A/N: So, I just gave away the plot in a brief conversation between the Baker Street duo? I'm a rubbish writer, I must say. -csf

6.

Greg Lestrade is eyeing John Watson with unconcealed grudge; the doctor cannot really blame him. John said he was sorry, of course, and the inspector tends to believe that John is only this reckless when the sobering influence of his best friend is removed from his life. Still, Greg Lestrade has chosen the fatherly approach with the two younger men, showing disappointment in them, but still supporting them, as if they were wayward teens. He suspects this just enables them further, but he cannot seem to back away, particularly not now, when he can see John is clearly out of his depth and Sherlock is out of his mind with worry for his doctor.

If he didn't already suspect so, seeing Sherlock Holmes so domesticated, preparing the tea that he's about to offer John, is a clear tell of how much things have turned around. Not long ago, it was only John who had the empathy displays. It shows how much Sherlock has learnt to exteriorise with his friend's influence.

John, sat at the corner of the sofa, mindlessly looking at the fire crackling on the hearth, indulgently takes the gently offered cup of tea and sips it... Only to spit it out immediately, spraying the rug and fireplace.

'What the heck? Are you trying to poison me?' he shouts back, immediately on edge.

Greg swoops in to smooth the situation – clearly the genius detective cannot produce something as simple as a cup of tea – but Sherlock stops him abruptly with a demanding hand up.

As if he wants John to release the vitriol on him.

Wait, does the genius know how to make a bad cup of tea on purpose? Did he just set up John? Is he volunteering as bait for an adjourned Watson temper explosion in the hope of a controlled detonation?

'John,' the detective says, in a sobering tone.

'It's a cup of tea, Sherlock! It's not rocket science!' John spats, in an ugly manner.

'Yes, rocket science I can do just fine,' Sherlock comments with a sharp smirk. John, who got up from his seat like a jack-knife, just stops, deflates... and starts chuckling.

The two mad men end up chuckling like kids, and even embrace to help holding themselves up, much to Lestrade's shock.

'Oh, and by the way, it's not me,' Sherlock gasps. 'It's the tea bags. We were meant to die of poisoning like your cousin,' the detective casually adds, with a deeper breath. 'It seems our poisoning murderess is an amateur and did not account for your connoisseur taste, John. Lestrade, I suggest you stop sipping your tea now. I trust John's knowledge of tea, I'm fairly sure it's tainted with yew leaves from the entrance edges.'

Lestrade quickly puts down the cup, rattling porcelain cup on metal surface.

'What the—?'

Sherlock says quietly, yet both his friends clearly hear this: 'Thanks, John. Your family is delightful.'

.

Rain is steadily falling, bringing a hushed background noise over the gravel and yew tree hedges. John Watson stands at parade's rest by the window, gaze lost somewhere in one of his memories. Nearby, as close as he dares, Sherlock fidgets nervously with a pocket microscope, analysing the chemical content of a dissected tea bag.

'John…'

What can Sherlock actually say? He doesn't know. This is John's territory; Sherlock is but a reluctant bystander when it comes to social cues.

He wishes he would have the knowledge to say something comforting to John, something valuable that could lift the man's soul from the depths of his grief.

John shakes his head slowly, as if imparting the truth that Sherlock being Sherlock is all he needs right now. He does not need the missing social conventions. He couldn't care less for social conventions right now. It's the familiarity of the detective keeping John grounded in this side of sanity about now.

'It's alright, Sherlock.'

Reassurance works both ways.

'For what it's worth, Henry Watson is a lowlife coward for not welcoming you when you returned from the war. He missed out on all that I was so lucky to get by having you as my flatmate.'

John's lips turn softly up.

'Same here. It turned out for the best, really.'

'And Hetty Almost-Watson is a fine example of a ruthless killer. I admire your choice of friends, John.'

'Well, she wasn't always like that. As a child, she was very sweet. Something will have happened along the way.'

'Don't you go blaming yourself for not being there for a developing murderess when you were out in the desert fighting for your country.'

John snaps his eyes towards Sherlock at that. Bingo. John slowly turns towards the window again. A comfortable silence ensues for a minute or so.

'I like rain,' John states at one point.

'Hm,' Sherlock comments. 'I had noticed.'

'I want to go outside now.'

'It's raining hard.'

'Exactly.' John looks over his shoulder to his friend, as if asking for permission. No, Sherlock understands. Asking if Sherlock will freak out if John follows the mad urge to go outside and get drenched in that rain, the rain that is so far from desert dryness, the rain that is so quintessentially British and home for John.

That cleansing rain.

Sherlock fluidly gets out of his chair.

'Let's go outside, John.'

I will follow you to the end of the Earth, John Watson.

.

A stray drop of water runs down John's pale, barely freckled neck, and Sherlock's mercurial eyes trace its voyage to the collar of John's jumper. As such, the detective is momentarily distracted as they await for the banshee screams of the bride to end, as she is brought in to the visiting cell at the local jail. She is under arrest for the murder of Hugh Watson and the attempted murder of three more people, all currently present in this interview room.

The cuffs are transferred from her wrists to the table in front of her by Lestrade, going very quickly from simulated outrage to threats and other unpleasantries.

Much like at the house, when Henry Watson was looking a bit green, watching his bride – well, maybe the wedding is off after all – as she was being cuffed for the murder of his brother. The bridesmaids were looking appalled at the scene, and grumbling about paying for ugly dresses and if they would be able to return them now the alterations have been made. The only seemingly sane and collected person there seemed to be Margaret Watson, who hummed to herself while munching on bourbon biscuits out of an old tin.

In the interview room, Hetty fixes a loathsome gaze on John and yells at him: 'You can't be alive! I put enough leaves into the tea bags!' To the inspector she adds: 'Johnny should be dead in his lover's bed by now! Why didn't he drink the tea?'

John clears his throat, controlling his anger, and getting her attention back on him.

'Sherlock is not my lover, and if he were, I couldn't possibly be any luckier, so cut it out. As to drinking spoiled tea, did you really think I wouldn't able to taste it? And what was it all for? Why kill Hugh, then try to kill me, and Sherlock too?'

Sherlock hushes him with a silent gesture by his side. John reluctantly obeys. There's nothing he could say that would ever put the events of the weekend right.

'I knew you'd turn me in to the police, Johnny. It'd only take Aunt Maggie telling what I did. You always were so keen to follow the rules, even before the army.'

John seems taken aback. 'Aunt Maggie knew?'

'Knew?' Hetty laughs. 'She planned it for me!'

Besides John, Sherlock raises an eyebrow. John once said he'd like Hetty. He wasn't wrong. A murderer is always of professional interest to Sherlock Holmes. Yet he is sure he likes Aunt Maggie the best of all the Watsons. She's never boring.

'Hetty, Aunt Maggie is slowly losing her mind. I doubt she could follow a recipe to bake a cake, let alone plan a murder for you.'

'Yet she did. She thought it was fun. All I had to tell her was that it was for a whodunnit charade in honour of our London detective. She was so keen, Johnny. She really wanted to do this for you and Sherlock Holmes.'

John looks like he just might throw up.

'Why plan the murder of Hugh Watson?' Lestrade inquires, collected and professional. She turns to him.

'My husband will inherit the family money instead. Hugh wasn't willing to share and he was going to get most of it. We decided he was going to get murdered at some point. Possibly with Aunt Maggie's riffle, but then John and Sherlock came along, and I decided to hasten things. Best to have them as witnesses, I thought. John would never think it was me, and committing a successful murder under Sherlock Holmes's watch was exhilarating, really. I really thought I would get away with it. I guess it pays to have a clever lover, because Johnny got some brains put into his tin soldier's head.'

The doctor's features are now stone solid, not betraying a flicker of emotion. Lestrade glances at Sherlock and is amazed that the detective is not currently flying at the murderess. Out of respect for John, he guesses. To intervene would be to lower John's power in this interview room.

'Is that all you got?' Lestrade asks himself. 'Taunts and common slur against John Watson?'

Sherlock shrugs. 'It was a common murder after all, inspector. What could we expect?' The detective can't contain himself anymore.

John tilts his head to the side, deep thought on display in his furrowed forehead. When he finally talks, his voice is low yet with a sonority that fills the room:

'You love him that much that you'll protect him from the rightful accusation of being your partner-in-crime, Hetty?'

Her face goes extremely pale. Sherlock smirks proudly, Lestrade ogles.

John proceeds: 'The taunts, the course suggestions, the vindictiveness – this isn't really your mark. It really has all the hallmarks of a whodunnit; the red herrings, the plot twists. But the characters are real people. Henry was the one who always envied the attention Hugh got. Hugh was the funny one, the adventurous one, when we played as children. And even now, as Henry saw me lending Sherlock my wristwatch, there was a dark expression in his face, he was thinking of his inheritance and how it was smaller than Hugh's. I should have seen it that day. How deep the jealousy festered in Henry, and how far you were willing to go, Hetty, to protect Henry. You concocted the murder together, but Henry screwed up. He was supposed to have the library's spare key kept somewhere and produced to open the library after the murder, but it ended up inside the library, didn't it? And so you had to reveal that you had a key – the key you had used, in fact – to lock the library door after Hugh stumbled in. That mistake with the two library keys, that was never meant to happen, was it? No murderer would plan it that badly, it always sat wrong with me.'

By his side, Sherlock silently smiles wildly. John may not have consulting detective genius per se, but his brains are quite attractive on their own. His scattered thought processes a fair juxtaposition to Sherlock's uber rationality. Occasionally, John hits all the necessary marks on his own.

Lestrade gets up. 'Guess I'm going to collect another prisoner from the mansion now.'

John gets up next. 'We'll take a ride with you, Lestrade. We've got keys to return. We overstayed our welcome.'

Sherlock gets up last. 'Ta-da!' he says, turning his back on the murderess without much ado.

.

'So, pretty much, everyone was involved,' Greg Lestrade summarises.

'The Watsons are never boring,' Sherlock pronounces, amused.

John just shakes his head and groans.

'What will happen to Aunt Maggie?' Sherlock asks.

'For now, there are friends in the village that will keep an eye on her,' John assures. He has, after all, spent the rest of the afternoon organising this much. Now the two friends pack up to return to London with Lestrade.

'I wonder if Mrs Hudson has baked us some game pie. We never got any.'

John smiles softly. He knows he's being goaded into eating a proper meal by the genius. And if that means playing along so that the genius too takes better care of himself for the next few days, so be it.

Sherlock takes up John's grenadier bear fridge magnet. 'Thank you for lending me your family, John. I found them very charming.'

'What do you mean? Your family is into the Secret Services, going by your brother Mycroft. Glass ceilings and rock throwing…?'

John takes the magnet and ponders it in his hand, losing some of the lighter tones he has been sporting in the last few hours. Adrenaline levels are plummeting, Sherlock diagnoses easily.

'Here.' From the bottom of his bag, Sherlock finds his trademark blue scarf of the season, and he winds it around John's neck with incredibly soft, caring gestures.

'What is this for then?' John asks as a token protest, not really meaning it. The way it sits around his neck is particularly comforting and the way it releases a light scent of Sherlock's woody spicy shampoo is tantalisingly familiar. Sherlock further holds his doctor together with one hand on each of his forearms, a small gap between their half embrace.

'It's fine. Just drop it, John. Let's go back to 221B.'

'Home,' John agrees.

.

The warm sound of the violin sounds almost mournful in 221B's cluttered living room. Sherlock Holmes is playing by the window and John Watson is watching him play, from the red battered armchair. It is a familiar, grounding scene and John feels a big chunk of the tenson he has carried within him dissipate through the melodic lines of the violin. It is as if the reluctantly sensitive soul of the detective had been analysing every turn of John's complicated emotions from the last few days, cataloguing them, recording them, deconstructing them to their elemental masses, and now returning them in a beautiful reconstruction of hope. The musician really is in his most expressive form tonight.

It is as if Sherlock is playing John's battle with his inner demons and his losses. It is as if Sherlock really saw John's soul and he wants to play an homage to where he sees bravery and strength.

John is touched by the kindness of Sherlock's melodic narrative; but he is also sure that he has been little more than mundane these past few days, and it has been the detective who transcended himself to be the support and care that the doctor needed.

Together they are a functional, brilliant team. Apart they are broken and incomplete. Two so very different men had their paths meet by serendipity and somehow they recognised their symmetry and completeness when together. Whatever they are, they are better than the sum of their parts when they are together. It is not rational, and it is not magic; it just is, with a natural simplicity that defies conventions.

John hums softly the recurrent line of Sherlock's melody, and immediately the genius picks up on it and builds on it. John's voice and Sherlock's violin, unifying in warm cadences, so rich and so deep. They smile softly at each other, beyond words. Outside, the world is cold and the rain steadily lashes against the window panes. It is a nice evening to spend in 221B. Home.

.