When the door was safely closed behind them, Sherlock spoke.

"I wasn't in any danger. He offered to show me his piranha tank. You know I've always wanted to see one. And it was a way to gather information. I was helping you."

"And how exactly was the cocaine helping me?"

"I..."

Mycroft held up a hand, looking at the ceiling and they both stopped talking as someone walked heavily above them. Then Mycroft went to the bedside and turned on the radio. A woman's voice blared out a song in Spanish.

Mycroft walked closer to Sherlock then, and lowered his voice. "I told you to keep out of trouble. Why on Earth did you go off with some strange man to ..."

"He was important! He had been a general. He knew things. I thought that I could get something from him."

"Oh, you thought you'd get something from him? Like syphilis perhaps?"

"Could you possibly be more crude?"

"I think that I'm showing remarkable restraint considering the fact that you are high! Why now when you've been clean for months?"

"He offered me cocaine. I didn't want to blow our cover, and it's not like I haven't had it before. I know how much I can handle."

Mycroft barked out a laugh "You know how much you can handle? Do you know how naive you sound? How could you possibly know?"

"As you so graciously reminded me, I have done cocaine before."

"With those imbeciles from your old school back in England."

"It counts!"

"Let me enlighten you about some basic economics. England is a long way away from here."

"I noticed."

"Did you? Then you should have noticed that it takes several hops, several different stops to reach the city even when one has a valid reason to go there. The route becomes much more circuitous, and passes through many more hands if one one has illegal cargo, such as cocaine. And each person has the ability, has the very strong incentive, in fact, to cut that cocaine with other substances to make it less pure. So every one takes a little bit out, puts in something like flour or powdered milk to make it weigh the same while keeping the good stuff for themselves, so by the time it gets down to someone like your friends at school, it's watered down so much it has only a fraction of the effect.

But here, we are much closer to the source of production. Columbia is just across the border, and the general is placed highly enough that he can afford quality. You may have thought that you were only taking a sniff, but you are still under the influence. You still haven't recovered. He would have given you more, and you would have taken it, thinking that you could handle it, but there was nothing in that room that you were prepared to handle."

"What do you mean by that?"

"If you don't understand, then you are too young to be in that situation in the first place."

"You brought me on this trip because you needed a partner, but you treat me like a child. I am not a child."

"Then why are you acting like one? Getting yourself drugged and locked in a room with a man who was seconds away from molesting you…."

"We were just talking."

"Just talking? He had his hand under your clothes."

"It's just sex, Mycroft. I do know how these things go."

"Do you? What can you possibly know about sex?"

"I'm seventeen, not seven. I wouldn't have let him do anything that I didn't want to do."

"Did you see the size of him? You couldn't have stopped him from doing whatever he wanted to do with you."

"I've studied judo."

"And he's killed people. It doesn't compare."

"I could have handled him. And even if we did have sex, what would that matter? I understand how it works, and I'm old enough to..."

"You're old enough to get yourself into a dangerous situation that you don't fully understand."

"I know how to fight. I could have stopped him."

"While you're high? And what if he pulled a weapon, a knife, or a gun. He's sure to have one. He probably keeps one in reach at all times. Then what would you have done."

"I don't understand you, Mycroft. You act as if I'm some...damsel in distress. If sex were the only way out of that situation. I would have just given it to him. It's just a little casual sex."

"Have you had sex before, Sherlock?"

"No, but..."

"Then you don't understand. It's not like a hand shake. It's intimate...needlessly intimate, and although some people can do it as casually, you and I cannot. Sex isn't for people like us, Sherlock. Sex is tied to emotions, hormones, instincts. It takes away from conscious thought and leads us to something much messier. It isn't something that should be casually given away to just anyone. In my measured opinion, it isn't something that we should engage in at all."

"It went fine for our parents?"

"Do you really think so? How many more books and papers do you think that mother might have written if she had not had the two of us? Why does she always encourage me to think of my career first. Because she knows her marriage was a mistake, yet even she could not avoid the consequences of it."

"You don't believe that," Sherlock said. "You can't possibly believe that Mummy regrets having us. She loves Father."

Mycroft choked out another laugh. "You're a romantic, Sherlock. You always have been. You believe that pirates had fun, and that people can find true love. Despite your sullen appearance, you have an optimistic heart. A heart that would have been damaged had that man abused you tonight. Yet you went with him willingly. Tell me that you won't ever do anything like that ever again."

"Do what? Do you want me seek your approval anytime that I plan to have sex? Don't be absurd! You can't govern my entire existence."

"You take incredible risks, Sherlock. If you had been hurt..." An image came to Mycroft of Sherlock's bloodied body in the rocks below the bridge, waves washing over him. Mycroft's face turned pale.

"I don't need your interference in my life, Mycroft. You assume too much responsibility for my actions as it is. I don't want your meddling in my affairs. I don't need you to worry about me."

"Do you think that I like worrying about you? I walked out of a possibly favorable situation because of you. Sr. Carillo had invited me to lunch. He was going to tell me all about his plans, but I've run out in the middle of the night without even taking my things? What can he possibly think, but that his revelations have shocked me. Perhaps he even believes that I might inform the authorities of his plans."

Sherlock turned to him, face filled with concern. "Go back, then," he said. "He may not have noticed your absence yet. You can leave me here, take a taxi."

"How do I know that you'll stay here? You could go somewhere else. Get another hit..."

"Trust me. I won't leave this room."

"I trusted you to stay out of trouble."

"I trusted you to be sane!"

"Lower your voice, Sherlock."

"Don't do that to me. Don't pretend like you're the reasonable one. You carried me out, Mycroft, CARRIED ME OUT of that place, throwing me over your shoulder like a cave man!"

"Someone has to prevent you from destroying yourself."

"Listen to yourself! You have a mission to accomplish. Leave me here. I promise, I won't leave this room."

"And why do you think that I should trust your promises? You promised me once that there would always be a list, but I looked around that room, and I didn't see any piece of paper..."

"Is that what's wrong? Is that why you're acting this way, because you think I lied to you?"

"Haven't you?"

"No! I haven't."

"Then where's the list?"

"I didn't have a pen."

"Feeble excuse."

"So I wrote it on my skin." Sherlock pulled open his shirt and slid it down his arm. Drawn on his left shoulder in black eyeliner pencil was the word 'Cocaine'. Mycroft grabbed his arm and touched the word with one finger. Then he let Sherlock go, covering his eyes with one hand before droppng down to sit on the edge of the bed. "I wouldn't forget to do something that important," Sherlock said. "I made you a promise, and you should know that I don't take vows lightly."

Mycroft let out a shaky breath. Then he dropped his hand to his lap. Sherlock sat on the bed beside him. "I'm sorry, Mycroft. I know this mission was important to you. I didn't mean to ruin it. You can go back if you want to. I promise to do whatever you say."

Mycroft turned his head and looked at his brother. Their eyes were almost level. He lifted one cheek in a feeble attempt at a smile. "No need to worry. I have got all that I need to complete this assignment already. Take a shower and go to bed. We'll be leaving before sunrise."

Sherlock rose to his feet then and went into the bathroom. Mycroft turned off the radio. Not like it had mattered. Everyone must have heard them fighting. They'd probably woken people from sleep. Mycroft laughed. He had always prided himself as a person who was cool in the face of danger, but when that danger involved his brother, cool was the last word that could be used to describe him.

Love. That's what Juan Carillo had called it. He said that it was obvious to anyone when they danced. Mycroft didn't call that emotion love. He called it caring. Sometimes he called it weakness. And the fewer people who knew about his weaknesses the better.

Mycroft folded his hands and looked up into the empty room saying, "Para el futuro, para destino, nunca sentiré amor."

"Is that poetry?" Sherlock asked coming out of the bathroom in his robe with a towel draped over his shoulders. "I didn't know that you indulged. I thought I was supposed to be the romantic?"

"Just remembering a poem I read once."

"Oh? Who by?"

"Federico Garcia Lorca."

"Hmm. I don't know him."

"That school you attend is pitiful. Why don't you hurry and graduate so that you can go to Oxford and get a real education."

"Oxford? I'd prefer Cambridge. I like their chemistry program."

"That's enough talking for tonight. We don't want to get into another fight. I'm exhausted."

Sherlock nodded, and they dressed for bed in silence. Mycroft set the alarm and climbed beneath the sheets, facing away from Sherlock so that he couldn't see him in the dim light from the window. He didn't want Sherlock to see his face and guess that he had lied.

That line was not from a poem. It was a phrase that he himself had created, a thought that filled his mind virtually every evening when he returned home to his barren and empty flat. It was only their location that had made him say it this time in Spanish.

"For my future, for my destiny, I will never feel love."

He closed his eyes, and quickly fell asleep.