." Emili pointed over towards the long grey curtains, which were still drawn, but weren't thick enough to keep the apartment dark. "I'd have let you sleep, but we need the space."

"Blimey, I'm sorry." His cheeks turned a little pink in consternation and he rubbed his eyes on his sleeve. "Don't remember deciding to take a kip."

"Don't worry. John's slept, too," she reminded, hoping it might make him feel better to know he wasn't the only one. "He just left for his day job."

"An' you haven't?"

"I'm used to being up late," she shared, sending a meaningful look over at Sherlock. He didn't operate on a schedule, and so he didn't believe it was necessary for John or Emili to have a bedtime, either. Dimmock's confusion faded and he nodded, guessing at what she implied. "And I've had a lot of caffeine. Speaking of," she put her hands on her knees to stand up straight and stretched her arms out behind her head, feeling her lower back and shoulders protest. "Sherlock, I'm going on a coffee run."

The black-haired detective turned around to face them with a book still opened in his hand. His long fingers supported the back while the spine rested in his palm. "You're giving up?" He asked her, his sharp eyes narrowed judgmentally.

"No, I'm not giving up," she retorted indignantly. Wasn't he listening at all? Probably, she thought irritably, but he just doesn't care much. "I'm going on a coffee run," she repeated. If she sounded a little bratty, then it was because Sherlock was an ass and she couldn't be a polite, respectful sister all the time.


By nine, Emili had run out of coffee in her own apartment, too, and was so low on energy that she almost couldn't walk straight. Her feet were sore from standing for so long, but there was no free space left on the furniture. She sent a look around at her companions to see how they were faring, and found that Dimmock was rubbing color into his pale, exhausted face. Bruises were already forming under his eyes. Sherlock, on the other hand, somehow never seemed to have eye bags, but was raking his hands through his messy, curled hair in frustration.

The teen covered her mouth while she yawned and put her foot down. "Alright, that's it," she declared. Or, at least, she tried to declare, but she doubted it held enough weight to really be classified as a declaration. "If no one else is going to be responsible, I will. Inspector, go home," she urged. "Sleep for a few hours. We've been working all night and all morning. We're going to run ourselves into the ground if we don't rest."

Dimmock looked at the box crate that he was almost through. She could see him thinking, just a little longer, I can finish this, and her glare at him sharpened, daring him to just try. He didn't need to look at her to make the smarter decision, his fatigue winning out over his flagging motivation. "I suppose you might be right," he relented, dropping his hands into his lap where he sat on the ground. "You'll call if you find it, won't you?" He stood up, stretched awkwardly with a leg half-asleep, and collected his coat.

"Got it," Em confirmed mindlessly. She didn't have too much faith in the Yard with a case they had already dismissed, but no one without a little bit of follow-through would spend as long as they all had looking at books, so Dimmock at least deserved a voicemail.

The man went on to get his shoes from where he had kicked them off by the door. He slipped his feet into the loafers and fixed the collar of his blazer so that it laid flat. "Good afternoon, Mr. Holmes," he said across the room to Sherlock.

Sherlock didn't reply. Emili could've predicted that, but Dimmock still looked a little disgruntled. She saw him to the door and closed it after he left, politely waving goodbye.

Then she turned around and picked her way through the books, walking in a not-quite-straight path towards the hearth. Sherlock was turned so his right side was facing the fireplace. She brought her hand up and laid it over the cover of the book he had just picked up and said, with all the authority she could possibly feign, "Sherlock, it's time to take a nap."

"Don't be stupid, Emili," Sherlock responded flippantly, merely moving the book out from under her hand and resuming his pace. "It doesn't suit you."

Of course no one could really tell Sherlock Holmes what to do, but Emili liked to think that he had some regard for her opinions. But not when they conflict with his, she sighed. She couldn't decide if she was going to be bothered that he was acting unreasonable or let it go because he had given her what she thought was as close to a compliment as Sherlock would ever get.

"There's much more work to be done," he continued calmly, sorting the two books and taking another small handful. "If you're tired, you can kip on the couch."

Emili crossed her arms, put her hip out, and waited. After a second of her dull stare, Sherlock lifted his head and looked around the apartment, finally realizing how littered it was. The couch had long since been turned into another makeshift table, and there wasn't enough room for anyone to sit, much less take a nap.

Sherlock looked back away from the room and amended himself. "Alright, on my bed, then."

"I have my own perfectly good bedroom in my apartment," she exasperatedly reminded him, "Which is literally a thirty-second walk away."

"There's not any time to waste. You won't hear me if I call," he accused, which was probably true unless he added screechy, torturous noises on his violin into the mix.

She tapped her foot, trying to think of a way to argue. In truth, the idea of the bedroom ten feet away was incredibly attractive. Her legs cried at the prospect of handling a staircase, and the closer the proximity, the better. In addition to that, Emili highly doubted Sherlock's bed would be dirty and unmade, given how infrequently he used it. He only got sloppy and messy when he was in his moods, and he'd been pleasant enough (by his standards) for almost a week.

"Aren't you going to sleep?" She questioned finally, not wanting to take his bed if he wasn't going to have anything to lay down on.

"I slept just last Friday night," he replied to her, eyes still focused on his tons of books.

She did the quick calculating in her head. All the irregular activities and meals had thrown her internal clock a bit, but they had found Soo Lin very early on Saturday morning, and the next night was the one they'd just spent pouring over dirty books for so long that Emili was starting to think the impossible had happened and she'd learned to detest books.

"Sherlock," she slowly stated, "It's Sunday."

"I frequently go for days without sleeping," he reminded unnecessarily, and added in an airy, unbothered tone, "It bothers John as well."

She uncrossed her arms but kept her weight centered on one leg. She pushed her hands into her pockets and narrowed her eyes at him. Forcing her tone to go casual, she shared an interesting fact she'd read after he'd more or less admitted to being a former heroin junkie. "You know, a study showed that sleep deprivation could be linked to increased drug cravings."

"A study conducted by the Mclean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, funded by the NIH and NIDA." Sherlock agreed promptly, somehow able to tell exactly which study she was referring to. She shifted her weight to stand normally, chagrined. Nothing was ever able to throw him. "It rather figures you would know a study conducted by the Americans."

She exhaled deeply. Sherlock went through spells where he was determined to stay clean, and then brief periods where he got cravings and was catty, slobby, and generally acted like he was in withdrawal. Those were usually when he was super bored – stress and intrigue kept his brain too occupied for him to long for a hit. Emili wondered sometimes whether she should really be exposed to that sometimes unpredictable behavior, but chose to think about something else before she got too uneasy.

Anyway, it surprised her that he was so nonchalant when he had so much riding on his sobriety. The Holmes' parents had cut Sherlock off because he was using their money to afford contraband, which was why a member of a relatively wealthy family had to share an apartment. Additionally, after an overdose scare, Mycroft had started paying more attention to Sherlock and his safety, which she was sure had to make Sherlock's skin itch in all the wrong ways. None of that even mentioned that, although drugs could make someone feel alive, if he used them too much, he stood a very high chance of losing his most valued asset – his brain.

"The sheets are clean." Sherlock pointedly told her after almost a minute of her just standing there, exhaustedly arguing with herself over whether to argue with him, go upstairs, or just flop down on the floor and pass out.

Sleeping in his bed isn't nearly as much as he's asked in the past, her sleepy brain pointed out to her. She sighed and conceded, taking off her sweater, putting it up on the rack by the door, and then went to Sherlock's room. The door was left unlocked.

She'd been in his room to get things for his lazy highness before, and it hadn't changed hardly at all. A cheap, cream-colored dresser held underthings, socks, robes, belts, et cetera, while the rest of his clothes hung in the wall closet. Scarves were the exception – there were a few, of varied colors and thicknesses, on an adhesive tack. The wallpaper matched the rest of the building, but Sherlock had taken thumbtacks to it to post up clippings and photos that interested him, and then left them there when he lost interest until he had something else to pin up. He had a desk that was practically unused, his phone charger was on top of the bedside table, and his sheets, though made and clean as promised, were blank and uninteresting.

He certainly worked with a minimalist style, she mused, and then dismissed the thought as stupid. Sherlock wasn't into style at all, and she was being stupid if she thought otherwise. He just didn't like sentiment, so he didn't keep what he didn't have a use for.

Em toed off her shoes beside his bed and pulled the blankets down. She took off her top layer to sleep in her camisole and jeans, getting in under the sheets. They smelled just a little bit like him, but more so like the laundry detergent. Right away, she was pleasantly surprised by how comfortable she was and failed to keep her eyes open.