Rain was something of a comfort to Sherlock- the sound and feel of it quieted him in a way that he often despised. However, he preferred rain to sun, as it was less likely to give him a headache even if it made the world smell earthy and dirty.
Right now, the pitterpatter on the glass door just to his left made him impatient and a little angry.
Normal people didn't have to wait for a police escort out of jail.
Sherlock had been deemed innocent, why was he waiting for whatever idiot the Met could scrounge up to pick him up?
Though, to be honest, he'd made so many enemies there he wouldn't be surprised if there were volunteers. Pick up Sherlock Holmes from prison and drive him back home. It was twenty minutes from here to there in the best of conditions, which it most certainly was not given the season, time of day and aforementioned weather conditions. He was looking at something more like forty five.
Forty five minutes in which they would doubtlessly tell him how much he'd cost the yard.
How they'd always thought he was a fraud.
How he might have gotten away on some weak charge of insufficient evidence, but the world still knew he was the one that committed those crimes.
I believe in Richard Brook.
Those were the words that were spraypainted on the outer walls of a London pharmacy, shown to the rest of the London on the news just last night;
Inexpert strokes, starting with a shaky, sketchy R and ending with quick, hurried letters near the end.
Poor choice of colour, if one wanted the message to really stand out. Dark Green, on a dark grey brick.
Foolish choice of geography. Irrelevant. Baker street would have been a much more populated (and efficient) choice.
This person was working alone, separate of Moriarty.
It wasn't a job, it was an opinion.
The rest of the world hated him. Even the security they were going to assign him was going to hate him.
Unless it was Mycroft.
Oh, God, I hope not.
He'd been waiting for forty minutes, watching the soles of his shoes boredly instead of paying attention to the scores of reporters waiting for something to happen, waiting for him to come out so they could ask him questions that he obviously wasn't going to answer.
He couldn't help but notice, however, when the cameramen and interrogators perked up, turned on their recorders, umbrellas rustling-
He didn't have to see or hear it to know that the car had pulled up.
Who would it be? There would be minimal (if any) response if it was a lower officer. A little more for a more heavily-televised member of the yard- more still for one who testified against Sherlock. If the officer in chief himself came to pick him up, there'd be thousands of little camera clicks and questions.
A car door opened and slammed with a familiar amount of time and pressure separating the two moments in time.
An uproar of activity.
The door buzzed, given the approval to open.
Sherlock's head popped up, surprised-
Greg Lestrade pushed himself in through the door, looking wet, angry and rather dishevelled.
He took in a few breaths to collect himself, finally addressing Sherlock-
"Get your damn coat on. I can't hold them back much longer."
He took one look at the chaos separated from them by a single glass door.
"Fuck, I never could. Just- Get in the car before anyone asks you anything."
Which proved to be impossible. The moment the door was forced open, questions flew across the way, microphones shoved in his face, camera flashes blasting lights in his eyes-
"Mr. Holmes, how did you do it?"
"Mr. Holmes, would you care to make a comment on the suspicious disappearance of Richard Brook?"
"There were crimes you pled guilty to- how did you get off with no jail time?"
"What happened to John Watson?"
In response, Greg pulled him into the car by the arm and shut the door behind them, beckoning the driver to pull away as fast as the crowd would let them.
"Keep your head down, then they won't get pictures. They can't run a story in the headlines without pictures."
"If I remember correctly, I was the one who pointed that out to you, Lestrade,"
But for once, he did what he was told.
They drove in silence, Lestrade drumming his fingers in uneven intervals against the knees of his trousers. Sherlock tolerated it for just under one minute before speaking up-
"For a guitarist, you have terrible rhythm."
He wasn't surprised when Lestrade didn't seem to be startled by the deduction. Instead, he laughed-
"I haven't played since I was twenty four. What, do I still have the remnants of a callous on my left hand?"
"No, your abhorrent taste in music, range of T-Shirts and your ability to assume a leadership role in the Met even as a late hire give you away."
"That I played the guitar?"
"That you fronted a rock band in your early twenties."
"Oh, really."
"It's quite simple, really. You have cassettes- really, cassettes, in this day and age- on the shelves of your office. All lined up, clean, barely a speck of dust. Save for the untouched CDs of much newer artists that your colleagues, friends, family gave to you because they thought you'd like it, it's sort of a similar genre, but it's not the same as the real stuff, is it? You-"
Lestrade held up a hand.
"Drums, Sherlock."
Sherlock took the new information in stride, slipping past his previous hypotheses as if he'd never made them.
"Well, then, that would explain the hearing loss."
"You were wrong."
For a second, Sherlock's lips quipped up-
"Won't happen again."
And then, his face fell. He grew silent.
Lestrade continued tapping his fingers on his knees, breaking the emptiness only to direct the taxi driver.
"You're not taking me back home."
"No, I'm not, am I."
Taking the lack of given information as a challenge, Sherlock slouched in his seat, staring out the window.
"No, I suppose you're not."
They drove in near silence, broken only by the ambience of the car, the driving-noises and the bustle outside. Then,
"How did you get out of those charges you plead guilty for? Resisting arrest isn't exactly a misdemeanour-"
Sherlock scowled deep from his throat, rolling his eyes hard enough for it to actually hurt.
"Mycroft. Must have been."
"Well, that was very-"
"Don't."
"- Nice of him."
They stared at each other for a long time, one pair of eyes glaring, the other amused but wary, looking away to point the driver down another street.
It took almost five seconds before Sherlock groaned, resting his forehead on the cold, rainy window.
"You're taking me for a drink."
"What, you couldn't tell by the colour of my shoes?"
"Take me home."
"Sherlock-"
Sherlock leaned towards the front of the car, trying to shout a new set of coordinates to the driver as Lestrade neutralised him.
"Sherlock-"
He grabbed the taller man by the wrists as they stopped for a light, keeping him from slipping out of the car.
"For God's sake, Sherlock-"
Practically pushed him out of the cab when they'd found their destination, tipped the driver an extra pound for the trouble (what, he wasn't made out of money, especially now)-
"You're thirty six years old, Sherlock Holmes-"
Corralled him into the pub and down at a table in the corner, put a pint in his hands.
They sat in silence, one pair of hands spinning his glass in the ring of condensation, the other sitting clasped on the table.
One man waiting to speak, the other waiting to leave.
In the background, the radio was playing some American rock song from the nineties.
"So."
Sherlock looked up at the offending syllable, and the man who emitted it.
Lestrade held up his drink, offering something that Sherlock neither wanted nor was quite comfortable in giving.
"A toast."
He waited, but not passively- Greg's waiting for Sherlock entailed a post-clause of or else.
Sherlock lifted his own drink, stopping short of the traditional clink of glass.
"What are we toasting to?"
Greg chose his words carefully.
"Your innocence- well deserved."
Sherlock nodded, went to bring their glasses together- Greg retreated only slightly, enough to make it known that he was far from finished.
And-
Sherlock knew what was coming.
And-
The and was in his eyes, in his glass, on the tip of his tongue.
There must have been something as well in Sherlock's eyes, glass, tongue, because Lestrade chose instead to bring their glasses back together, the sounding of glass standing in for the name unsaid.
One man gave the toast a delicate, chaste sip, nearly enough to coat his top lip, before setting the pint glass back on its coaster.
One man offered half of the beer to it, in memory of an absent friend and how he would have wanted it.
They sat in silence once more. A Beatles song followed, tinny and too-soft for the din of the pub, even in the afternoon.
And finally-
"There is- There is one more thing."
Of course there was. Sherlock clasped his hands on the table again, leaving his drink untouched.
Greg, beer almost finished, fiddled with the water droplets on his glass.
After a long, uneasy silence, Sherlock continued, impatient.
After a beat, Lestrade got himself back on track.
"I can't- I have no say- I had no say-"
Lestrade stopped. He sighed.
"You're not allowed on crime scenes anymore. You're barred, completely, from them. In any way, shape or form. I mean-"
"-It was completely expected, I don't know why you bother appearing surprised by the decision-"
"Because it was the wrong one! You've been gone for one month and we're already up to our-"
He'd said too much already. He was on such thin ice.
"I just wanted to be the one to tell you. I think the original plan was a phone call. That seemed a little-"
Cruel. A heartless action towards the heartless man.
Not so. Greg knew better.
"Impersonal. After all you've done for-."
For the city.
For the force.
For everyone.
"- For me, god dammit. I never would have made it to DI."
"Yes, you would have."
"Then I never would have made it that quickly."
He couldn't argue with that.
"I just- I wanted- I needed to make sure they didn't just send you a formal letter or something. I think it's shit, but I guess it makes sense. I wouldn't want you on my crime scenes, either, if I didn't already know what you do with that… Mind of yours."
An image swam up in Greg's mind, of a young, thin man in his twenties; gaunt and sallow, wrapped in an expensive coat that had seen many distant better days. The observations that spilled out of his mouth even as he leaned on Greg's squad car, half for support, half as a pair of hand cuffs were snapped onto his skeletal wrists.
"They've seen what I do just as well as you have. They are acting not out of observation but a negative emotional response."
"Well, you don't make it very difficult, now, do you?"
Sherlock stayed silent. It was the sort of silent that worried Greg. He himself was a very vocal person- if something needed to be said, he'd say it, even if it wasn't eloquent or particularly kind- but Sherlock had so many flavours of silence to keep track of. He'd gotten rather okay at it since he'd gotten to know the other man- when the silence meant content, when it meant perturbed, when it meant I'm about four minutes away from dropping everything and finding a fix.
He wasn't as good as John was. How he'd come to crack the code Sherlock left in the lack of his words, in a little over a year.
He wasn't as good as John ad been.
It wasn't a conversation he wanted to have- Greg wasn't any better at loss than Sherlock was, or seemed to be. Their mourning processes were different, but the struggle was the same.
"I- Listen. There's something else."
He didn't want to have this talk. Least of all with Sherlock, the machine.
It didn't seem as if the machine wanted to have the talk, either. He reached behind himself for his coat.
"No- Sherlock, stay."
And he did stay, for a fraction of a moment- less than a handful of seconds in which their eyes met, and Sherlock learned what he needed of the future of the conversation they were never going to have.
"I have very little interest in what you're about to say, Detective Inspector, if what I think you are going to say is correct. I dare say it is, and so-"
"- Sherlock, you just-"
"- I'm tired and I haven't been home in a month, I will accept social calls in my own time-"
"- You've just been through-"
"- A very traumatising experience, yes, I have, wrongful imprisonment is no laughing matter-"
"- I'm talking about-"
Greg scowled into his hand- he wasn't going to make this easy. Why the hell would he make this easy?
"John-"
And he instantly regretted it. The entire room iced over at the mention of the name.
The name in the eyes, in the glasses, on the tips of the tongues of both of the men, spilled out and made profane.
Arctic eyes stared wide at him for a long moment before standing gracefully, coat coming with him as he wound that scarf around his neck.
"Good afternoon, Constable."
Greg waited until Sherlock was well out of the pub before burying his face properly in the coarse palms of his hands, reaching over to finish the beer he'd bought for the other man.