AN: For anyone interested, the Cake of Queen and Country mentioned in this chapter actually exists. It was my own 21st birthday cake back in October, which my flatmate lovingly made for me, amateur piping, sugar sprinkles and all. It was delicious.

As soon as the Franklins' front door shut behind them, Sherlock took a firm hold on John's upper arm and his head dropped heavily onto his doctor's uninjured shoulder. John stood, resolute as a sentinel, and waited for him to gasp and shudder through the worst of the migraine, feeling the rush of Sherlock's warm breath even through the reinforced shoulder of his jacket. True to form, it was less than a minute before he managed to collect himself, pushing his dishevelled bangs back from his slightly clammy forehead and straightening up as though the whole episode had never happened.

"We need to go back to the flat," John decided, leaving no room for argument, but careful not to imply condescension by saying 'you need to go back to the flat.'

"Tesco first," he retaliated, "we'll get a taxi."

"What the bloody hell for?"

"Cake mix."

"What? Cake, seriously? I thought you were being sarcastic. You actually do need to bake a cake?" John's whole face screwed up with confusion, the reason for Sherlock's sudden culinary urge was too far out of his reach for him to even begin speculating.

Sherlock, with covert nonchalance, looped his arm around John's elbow and nudged him just had enough to make him start walking. He was careful to lean only as much as he needed to. "It's Mycroft's birthday." He explained brightly, just before a sly grin crept across his face. "And he's on a diet."

John was too appalled to even be embarrassed by the fact that he was walking arm-in-arm with his flatmate. "I have never met anyone with their priorities so out of order." He sighed. He was letting Sherlock have his way again, he knew it, but he was spread too thin to let it bother him.

"You got the German chocolate icing?"

"Yes, yes, I got exactly what you told me," John grumbled, dragging a crinkly plastic Tesco bag with him as he climbed back into the cab. "Including, against my better judgment…sugar sprinkles."

"If you're going to play at sabotage," Sherlock announced, "you have to fuss over details."

"Is this really necessary?" John demanded as the cab headed, finally, toward Baker Street. "You're putting a case on hold, putting your own health in jeopardy, just to ruin Mycroft's diet out of spite?"

"Worth it."

"You're impossible."

"Any further outbursts, doctor?"

"Nope. That'll do for now, I suppose."

Sherlock tried very stoically to make the distance from the curb side to the second-story flat with his usual vigour, but his spinning head had him leaning on the wall for support by the time he was halfway up the stairs.

"You need painkillers," John decided, overtaking him and walking backwards to continue his scolding "painkillers and a good night's sleep."

"Isn't that how I got this way in the first place?" He teased.

John scowled. "Come on then, let's get this cake bollocks over with so we can get on with our lives." He gripped Sherlock's upper arm and guided him up the stairs, releasing him finally to drop onto a stool next to the kitchen table before scurrying off to plunder his considerable stock of pharmaceuticals.

Sherlock searched for a spot to set his elbows, but hardly an inch of the flat surface was not canvassed with beakers, dishes, graduated cylinders, papers, tools, microscopes. He propped his foot up on the seat and rested his head on his knee instead. He was so warm in his coat and so relieved to be back in his flat that his ailing brain allowed him a rare moment of silence. He was practically asleep by the time John returned, but he was startled back to consciousness by the hiss of the tap coming on. He had determinedly recomposed himself by the time John presented him with a glass of water and three different pills.

"What's this?"

"Acetaminophen, ibuprofen, and caffeine." It was melatonin, but Sherlock didn't need to know that, and with the right motivation he could lie convincingly. Sherlock plucked the tablets distastefully from John's palm and swallowed them in one go, grimacing childishly as he chased them with the water. "And now I'm going to make you a ham sandwich, because otherwise you'll be whining about a stomach-ache in ten minutes."

"Clever trick, doctor," he conceded, dropping his forehead back to his knee, "getting me medicated and fed in one go. Commendable."

"Yeah, well, you fell for it." John bustled about, fetching bread and mayonnaise and anything else in the sparsely stocked kitchen he could use to add calories to his rare opportunity to feed the temporarily submissive consulting detective.

Sherlock reached languidly for the shopping bag that John had dropped near his feet and retrieved the box of cake mix. Instructions: Eggs, water, vegetable oil. Luckily this was going to take no more than five minutes to blend, although he was sure that the Union Jack he was planning to pipe onto the top would turn out a little shaky. Of course, he could have just left it chocolate and Mycroft still would have eaten it, addiction was a family matter, but two personal jabs at once? Queen, country, and cake? Too good an opportunity to pass up.

"Preheat the oven please, John." There was an exasperated sigh and the oven clicked on. "Also, get a mixing bowl."

"We haven't got one, you've put a dog's stomach in it so you could store in the fridge, and even if you clean it out I am absolutely never putting food in it again." He came around the table and went through the same gamut of obstacles that Sherlock's elbows had faced as he looked for a spot to set the plate with the sandwich. Eventually, frustrated, he confiscated two beakers and relocated them to the counter to make room. "Eat that, or I will personally ensure that Mycroft's diet remains on track."

Sherlock grumbled incomprehensibly and waved his hand in a gesture that could have meant either "I'd like to see you try" or "you win, go away." John dug in the cabinets for a large saucepan – the bowl was a lost cause – and snatched the shopping bag from the floor and the cake mix from Sherlock's hand. "Eat the food." He repeated, pointing at the plate and giving him a glare that could have killed a lesser human being.

Sherlock took a few unenthused bites, but found each movement harder and harder. He worried for a moment that he was developing some sort of cognitive problem, that perhaps the overdose had done more permanent damage than he had realised, but he noticed the way John kept glancing at him as he mixed the cake batter.

"Ah, very good," he smiled weakly, "you gave me a sleeping pill, and now that I'm eating it's metabolising more quickly." He nodded knowingly. "Don't expect to get one over on me so easily when I'm uncompromised, John, I am still considerably cleverer than you."

"Yeah, keep rubbing it in, I still won this round."

"I let you win." His voice was slurring already.

He was swiftly losing consciousness, but still aware enough to feel John – firmly but not roughly - peeling off his coat, then his suit jacket, and pushing on his back to steer him toward the sofa. He allowed himself to be manhandled into a sitting position, then lay back voluntarily, deciding that he was far too dizzy to protest with any level of dignity. He giggled slightly as he realised that John was now removing his shoes for him, but was too far gone even to reprimand his caretaker for not being properly respectful of his very expensive footwear.

"John?" He grumbled in a last bid for rational thought.

"Yes?" He was hesitant, not sure if he was in for an outpouring of gratitude or more snide criticism.

"I am entrusting you with The Cake of Queen and Country. Don't disappoint me."

John snorted. There was absolutely no chance in hell that he would be spending the remainder of this very long and trying day baking, decorating, and delivering a cake for the sole purpose of irritating his genius flatmate's admittedly rather corpulent brother. But wouldn't that have been a hell of a story?

Less than two hours later, Dr. John H. Watson MD, formerly of the British Army and with both the medals and scars to show for it, found himself seated in the very posh but rather uncomfortable office of Mycroft Holmes. On his left knee was balanced a chocolate sheet cake, coated in cellophane and adorned with a clearly amateur rendition in coloured icing of the British flag. It glinted in the yellowish lamplight with white sugar sprinkles.

Mycroft had been notified of Johns arrival by his lovely – very lovely, if a bit humourless – assistant, but he seemed to be taking his sweet time responding. This gave John more than long enough contemplate his life's decisions up to this point and attempt to identify the exact, momentary lapse in judgment that had led him to where he was now. He chewed the inside of his cheek for what must have been the thousandth time this afternoon and glared at the cake, as though this were somehow entirely its fault.

"Afternoon, Doctor Watson." He had been so cross with the cake that he had hardly noticed Mycroft enter the room behind him. The elder Holmes brother rounded the chair, his face buried in a file, but he quickly stopped and did an appropriately understated double-take when he saw the confectionary offering that John was holding. His dark eyes jumped from the cake to John's face and back several times before he finally turned fully about and leaned back against his desk.

"Erm, Sherlock asked me to bring you –"

"So he's relapsed." Mycroft's tone was dire, but characteristically matter-of-fact, and his jaw was set in a way that betrayed his anxiety.

John sighed. He was constantly out of his depth with either of these two. Was cake some sort of secret Holmesian cry for help, or could Mycroft just read him that well? "I...I'm not sure relapsed is the right word…" he struggled. He didn't want to have to relive the whole story. In his exhaustion he wasn't sure how he would hold up emotionally.

"Whatever semantics you choose to employ, I know my brother well enough to realise that he would never pass up an opportunity to humiliate me in person." Mycroft dropped the file onto his desk and crossed his arms over his chest. "I honestly don't know how he convinced you to do his dirty work, but his absence implies that he is one of three things: dead, effectively comatose, or deeply ashamed of his current state of being. Knowing his history, and seeing that he was clearly able to communicate to you his little –" he peered repugnantly at the Union Jack cake " – tradition, I think it's reasonable to assume that he is neither dead nor comatose. That leaves one possibility." He raised an eyebrow and lowered his chin and John dropped his gaze, not sure how to carry the conversation.

"Would you like a piece of cake, Doctor Watson?"

He had never needed a piece of cake so badly in his life.