Friend

Just as he had before, Mycroft left right at 10:00 a.m. Sherlock did not appear for many minutes, and I had begun to worry that something had happened to the man I had accompanied the previous night. Finally, at 10:45, he pushed through the door of the café and staggered inside. I was glad business was slow enough that I had no other customers.

"Quadruple espresso, John," he said.

"Only if we talk while you drink it," I said sharply, wanting to make an impression on his preoccupied mind.

"I could—go somewhere else and get a coffee," he said, his wild gaze lighting on everything and nothing.

"You could," I answered, "but you picked me, and you want to hear what I have to say." I had begun making the drink as soon as he walked up to the building, and by now, I was finished. I held it close.

"You've spoken to Mycroft," he said, shaking his unruly hair and looking at me with red-rimmed, disappointed eyes.

"You've both spoken to me," I said evenly, "and now I want to do the talking." Admitting defeat, Sherlock followed me to a table. I knew I couldn't physically match him if he decided to bolt once he had the coffee, but I didn't think he would.

I was right. He started to drink as soon as the espresso was in his hand, but he didn't attempt to get up. "Listen," I said. "I know what you do, at least something about it. For some reason, you picked me to help you last night. I've never seen anything like that before. What I have seen, Sherlock, is a lot of people with your other habit, the one that makes you come in here wild-eyed and raving every morning. I know what happens to those people. They die."

"I don't care, John," he said. "Living is boring."

I was inordinately glad he'd chosen to use my name. "But what if it wasn't? What if you could go to crime scenes without everybody looking at you like a junkie? What if—we did that all the time?"

I'm not one for big speeches, but like I said before, I have a problem with caring to much. If I'm honest, it wasn't entirely selfless, either. I had loved the night before, and the thought of being a detective—or at least some kind of assistant to a detective—had a certain amount of charm, certainly more than living out my days as the Speedy's barista.

Sherlock was a little bit calmer now that he had espresso in him, and he looked up from his cup and stared me full in the face. "You would do that, John Watson?" Then, after a moment, a statement instead of a question. "You would do that, John Watson."

"There are two things I want out of this," I answered. "Number one, you do whatever it is your brother has lined up for you to get clean."

"Rehab," he practically spat. "Boring."

"Not if I visit you," I answered, "and bring you copies of all the papers and talk over cases with you."

"Still boring," he said.

"But worth it, if you want to have a brain in three years," I retorted. Like I said, I'm direct.

"What is your other condition?" he asked.

"That you talk to your brother before you go," I said.

"I will if you will," he said, almost smiling for the first time since I'd met him.

"What?" I asked.

"I'll meet Mycroft if you agree to contact your brother Harry, the drunk one," he said.

"Oh," I answered, my own smile filling my face. "Harry's my sister, but you've got the rest of it right. I—haven't talked to her for a while."

We sat silent for a short time. "Ok," I said. "You win. If you come here for breakfast with your brother tomorrow, I'll phone my sister."

"Agreed," he said, but I could see fear in his eyes at both things he'd promised to undertake. I didn't envy him. I've seen many people in the throes of withdrawal.