An Experiment in Devotion

The silence didn’t feel restful. It felt like a held breath that went on too long, the kind that made John’s chest ache and his fingers twitch for something to do. The newspaper had been read cover to cover an hour ago, the kettle boiled twice for the sake of the sound, the cup now cooling on the table beside him. Even the old clock on the mantle seemed reluctant to tick, as if it, too, had given up out of respect for the unusual quiet of 221B.

He could hear the city, faintly, through the glass—distant cars, a siren, the muffled thuds of someone lugging groceries up a staircase somewhere. Here, nothing. No violin. No clink of glassware from the kitchen. No muttered deductions or the rustle of case files. The flat had never been this still. It was unnerving in a way none of Sherlock’s explosions had ever been.

John shifted on the sofa and glanced toward the window. Sherlock stood there, a tall, unmoving cutout against the grey London morning. He’d taken up that pose before dawn and held it like he was punishing himself with it, arms loose at his sides, chin slightly lifted, eyes tracking absolutely nothing. The long lines of his back were rigid beneath the dark dressing gown, and his bare feet were braced against the floorboards like he might launch himself at the glass to make something—anything—happen.

It had been days. No cases, no messages. Lestrade was quiet. Mycroft was silent. The city, for once, refused to oblige with any interesting corpses. Sherlock had burned through his experiments until even his boredom with those had dried up. He’d thrown himself into the sofa yesterday with a violent sigh and then migrated to the window when the ceiling failed to produce stimulation.

John set down his cup carefully, because the sound felt like an intrusion. “You’ll wear a trench in the floor,” he said, voice low.

Sherlock didn’t respond. He didn’t even blink. His profile was all edges and focus, the pale cut of cheekbone, the mouth flattened, the eyes huge and empty. John swallowed. He knew this—this was the dangerous quiet that came before something reckless. He’d seen Sherlock’s mind starve for days like this, and he’d seen the result: cold cases reopened, illegal trespasses, experiments that flirted too closely with narcotics. It made his skin prickle with the memory of ambulances and shaking hands.

He stood and crossed the room with a kind of deliberate normalcy he suspected Sherlock hated. He stopped a respectful distance away, close enough to feel the draft at the window’s edge where the frame didn’t quite meet the paint. Sherlock’s gaze didn’t move. Outside, the street was flat and damp, the trees stripped, the sky the color of old paper.

“You’ve been like this since Thursday,” John said. “It’s Sunday.”

“Your dates are accurate.” Sherlock’s voice came out low and absent, the consonants clipped. “Congratulations.”

“Right.” John shoved his hands into the pockets of his jumper and looked down at the street because staring at the side of Sherlock’s head made something inside him itch. “We could do something. Anything. Go somewhere. Walk in the park. Get coffee. A flat white that isn’t burnt. Remember those?”

Sherlock made a faint sound that might have been a breath or might have been disdain. “To what end? Watching couples complain about the price of avocados while pushing identical prams is not data, John. It’s a collective delusion. Pointless milling. Noise.”

“It’s called other people living their lives.”

“Exactly.”

John looked at him and tried not to be petty. “You haven’t showered.”

“I showered at four thirty. Your sense of time is compromised by boredom.”

“I’m not bored.”

Sherlock turned his head fractionally, just enough to meet John’s eyes with a glint that might have been irritation if it had been hotter. “No? You’ve read the Mail despite repeatedly declaring it a moral hazard, You made tea twice to hear the kettle. You reorganized the cutlery drawer. By color.”

“It’s silver,” John said, defensive without meaning to be. He felt his mouth tug, a smile that didn’t quite get there. “There’s only the one.”

“Exactly.” Sherlock looked back out at Baker Street with the flat, hungry stare of something pacing a cage in its head. “No cases. No threads to pull. The city is in a stupor.”

“You could… I don’t know. Text Lestrade. Ask if he’s got a—”

“Lestrade will text when he has something worth not wasting our time with.” Sherlock’s jaw flexed. “Today he has spreadsheets. He reeks of spreadsheets when he comes here with nothing.”

John bit down on further suggestions because the last thing he wanted was to nudge Sherlock into the kind of antagonism that ended with the man turning himself into a problem to be solved. The silence settled between them again, thick as fog. The radiator clanked once and then surrendered.

“You could play,” John said, finally, careful. “The violin.”

“I’ll only make it angry.” That actually pulled at John’s mouth properly.

“You can’t make a violin angry.”

“You can make everything angry,” Sherlock muttered. “If you do it long enough.”

John took a breath and let it out. He was used to being the buffer, the ballast. He could do that. But even he could feel the way the quiet pressed against them both. He thought of going out anyway, of bringing back pastries they didn’t need, of returning to find Sherlock in the exact same place, exactly as hollow.

He reached for a more practical line of attack. “Breakfast,” he said, despite the hour. “Something with protein. God forbid, an egg. Have you eaten?”

Silence. That answered itself.

John moved back toward the kitchen, pretending not to hear the way Sherlock’s breathing hitched once in a barely contained frustration. He opened the fridge and stared at the loneliness inside it—mustard, a single shriveled lemon, something in a jar that might once have been pickles.

He shut it gently. “Right,” he said to the empty air. “Toast it is.”

He’d barely gotten the bread halfway to the toaster when Sherlock said, in that remote tone that meant he’d noticed and catalogued it purely on reflex, “The bread is stale.”

“We’ll pretend it’s artisanal.”

A muscle in Sherlock’s cheek jumped. Not quite amusement. Not quite anything.

John set the bread down and turned around to face him fully. He let himself look this time, openly, at the man who had turned himself into a statue to survive the lack of a problem. Sherlock always looked bigger like this—not physically, but as if the space had to stretch to contain him. John felt the familiar pull under his ribs that was not annoyance and not exactly affection, something steadier and more frightening.

“We can drive to Hampstead,” John said. “Walk and pretend to insult people’s dogs. Or I can go alone and you can continue scowling at the weather until it files a complaint.”

“Insulting dogs is immoral,” Sherlock said, automatic. “Their owners, however—”

“Good. That’s progress.”

Sherlock didn’t answer. The bread sat waiting, the kettle heavy with its second boil, the flat caught in an unnatural calm that made John want to stamp his foot or shout just to make a crack. He didn’t. He leaned back against the counter and watched Sherlock watch the world, and waited for the tiny shift that meant he was coming back into his body.

It came, eventually, a small flicker as Sherlock’s fingers curled in, then loosened. He blinked. Once. His mouth eased from its rigid line. He glanced at the table, at the cup, at John’s hands on the counter, at the toaster. Like he was cataloguing the room again, tethering himself to it.

“Toast,” Sherlock said, as if tasting the word.

“Radical, I know.”

Sherlock’s gaze slid back to the window, but his voice was faintly less flat when he said, “We should have eggs.”

“We should,” John agreed, with a steadiness he didn’t quite feel. “We will. After I’ve convinced you to leave the house voluntarily.”

Sherlock’s shoulder lifted and fell, a breath that could be refusal or acquiescence, and in the space after it the silence shifted. It had edges again, less suffocating, more familiar. Outside, somewhere down the street, a car door slammed. The clock resumed its tick, as if deciding the stalemate was over.

John pushed off the counter and wiped his palms on his jeans, the action more about restlessness than any real need. “All right,” he said, pitching his tone into something gentle, light. “Let’s get out for a bit. Fresh air. Park, maybe. Or that cafe on the corner that does the coffee you don’t hate. We can sit by the window and you can quietly judge everyone who walks past.”

Sherlock didn’t turn. “I can judge them perfectly well from here.”

“Right, but I can’t drink a flat white here, and I’m dangerously close to becoming the sort of man who organizes silverware by color.” John moved around the table, angling himself until he could see the sharp line of Sherlock’s mouth. “Come on. Coat on. Shoes. We’ll take twenty minutes and then come back to the existential abyss.”

“‘Fresh air,’” Sherlock echoed, in the same dispassionate cadence he used when reading labels on poison bottles. “You want me to stand beneath trees and inhale particulate matter because the kettle has already boiled twice.”

“I want you to stop glaring holes in the atmosphere.”

Sherlock’s eyes flicked to him, cool and assessing. “Parks are choked with children whose parents are invested in the lie that a Sunday in a puddle constitutes development. Their dogs will drag them toward rotting sticks. The paths will be slick. We’ll be jostled by joggers swaddled in neon who believe their pulse rate is an identity. As for cafes—” His mouth thinned. “Rooms in which people line up to purchase mediocrity, then linger with laptop screens, cosplaying productivity. Pointless milling. Herd animals in artisanal pens.”

John let out a breath through his nose and folded his arms. “You don’t have to romance it, just drink it.”

“Stimulation is not found in overpriced milk,” Sherlock said, returning his gaze to the window. “Or in walking slowly in circles until we pretend we are satisfied.”

“It’s not about stimulation.” John heard the edge creep into his own voice and tried to rein it back. “It’s about… doing something ordinary. Humans do that. We go outside. We sit somewhere that isn’t this room. We make eye contact with someone who is paid to be nice to us and drink something hot that we didn’t make ourselves. It helps.”

“Helps what?” Sherlock’s tone sharpened slightly, the first sign of life that wasn’t disdain. “Helps you pretend the silence isn’t loud? Helps you avoid the fact that nothing interesting is happening?”

“It helps me feel normal,” John said, aware as he said it that the word would land like a provocation. “Which, by the way, I am allowed to want once in a while without you treating it like a character flaw.”

Sherlock’s jaw worked. “Normalcy is a narcotic. It lulls you. It sands down edges that should remain sharp. It’s how people miss the obvious and die.”

“And constant starvation of your brain isn’t exactly healthy either,” John shot back, more heat now. “You stand there until you’re ready to jump out of your skin and pick a fight with reality. That’s when we end up breaking into places at two a.m. because you’d rather get arrested than be bored.”

The silence that followed had a different weight to it. Sherlock’s hands, hanging at his sides, curled in again and stayed that way.

John scrubbed at the back of his neck. “Look. I’m not asking for a picnic. I’m asking for twenty minutes around the block. We can even pop into Speedy’s and you can insult the bread. You’re very good at that.”

“Speedy’s bread deserves it.” Sherlock’s voice dipped, almost reflexive. “The yeast is indolent.”

“See?” John said, a little helpless. “That. That right there. Go inflict your opinions on someone who isn’t me for ten minutes.”

“Why?” Sherlock turned fully at last, and the flint in his eyes made John’s breath catch. “So you can pretend we’re like them? The couples in parks. The people in cafes who find contentment in foam art. So you can have your little slice of quiet that has nothing to do with—” He flicked his fingers, as if he could pluck the word out of the air. “—purpose.”

John took that, held it, and tried not to flinch at the way it had been aimed. “So I can have a morning that isn’t you trying to peel your own skin off from boredom,” he said, evenly. “So I can breathe. So you can breathe. I’m not trying to turn you into a jogger, Sherlock. I’m trying to keep us both from climbing the walls and doing something stupid.”

“Speak for yourself,” Sherlock said, but the bite was dulled. He looked past John, toward the door, and then back again, conclusions slotting into place behind his eyes. “You’re restless. You want the ritual. The pretence of routine.”

“It’s not a pretence for me.” John set his shoulders. “It’s recovery.”

Sherlock stared at him for a long count, the pulse moving once in his throat. Some of the tightness around his mouth eased, not with agreement but with recognition. “And what,” he said more quietly, “is it for me?”

“It’s… keeping you from picking fights with joggers in neon.” John let his arms drop, palms open. “It’s me asking you to meet me halfway for twenty minutes. Then we can come back here and you can stare out the window and compose a sonnet about the stupidity of latte art. Just—come with me.”

Sherlock’s gaze cut toward the window again, drawn as if by a magnet to the blank street. The pull toward the stimulus that wasn’t there. The flat hummed with the radiator’s low effort, with the far-off siren that never seemed to arrive. John could feel the ask hanging in the room like a wire stretched taut.

Sherlock’s lip quirked without humor. “The pointless milling of the masses,” he said, as if tasting whether the phrase still satisfied. “You really think submerging ourselves in it will make either of us less aware of how little it offers?”

“I think,” John said, and the honesty surprised even him as it came out, “it will make me feel less like I’m watching you try to outrun your own head with no shoes on.”

For a second, something undefended flickered across Sherlock’s face—weariness, or the ghost of a smile at the image. Then it was gone, replaced by a reluctant calculation.

He exhaled, long and narrow. “Ten minutes,” he said at last, voice clipped. “And if anyone speaks to me about the weather, I reserve the right to explain to them, in detail, why their umbrella choice reveals poor decision-making.”

John felt the coil in his chest loosen a fraction. “Deal,” he said, and reached for his own coat, the air still tight between them, but shifting. The truce was thin, but it was something to move on.

The floorboard outside creaked and John glanced up just as the familiar tap-tap sounded against the door. Mrs. Hudson pushed it open with her hip, a tray balanced expertly in her hands. The porcelain rattled just enough to announce itself without spilling.

“Oh, good, you’re both decent,” she chirped, eyes flicking over coats half on and Sherlock’s bare feet. “Not that it would matter to me, I’ve seen worse—oh, look at you both, faces like rainy Mondays.” She swept in like a warm draft, setting the tray down among the scattered mail and a defunct microscope slide. The good teapot today, blue with the hairline crack, steam coiling from the spout. Two cups. A plate piled high with biscuits, some shop-bought, some obviously from her oven, wonky edges and sugar dusting everything.

“Mrs. Hudson,” John said, a breath sliding out of him that he hadn’t realized he was holding. “You’re a saint.”

“I’m a landlady,” she corrected, spreading a napkin and fussing it flat with both palms. “And a very patient one. I can hear you glowering all the way downstairs.” Her gaze cut to Sherlock, fond and sharp at once. “And you. How long have you been playing statues at that window? You’ll give the neighbors ideas.”

“Statues don’t play,” Sherlock said, dry, not moving. “They are placed.”

“I’ll place you,” she sniffed, then reached for the teapot. “Sit, sit. The kettle’s boiled twice already by the sound of it and you haven’t touched a drop.”

John obliged, shrugging fully into his coat and then abandoning it over the back of the chair. He moved the file of old receipts aside to make room for the cups. “We were just heading out,” he said. “Park. Or Speedy’s. Haven’t decided. We made a deal.”

“Did you now?” Mrs. Hudson smiled into the cups, pouring with the care of a surgeon. Milk into John’s, none into Sherlock’s. She didn’t ask. “You two and your deals. Every week it’s another one. No experiments in the icebox, no heads in the microwave—”

“That was one time,” Sherlock said, automatic, but he’d turned his head a fraction, attention snagged.

“—and now it’s, what, a constitutional?” She clucked her tongue, depositing the cups with a practiced clink. “Good. Fresh air will do him good,” she told John, as if Sherlock weren’t six feet away. “And you, too. Your shoulders are up by your ears.”

“Occupational hazard,” John said, accepting his cup. The heat grounded his palms. “Thank you.”

Sherlock didn’t take his immediately. His gaze dropped to the cup, then slid to the plate. “Those are oversugared,” he observed, because he couldn’t not.

“They’re shortbread,” she said, undefended. “Short. Bread. And I put my heart in them, so you hush.” She selected one and thrust it toward him. “Eat something that wasn’t an experiment.”

He took it, long fingers careful not to brush hers more than necessary, and nipped off a corner. He chewed, eyes narrowing in thought, then, with exaggerated neutrality, said, “Butter’s decent.”

“Oh, high praise,” she said, rolling her eyes. “From a man who’d salt his own tea if it meant being difficult.”

John hid a smile in his sip. The tea was perfect. Mrs. Hudson’s perfect, which meant it tasted like kindness and familiarity and the faintest hint of floral, because she favored Earl Grey when tensions simmered. It soothed the ragged shape of the morning, filed the edges without dulling them.

“And what’s got you both like this?” Mrs. Hudson went on, distributing napkins like a general arming troops. “It’s Sunday. You should be doing the papers, crosswords, giving me grief about my soaps. Instead you’re up here sulking in stereo.”

“We’re not sulking,” John said.

“He is,” Sherlock said.

“See?” She pointed a biscuit at them both, triumphant. “Like an old married couple, you are. Bicker, bicker, bicker. ‘We’re not going out.’ ‘We’re going out.’ ‘The bread is indolent.’ ‘My soul needs a latte.’” Her voice rose into an affectionate falsetto for the last bit, then she popped the biscuit in her mouth, chewing as if she hadn’t just lobbed a grenade and smiled about it.

The word hung there, impossible to ignore. Old married couple.

Heat climbed up the back of John’s neck in a way he hated himself for and couldn’t stop. He kept his eyes on the cup, on the idiot little swirl at the surface where his last sip had disturbed it. He didn’t look at Sherlock.

Across from him, Sherlock had gone very still, but not statue-still. His chin tipped a fraction. The muscle in his jaw flickered once. He did not scoff. He did not cut her with a line about marriage being an inefficient contract. He didn’t say anything at all.

The room narrowed and widened at the same time. The radiator ticked. From the street, a shout, then laughter, then a dog barking. Mrs. Hudson, realizing too late what she’d landed on, fluttered. “Oh, now, don’t look like that. I only mean—well. You know. The way you fuss at each other.” Her voice softened. “It’s sweet. In its way.”

John cleared his throat. “Right. Well. We… yes. We’re… we… manage.” He sounded like an idiot. He took another swallow of tea he didn’t need.

Sherlock, mercifully, broke the impasse by setting his biscuit down and reaching for his cup. “Your neighbor on the first floor has a new boyfriend,” he said, bland. “He wears cheap cologne and shoe lifts.”

Mrs. Hudson blinked, thrown, then laughed. “Thank you, dear. I’ll be sure not to comment on his height.” She touched John’s shoulder as she circled to reclaim the teapot, a light pressure that said I see you even if she didn’t know what she was seeing. “I’ll leave you to it, then. Do try not to kill each other. Or get arrested. Again.”

“We’re going out for ten minutes,” John said, because the plan mattered suddenly in a way it hadn’t five minutes ago.

“And we will not speak to anyone about the weather,” Sherlock added, staring into his cup.

“Very good,” she said. At the door, she paused, looked back with that same fond sharpness. “You do take care of each other. That’s all I mean.” A beat. “And take a biscuit for the road. The butter’s decent.”

She left, the door easing shut behind her with a soft click that sounded louder than it should. The air she’d churned settled, and the quiet came back down around them, changed in some small, unnameable way.

John set his cup down very carefully. He risked it, then—a glance at Sherlock. Sherlock was already looking at him.

Neither of them said anything. The silence wasn’t oppressive now, but it hummed with something new and awkward and tender, as if the floorboards had shifted a millimeter and both of them were waiting to see if the whole building would notice.

Sherlock lifted his cup again, buying time. John reached for the plate and—because there was nothing else to do—took a biscuit. He didn’t taste it. He stood, curl of coat over his arm, and found his voice.

“Ten minutes,” he said.

“Ten minutes,” Sherlock echoed, and for once didn’t argue.

They made it around the block and back without incident unless you counted Sherlock’s running commentary on footwear and the sociology of dog ownership. By the time the sky had thickened to a dull white and the chill worked under John’s collar, they were back inside, the flat holding onto their breath as if it hadn’t exhaled all morning.

Later, the stairwell echoed with a tread John could place by weight and rhythm alone. Lestrade’s knock was perfunctory, two short raps, and then he pushed the door open without waiting, the way people did when they were too tired for manners.

He looked like he’d slept in his clothes: tie tugged loose, shirt creased, hair flattened on one side and sticking up on the other. Shadowed eyes. He carried a buff file fat enough to warp. The smell of cold air and machine coffee came in with him.

“Afternoon,” he said, and it sounded like an apology. He glanced between them, clocking coats tossed over chairs, cups abandoned with half rings of tea staining the saucers. Something in his shoulders eased, as if whatever he’d feared walking up had not, in fact, met him at the door.

“Lestrade,” Sherlock said, already halfway across the room. The sloth of earlier snapped clean. He plucked the file from Lestrade’s hand before the DI had fully closed his fingers around the edge. “About time.”

“Nice to see you, too,” Lestrade said, pushing the door shut with his heel. “And before you say anything about my shoes, save it. Don’t. I can’t.”

“Resoled cheaply, you’ve been walking more than usual, circulation compromised, hence—”

“Sherlock,” John said, quiet, a warning wrapped in fondness.

Sherlock’s mouth closed around the rest of the observation. He flicked the file open, the first photographs sliding into the light. His breath changed, went shallow. John knew that sound the way he knew the first bar of a favorite song.

Lestrade scrubbed a hand over his face and aimed himself at the chair nearest the radiator. He collapsed into it and let his head fall back for a second before he hauled himself upright again. “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t… I mean, it’s probably nothing. It is nothing. On paper. But it’s—” He stopped, hands blank. “It’s wrong.”

“Finally,” Sherlock murmured, not looking up. “A statement with potential.”

John stood and moved around the table, drawn by the photographs and Sherlock’s gravity. He hovered at Sherlock’s shoulder, close enough to smell the soap from that morning and something warm and particular beneath it.

Lestrade flipped the cover of the file with a finger. “Affluent, middle-aged. All men. Different parts of the city. Different circles, as far as we can tell—finance, a barrister, a venture capitalist, a consultant in tech. Three weeks of this. We’ve got five. Maybe six if you count the one still with the coroner. On paper…” He gestured. “Natural causes. Heart attacks, strokes. One aneurysm no one knew about.”

Sherlock’s eyes tracked the photos: living rooms staged like magazine spreads, kitchens with expensive appliances gleaming, bedrooms with sheets turned back as if the occupant had just stepped out. The bodies were tidy. No blood. No mess. Peaceful faces. Too peaceful.

“Middle-aged as in?” Sherlock said.

“Forty-eight to sixty-three.”

“Affluent as in?”

“Places like these,” Lestrade said. He waved a hand at one of the images—a glass-and-steel apartment with a view that screamed money. “Cars to match. Holiday photos in frames. The right wines on the racks.”

“Family?” John asked.

“Varies. Two divorced. One widowed six months. One separated but not officially. One—” Lestrade grimaced. “Well, he’d only just started dating again. They all had, actually. That’s one of the only things that links them, but it’s flimsy. Men like this don’t like to admit things like loneliness to us. Or anything, really.”

Sherlock changed photos with a flick of his fingers. One image made him still. He leaned closer. “What’s that?” He tapped the corner.

Lestrade squinted. “Book. From the bedside table. Why?”

“It’s upside down. Spine facing the wrong way. Someone unfamiliar with the shelf placed it. He wasn’t a reader but wanted to give that impression. Or someone was tidying without knowing his habits.” Sherlock didn’t wait for agreement. He was already speaking to the room, to himself, to the pattern he could feel under the floorboards. “Tea brand?” He glanced at another kitchen photo. “This house has Fortnum’s tins but the teabags in the caddy are supermarket. He switched for a guest.”

“You got that from a photo,” Lestrade said, not quite incredulous anymore, just tired admiration layered over resignation.

John leaned over the next report. “Causes?”

Lestrade dragged a hand down his face again. “First: myocardial infarction. Second: stroke. Third: thoracic aortic aneurysm. Fourth: arrhythmia. Fifth: brainstem hemorrhage. All plausible. All signed off. Families have money. Private doctors in some cases. Coroner’s workload is ridiculous this month. No one blinks.”

John’s brain did the automatic arithmetic. “Statistics say clustering like this, in this time frame, with this demographic… it’s not impossible, but it’s odd.”

Lestrade nodded at the file. “That’s… that’s what I mean. It’s all… neat. Too neat. And the scenes. They make my skin crawl. You know that feeling when you walk into a room and you just know someone’s wiped something down?”

“Perfume,” Sherlock said, eyes narrowing. “There.” He pointed to a living room photo. “On the mantel. That bottle is wrong for that man. His watch is a Patek Philippe; he wouldn’t have a drugstore scent sitting under a photograph like a trophy.”

“Families say the new girlfriends were lovely,” Lestrade said, the word bent a bit in his mouth. “Charming. Wouldn’t say boo. Smart. Well-dressed. None of them around when the men died. No overlap in names or descriptions we can pin down. We’ve got nothing but gut.”

Sherlock’s hands stilled. He looked up finally, his face transformed, hungry and bright. For a second, John wanted to put his hand on the back of Sherlock’s neck, anchor him to the floorboards. He didn’t.

“How soon can I see the bodies?” Sherlock said.

Lestrade blew out a breath that held more relief than he’d probably like anyone to notice. “I thought you’d say that.” He tapped the file. “I can get you into the morgue for two of them by five. The others… we’ll see. Families are already doing funerals.”

“And the flats,” Sherlock said. “I want the flats.”

“I can get you one this evening. The widower’s place. His son’s still dealing with paperwork. He’s… cooperative. Grieving.” Lestrade’s mouth flattened into a line that strained at the edges. “Look, I know it’s thin. I know it’s—”

“Thin?” Sherlock’s laugh was short and sharp. “It’s a thread. Threads are everything.”

Lestrade took the cup John thrust into his hand without seeming to see it first. He drank, grimaced in surprise at the sugar, then finished it anyway. “Knew you wouldn’t tell me to bugger off. Well. I hoped.”

“You hoped correctly,” Sherlock said. He was still holding the photograph of the upside-down book. His thumb moved absently over the glossy edge.

John closed the file gently, enough to get Sherlock’s attention back into the room. “We’ll need to go now if we want to make the morgue by five.” He looked at Lestrade. “You look like you haven’t eaten since yesterday.”

“Probably haven’t,” Lestrade admitted. He set the cup down with care, as if it might shatter if he looked away too fast. “I’ll call Molly. Tell her to expect you. And—” He hesitated. “Thanks.”

Sherlock’s gaze slid to John, a quick, charged flicker that had weight it wouldn’t have had this morning. He nodded once, a tiny movement that felt like a promise to both of them and to the dead men looking up from the table. The silence between them wasn’t empty anymore. It hummed with purpose.

Sherlock was already in motion, the file open like a hand of cards he intended to play face-up because knowing the end never spoiled it for him—only delayed satisfaction. He flicked through photographs and reports, then stopped, head tipping as he looked over the edge of the folder at Lestrade like he was a person-shaped note scrawled in the margins.

“You took the District line but changed at Embankment because the signal failure at Earl’s Court made you hedge your bets. The coffee stain on your cuff is from a paper cup lid that didn’t seat properly—machine in the Yard lobby’s been temperamental for three days—so you shook your wrist and swore under your breath and burnt your tongue anyway. You haven’t had a proper meal since last night; the smell of fried onions on your coat suggests the kebab van on the corner near your place, but the lack of grease on your tie means you missed your mouth as often as not because your phone kept going off. That, or you tried to eat while walking stairs. Right—there.” He pointed at the worn scuff on Lestrade’s left shoe. “Fourth step from the bottom, nicked wood. You always clip it when you’re looking at messages.”

Lestrade blinked at him. “That’s—”

“And you slept on your sofa for three hours between two and five a.m. because your hair is flattened on one side but your collar is crumpled at the back, not the front. You hate your pillow; it’s too high. No time to change it but time to complain about it to yourself. The text from Donovan came at 6:12, woke you up properly, and you left the kettle on in your kitchen. It’ll have boiled itself dry by now and set off your smoke alarm if your neighbour’s cat hasn’t knocked it over first.”

Lestrade stared, then huffed a short, defeated laugh. “Fine, yes, I’m a mess. Are we done? Can we get to the bit where you tell me I’m not imagining this?”

“We’ve left imagining far behind,” Sherlock said, already flipping to the next sheet. “John.”

It was not a question. It was an orbit establishing itself. John found himself moving before he’d decided to, the gravity of it old and familiar. He came to stand at Sherlock’s shoulder, infringing on the space where the scent of paper and ink gave way to Sherlock’s skin and the sharp thread of his soap. He rested his hand briefly on the back of the chair as if to steady the universe, then leaned in.

“Natural causes,” John said, scanning the summaries, the times of death, the doctors’ names. “On paper.”

“On paper,” Sherlock echoed, but his eyes were elsewhere—on the minutiae in the margins. “Look.”

He tapped the corner of a photograph again, this time tracing the outline of the glass ring on the polished wood of a bedside table. “Condensation mark near the lamp. The surface should have been wiped; everything else is tidy. Why leave that?”

“Careless,” Lestrade said.

“Or staged,” Sherlock countered. “Nothing else in that room is careless. The lampshade is dust-free, shelves clean, picture frames aligned. Someone wanted it neat. They missed only this. Why? The glass was replaced quickly. Guest in the room, nervous hands. The ring was made and not seen because the maker was focused on something else.”

“Like a dying man,” John said quietly. “Or a body.”

Sherlock’s mouth curved, not a smile, but the near approximation. “Exactly.”

He turned a page. “And here—see the tea tin? Fortnum’s Earl Grey, but the teabags in the jar are generic supermarket brand. You don’t switch downward unless you are either frugal to the point of absurdity or accommodating someone without taste. He had taste. The watch, the furniture, the art print on the wall—a legitimate Hockney, not a reproduction. He bought Fortnum’s for himself. He bought the cheaper brand for a guest. A guest who stayed long enough to alter habit.”

Lestrade’s shoulders straightened fractionally. “Alright. And the perfume?”

Sherlock snatched a print and held it at an angle to the light. “This bottle,” he said. “Drugstore floral. Misplaced. This man did not wear scent. His bathroom has cologne—Hermès—half-used. This is incongruent. A woman’s. Left where it could be seen but not so obviously it draws attention. A trophy? No. A mistake. More interesting.”

John glanced up at him. “So you do think it’s a woman.”

“I think it’s a person who wants to be seen as a woman or who is very good at using that assumption. The new relationships—whirlwind, intense, brief. Men recently bereft, suddenly in love, then dead in their beds. The method is elegant, the delivery subtle. The unsub is careful, confident. Not a teenager on a spree. Someone patient.”

Lestrade rubbed his eyes. “We’ve got no prints, no DNA. Neighbours noticed nothing. The partners—if that’s what they were—used different names, different looks. We’ve got descriptions that might be five different people.”

“Five masks,” Sherlock said softly. “One face.”

John’s finger traced the list of times. “They all died between ten and two in the morning. Night. Quiet. Less chance of interference.”

“Less chance of a witness,” Sherlock agreed. “And the causes chosen specifically to pass without question. Each tailored to history or plausible risk factors. A middle-aged man with a stressful job? Heart attack. Another with a family history of strokes? Stroke. Aneurysm no one knew about, but perhaps suggested to those who’d listen because ‘he had headaches’.” His lip curled. “A single killer with good research and access to them at their most intimate are the commonalities. How does she—or they—get in?”

“Invited,” John said. “That’s the point. They’re dating.”

“Precisely.”

Lestrade let out a breath, a sound like surrender and relief touching cheeks. “So I’m not mad.”

“Debatable,” Sherlock said absently, then flicked him a ghost of apology with his eyes that made John’s chest pinch, because it meant he was trying. “But in this, no. You were correct to come.”

He pushed the file back onto the table with a decisive thump. “We go to the morgue. We confirm what the reports won’t have bothered to note. Tiny inconsistencies at the microscopic level. Then we look at the flats. The widower’s first—grief makes for honesty if you know where to look.”

Lestrade was already fishing for his phone. “I’ll call Molly.”

Sherlock’s gaze cut to John, a flick of connection that landed with the weight of routine layered over something new that neither of them would name out loud. “Coat,” he said. It was a command and a question both.

John’s mouth lifted at one corner. He reached for his jacket, slid into it. The familiar dance of movement—Sherlock stepping sideways, John brushing past, Lestrade muttering into his phone—fell into place. The hum in the room shifted from oppressive to kinetic.

“Try not to antagonise Molly within the first thirty seconds,” John said, pressing his shoulder into Sherlock’s as he leaned to retrieve his gloves.

“I’ll be charming,” Sherlock said, distracted, already halfway to the door in his mind. “For at least forty-five.”

“Generous,” John murmured, and followed as Sherlock swept out, the file tucked under his arm like a promise. He felt the old pull in his blood, the sensible part of him muttering about late lunches and sane Sundays drowned beneath it. He didn’t mind. He never really had.