A Study in Proximity

The quiet had a weight to it. Dust hung in the thin strip of afternoon light that managed to slip between the slats of the blinds, drifting like slow, tiny planets. The room carried the stale smell of abandoned tea and the faint bite of chemical residue. John sat in his chair with a newspaper he wasn’t reading and listened to the silence thrum in his ears.

Sherlock lay draped across the sofa, one arm flung over his eyes, bare feet dangling off the end. He hadn’t moved in an hour. Maybe two. The violin case was open near the coffee table, a bow tossed like an accusation beside it. Empty beaker on the mantel. A pen cap on the rug. The flat as a map of a storm that had passed and left no rain.

“We need milk,” John said finally, because words felt like the only thing that might cut through the fog. “And bread. And you’ve finished the last decent tea. I’m not drinking the rosehip.”

A muffled sound from the sofa. Not a word. The arm stayed over his eyes.

John set the paper aside. “You could come with me.”

No response.

The quiet wasn’t just quiet; it was a pressed-in thing, a waiting thing. It was the kind of silence that followed a string of adrenaline-soaked weeks and now left everything hollowed out. He could feel it in Sherlock like a sinking tide.

“Fine,” John said, reaching for his jacket. “Five minutes. You’ll miss me.”

The arm shifted just enough to expose one blue eye, flat and unamused. “Unlikely.”

John smiled, but it didn’t land. “You haven’t eaten.”

Sherlock’s eye disappeared again. “Food is boring.”

John stared at the slope of Sherlock’s shoulder, the way the fabric of his shirt had wrinkled, evidence of hours spent not moving. He swallowed the words he wanted to say—about health, about habits, about the way the colour had drained from Sherlock’s face over the last week. When the world gave them nothing to do, Sherlock dimmed. John hated the dimming.

“I’ll be right back,” he said instead, voice softening despite himself.

He took Mrs. Hudson’s stairs two at a time, pausing mid-flight at the sound of drawers opening below, her humming faltering and then resuming with a tremor. He almost went down to talk to her but didn’t have the heart for the pity in her eyes today. He pushed out into the brisk street and welcomed the noise, the proof of life. Buses sighed. A dog barked at a pigeon. London shivered under a late-winter sky.

When he returned with a bag bruising his fingers and the chill clinging to his coat, the flat looked precisely the same. Sherlock hadn’t shifted. John set the bag on the table, the paper rustling far too loud in the close room.

“Got biscuits,” he said, trying for bright. “Chocolate ones. You like those.”

A noncommittal grunt.

He pulled milk and eggs from the bag and hesitated, then held up an apple. “This is a fruit.” He waited. “You might remember those from your childhood.”

Nothing. John cut the apple into slices, arranged them in the chipped blue bowl Sherlock never paid attention to, and set it on the table near the sofa. “There,” he said. “Progress.”

He put the kettle on out of habit and made tea because that was what he knew to do: small rituals that made the space kinder. The gas clicked, flame caught, water gathered itself. He tried not to glance at Sherlock’s still form, tried not to take measure of each shallow breath as evidence of something he could fix by sheer stubbornness.

The kettle screamed. He poured, added sugar to one mug, none to the other. He carried them both over, set one on the floor within easy reach of Sherlock’s hand. He waited.

A beat. Then two. Sherlock didn’t move.

“All right,” John said, the sigh escaping him despite his resolve. “Grocery shopping was perhaps ambitious. What about—” He looked around for inspiration. “What about going down to the chemist later? Those syringes you like. The clerk thinks I’m diabetic.”

Silence.

John’s patience frayed at the edges, though it wasn’t anger. It was worry dressed as impatience, bristling to feel useful. He walked around the coffee table and, with a deliberate mildness he’d learned in Afghanistan wards, nudged the violin case closed with his toe. “At least tune it before you—”

Sherlock sat up with a suddenness that startled him, the movement sharp against the room’s heavy air. He reached for the violin without looking at John, jaw set, cheekbones thrown into harsh relief by the low light. He brought it up to his shoulder, set bow to strings.

The first sound tore through the flat. A screech, raw and ugly. John flinched and then forced his face into neutrality. Another sound, worse. A tortured string of notes that weren’t notes at all.

He refused to look away. “You’re driving off the pigeons,” he said calmly.

The bow stuttered, scraped. Sherlock adjusted a peg, exhaled. For a fleeting second, there was something fragile about the angle of his mouth, the tightness at the corners of his eyes. Then he dragged the bow again, as if determined to fill the space with any noise at all.

“Sherlock,” John said, quieter. “Please.”

One more jarring sweep, then the bow fell. Sherlock’s shoulders dropped, but he didn’t look up. He tucked the violin back in its case with stark precision, fingers careful on the latch.

“What do you want me to say?” Sherlock’s voice carried sandpaper over steel. He still didn’t meet John’s eyes.

John held his breath for a second, letting the sound of Sherlock’s words settle. “I don’t want you to say anything,” he said carefully. “I want you to stop starving yourself into a sulk and drink your tea. And then you can tell me to stop fussing and I will, for five minutes.”

A flicker, quick and gone, across Sherlock’s face. He looked at the mug, then at the apple slices, then away, like each was a problem to be solved rather than an offering. “There are no cases,” he said, flat.

“I know,” John said. “The world has decided to behave. How dare it.” He dared half a step closer, watching for that invisible line between acceptable and too much. “It won’t last. It never does.”

Sherlock’s gaze flicked to him then, meeting his eyes for the first time that day. In it, John saw it all: the restless intelligence scraping at the inside of his skull with nothing to cut against, the hunger that wasn’t food, the ache of being unused. He felt something inside him soften and pull taut at the same time.

“Milk,” Sherlock said finally, the syllable heavy with truce.

“Already bought,” John said, and let the smile show itself. “See? You do need me.”

Sherlock’s mouth didn’t smile back, but the line of his shoulders shifted. He reached for the mug and took a sip. He winced. “You didn’t time the steep.”

“I never do,” John said, and in the faintest lift of an eyebrow he saw the first crack in the silence.

He left it there. He didn’t push, didn’t fill the space with more words. He went to the kitchen and put the bread away, wiped a section of counter that didn’t need it, listened to the tiny sounds of Sherlock being a person—ceramic against teeth, a swallow, the soft thud of the mug back on the floor.

Behind him, the violin case stayed closed. The dust motes kept floating. The quiet loosened its grip by a fraction, and John let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. He placed the biscuits on the table where Sherlock could reach them without making it a concession, and sat back down with his own tea, settling into vigilance that looked like companionable silence.

Outside, London kept moving. Inside, something almost did.

John didn’t realize he was staring until the knock came, light and hesitant. Mrs. Hudson didn’t wait for an answer. She never did. She pushed the door open with her hip, balancing a tray with a teapot and two plates. Her face had that careful brightness she wore for sick friends and difficult tenants.

“Oh, good, you’re both in,” she said, though her eyes catalogued the room in the way only she could: the closed violin case, the untouched apple slices, Sherlock’s shirt rumpled from hours of inactivity. “I brought scones. Not that you deserve them, Mr. Holmes, after the racket.”

Sherlock didn’t look up. “Thank you, Mrs. Hudson,” he said, toneless, as if reading out a weather report. He moved the mug an inch and stared at the same spot on the rug as before.

She stood just inside the doorway, tray balanced, waiting for a cue that wasn’t coming. John rose, took the tray from her with a smile that felt crooked. “Smells good. You’re a saint.”

“Hardly,” she said, but her gaze softened as she watched him set the tray on the table and pour. “I’ve seen too much for sainthood.” She fussed with the napkins, folded and re-folded them. “How are we today?” Her voice pitched toward cheer, but it trembled at the edges.

Sherlock’s lips thinned. “We?” He reached for the scone closest to him and turned it between his fingers without taking a bite. Crumbs fell like pale confetti onto his trousers.

“I’ll take that as a ‘could be better,’” Mrs. Hudson said, stepping closer to John like gravity pulled her there. She patted his arm, and the gesture said everything she didn’t want to say in front of Sherlock. John felt the pressure of her fingers settle into his skin and hold.

“I’ll make more tea,” he said, for something to do. The pot was full, steam curling. He measured out another sugar, slid a plate toward Sherlock. “Eat.”

“That’s an order?” Sherlock asked, not moving.

“It’s a request,” John said, even. “From your friend.”

He didn’t look at John, but the scone made it to his lips. He took a reluctant bite. It was a small victory. John pretended not to see it as one.

Mrs. Hudson hovered, then pulled herself together and smoothed her blouse. “Well,” she said too brightly, “I’ll just—Oh, I nearly forgot, John dear, could you… a moment?” She tipped her head toward the hall. “Just a quick word.”

John glanced at Sherlock. He didn’t object. He didn’t react at all. The closed-off angle of his body said enough. John nodded. “Be right back.”

They stepped into the narrow landing, and Mrs. Hudson shut the door behind them with a soft click. The dimness of the stairwell felt kind compared to the flat’s washed-out light. For a second, she stood there with both hands resting on the banister, the fight draining out of her posture.

“I don’t like it,” she said quietly, eyes darting back to the door and then to John. Gone was the brisk landlady; in her place was a woman who had watched them both come and go through too many storms. “He’s been like this for days. Not eating, not sleeping properly—when he does, it’s at odd hours with lights blazing. He’s… worse than usual.”

John swallowed, the words heavier than he wanted to let them be. “I know.”

“And you’ve been so patient,” she rushed on, as if afraid he’d wave her off. “I see you trying. Tea and that little bowl and humor, and it’s lovely, it is. But he frightens me when he goes quiet like this. He walked right past me yesterday morning, eyes like no one was home. I said, ‘Good morning,’ and he said, ‘No,’ like I’d asked him a question. He didn’t notice the toast burning. The whole kitchen smelled like a bonfire.”

The picture was too easy to imagine: Sherlock drifting through, a ghost in his own house. John felt something twist under his ribs.

“And he won’t eat,” she whispered. “He picks. He makes messes and then… nothing. He goes still. I knocked last night and he didn’t answer, but I could hear the floorboards—he was moving about. I don’t want to be a fusspot. I know he’s grown. I know. But I can’t help it. He’s my boy.”

John found himself nodding, slow. “He’s my responsibility,” he said before he could stop himself. It came out rawer than he meant. Not true, not in any legal sense, but in the ways that counted, it felt carved into him. “I’ll watch him. I’ll… manage it.”

Mrs. Hudson’s eyes softened. She reached up and cupped his cheek for a second, a quick, maternal touch that he didn’t expect and couldn’t quite take in. “You always do,” she said. “You always have. But promise me you’ll be firm. He listens to you when you push. Not to me. Not to anyone else.”

John blew out a breath and looked at the scuffed step below his feet. “Firm,” he repeated, as if trying the word on. It felt wrong in his mouth. He thought of the way Sherlock’s eyes had met his earlier, brief and naked. “I will. I promise.”

She exhaled, the tension easing out of her, but not all the way. “Good. And if you need anything—if he needs anything—you tell me. I’ll make soup. Proper soup, not from a tin. He can’t refuse my soup.”

“He can and he has,” John said, and it pulled a reluctant laugh from both of them. It faded too quickly.

Mrs. Hudson looked toward the door again, worry tightening her features. “He’s lonely,” she said. “Don’t tell him I said that. He hates it when I—well. He is. He’s better when there’s something for that brain to chew on. Without it, he chews on himself.” Her voice cracked. “I hate that.”

John pressed his lips together. He felt the bruised edge of his own helplessness. “I’ll keep him busy,” he said, quiet. “Or at least… I’ll keep him.”

She blinked back tears and patted his arm again. “That’s all any of us can do.” She straightened, wiped at her eyes with a brisk hand. “Right. I shouldn’t keep you. You’ll want to see he eats that scone.”

John nodded. He turned the handle and stepped back into the flat. The air met him with the same stale chill, the same strip of light across the carpet, but something in him had been steadied and loaded at once. Sherlock was in the same place, elbow on knee, scone half-gone, the apple slices untouched. He looked up at John with a flicker of interest, or perhaps he sensed the shift.

John closed the door gently and leaned against it for half a second, anchoring himself. He crossed to the table, took the apple bowl, and moved it to the arm of the sofa—closer, without making a speech of it.

“Eat those,” he said, kind and firm in the same breath.

Sherlock arched a brow. “Orders, then.”

“Requests,” John corrected. He sat in his chair and picked up his tea. “And I’m not above nagging.”

Something eased in Sherlock’s face. He reached for an apple slice, bit it, winced at the sweetness, and chewed anyway. John watched, not openly, not enough to make him bolt. Just enough to count the swallow and let some tight knot inside him loosen.

From the hall came the faint creak of Mrs. Hudson’s retreating steps, the sound of someone who would always be nearby. John held that in his chest like a promise.

“We’ll find a case,” he said, half to Sherlock, half to the room. “Soon.” He didn’t add what he thought: until then, I’ve got you. He didn’t need to say it. He set his cup down, rolled up his sleeves, and settled into the patient work of staying.

The knock this time wasn’t Mrs. Hudson’s—too tentative, too uneven, like the hand behind it wasn’t convinced it should be there at all. John glanced at Sherlock. No movement. He set his tea down and stood. The second knock came, a half-beat late and somehow more desperate.

John opened the door.

The young man on the landing looked like he’d outrun several bad nights without stopping. He had the rumpled sort of neatness that suggested he’d started out with a plan and lost it halfway through: pale shirt buttoned wrong at the wrist, tie loose and skewed, expensive coat with rain freckles clinging to the shoulders like a nervous habit. His hair was dark and too long, pushed back and too quickly abandoned. He clutched a worn leather satchel in front of him like a shield.

“Um,” he said, peering around John’s shoulder into the flat with quick, suspicious flicks of his eyes. “Is this—are you—this is Baker Street, isn’t it? Mr. Holmes? Sherlock Holmes?”

“That’s right,” John said, gentle. “Come in.” He stepped aside. The man hesitated on the threshold, then crossed it in a careful step as if he expected a trap to spring.

Inside, his gaze skipped over everything—the skull on the mantel, the messy chemistry set on the table, the slant of Sherlock’s long frame on the sofa—and landed, finally, on Sherlock’s face. He flinched and then pulled himself together, like he’d been seen more deeply than he’d consented to.

“I, um. I—my name is Alistair Finch.” He gripped the satchel harder. “I—can I sit?”

“Please,” John said. He gestured to the chair opposite Sherlock. Alistair took it like someone taking a lifeboat seat, perched and rigid. The satchel went on his knees, his fingers white at the edges.

Sherlock’s eyes had sharpened, a hint of life cutting through the fog. He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. The air moved differently when he focused, like a lens clicking into place.

Alistair swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing. “You don’t know me,” he began, breathless. “Obviously. And I know this will sound mad. I know how it sounds. But I—I don’t know where else to go.”

John sat back, angled toward him, patient. “Tell us.”

Alistair’s laugh was a brittle thing. “There’s a curse,” he said, and then winced at his own word. “They say curse as if it’s—” He shook his head, hair falling into his eyes. “I’m not superstitious. I’m not. But people in my family are dying. One after another. And every time, it’s—it’s an accident. Except it isn’t.”

John felt Sherlock sit a fraction straighter, the minute awareness like a change in temperature.

“How many?” Sherlock asked, voice soft, scraped clear.

Alistair’s gaze darted to him and then away. “Three,” he said. “In a year. My uncle first. He fell from the gallery stairs at the manor. Slipped on a rug, they said. He’d walked those stairs every day for thirty years.” His hands tightened on the satchel. “Then my cousin. Gas leak. They said it was faulty piping. Only it had passed inspection two months before and it wasn’t just in his room—it was in his room.”

“And the third?” Sherlock prompted.

“My sister,” he said, so quietly the word almost didn’t make it out. The satchel slipped and he caught it, knuckles knocking together. “The brakes on her car failed coming down the hill to the village. They said the lines were old. They were replaced last winter. I took it in myself.”

Silence pressed at the story’s edges. The old clock on the mantle ticked once, loud and obscene.

John leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “You said it isn’t an accident.”

Alistair nodded, once, a twitch rather than a movement. “It can’t be. Not all of them. We’re not cursed—God, listen to me—but—” His free hand gestured helplessly. “There were little things. Details. With my uncle, the rug was always anchored. He was meticulous. With my cousin, he was a smoker, yes, but his windows were always open. There were marks by the latch, like it had been forced. With my sister… she’d complained about her brakes. She said they felt wrong. She did. She did.”

The last words broke on a breath. He blinked hard and forced them back. John’s chest tightened in that old, familiar way. Grief made people swallow the worst parts, as if choking them down would save anything.

“Police?” Sherlock asked. “Reports? Inquests?”

“Yes,” Alistair said. “Of course. I didn’t— I mean, my mother insisted on—on everything proper. The coroner’s reports say accidental death. The police were… thorough.” He said the word like a test. “But they don’t know our house. They don’t know us. They don’t see the pattern.”

Sherlock’s gaze flicked to the satchel. “You’ve brought files.”

Alistair nodded, quick. “Copies. Notes. I took photographs. You can see… well. You can see.” He fumbled with the clasp. John reached out to steady the flap and Alistair startled, then managed a strained, apologetic grimace. “Sorry. Sorry. I’m—sleep has been—insufficient.”

“Tea?” John offered quietly.

Alistair looked at him like he’d offered him a mercy. “Please.”

John stood, moved to the tray. Behind him, the sound of paper slipping free, Sherlock’s soft inhale as he lifted a photograph.

“Tell me about the curse,” Sherlock said, the word not mocking but clinical.

Alistair huffed a humorless breath. “Our house has a history. We’re old money. Or we were. There are stories. Wars, plagues, bad marriages. Finches don’t die in their beds, my grandmother used to say. We—there are portraits with eyes that follow you and locked rooms and everyone drinks too much at Christmas. It’s all very Gothic. The locals say the land takes back what it’s owed. I wouldn’t have—” He swallowed. “I wouldn’t have said that to anyone with a badge.”

John set a cup by his knee. Alistair wrapped both hands around it like he could pull the heat up into his chest.

Sherlock’s attention was absolute. “Who benefits,” he asked, almost idly, “when Finches don’t die in their beds?”

Alistair’s lips trembled. “There’s the will,” he said. “There’s always the will. You must already know that sort of thing. It’s… complicated. We argue about it when we’re bored.” He slid a photograph across to the edge of the sofa with a careful, shaking hand. “But this—” He tapped the image, not looking at it. “You will understand what I mean. The coroner didn’t see it. They never see it.”

John glanced down as he passed the milk. The photograph showed a tiled floor, a smear of something dark at the edge of the frame, the bottom step of a wooden staircase with a corner of rug turned up just so. Nothing dramatic. Nothing obvious. The kind of image that made sense if you were looking at it through Sherlock’s eyes.

Sherlock’s fingers touched the corner of the print, not taking it yet. “Why me?” he asked. “Why not continue insisting to the police. Or hire some private security man in a black suit to lurk in corners.”

Alistair’s mouth lifted in an attempt at a smile. It failed. “Because you see things,” he said simply. “Because you aren’t afraid to be right when everyone else is comfortable being wrong. Because I’m terrified, Mr. Holmes. And because—” He looked at John then, a quick, vulnerably human look. “Because I need someone who doesn’t talk to me like I’m hysterical.”

John held his gaze and nodded once. “You’re not.”

Alistair nodded back, throat working. He pushed the satchel the last few inches into Sherlock’s reach. “Please,” he said. “Before there’s another accident.” He tried to make the last word neutral and couldn’t. It sounded like a plea.

Sherlock looked at the photograph without blinking. The flat was very quiet. Outside, a siren wailed and receded. The sharp focus in Sherlock’s eyes caught and held, a spark finding dry tinder.

John sat very still, a familiar prickle across his skin. The dust in the light seemed to change direction. Sherlock’s gaze moved to the next photograph, then the next, his hand finally closing on the paper as if he’d been waiting for permission from something inside himself.

“Tell me everything,” he said. His voice was calm. It always was, at the beginning of a storm.

Alistair started at the beginning, halting and careful. He spoke names that meant nothing to John, dates that did. Sherlock flicked through pages with a precision that bordered on contempt, rearranging the photographs into an order that only he understood. His posture was quiet arrogance: long body angled away, wrist indolent as he handled the paper, gaze cutting only where it wanted to.

“Your cuff,” Sherlock said suddenly, not looking up. “Frayed inside left seam, not the right. You write with your left hand, so the right cuff should show wear, not the left. Unless the shirt is secondhand. The coat—” his eyes flicked, razor-bright “—is two seasons old and a size too large. You’ve lost weight in the last three months. You’ve tightened the belt. The shoes were good once; now the soles are thinning at the ball and heel.”

Alistair’s mouth parted. He looked down as if checking his own body for proof.

“You told the truth without meaning to,” Sherlock continued, voice smooth, almost bored. “Old money. Past tense. You are liquid-poor and asset-rich. Which is to say: you are desperate. Debts. Not small ones. Your choice of tie knot speaks to someone who’s been taught but doesn’t care to remember. The man who knows how and chooses not to. Sloppy because you’re tired. Or drunk more often than you admit.”

“Sherlock,” John said, tone a soft warning. He could feel Alistair shrinking.

Sherlock’s glance skimmed John’s face and bounced back to the papers. It softened nothing. “You came here to save your inheritance,” he said to Alistair. “Not to lift a curse. Someone has begun trimming branches from the family tree, true, but your fear isn’t spectral. It’s the bank. The house bleeds money. The portraits will not cover the mortgage. You will not cover the mortgage.”

Alistair swallowed, twice. “I didn’t— I don’t care about—” He stopped, shut his eyes, opened them again. “It’s my family,” he said, naked in the way hard things sometimes are. “Whatever else, it’s my family.”

Sherlock hummed. It wasn’t agreement so much as acknowledgment. He set a photograph aside and selected a stapled report from the satchel. “Post-mortem,” he said. “Your cousin. The gas leak.” His eyes moved quickly. “Carbon monoxide saturation. Predictable. Your uncle, craniocerebral trauma, also predictable. Your sister—” He turned a page and paused. The tiny pause meant more than a shout. John felt it and sat up straighter.

Sherlock’s finger tapped the margin. “This is… sloppily written,” he said, irritation prickling along the edges of the words. “No, not sloppy. Blind. There’s a note here—minor cellular degeneration in the hepatic tissue. Dismissed as artifact. It’s not artifact.”

Alistair leaned in. “What does that mean?”

“Means your coroner saw something he didn’t understand and smoothed it out with a word. Artifact. As if microscopes lie on their own.” Sherlock shoved the report at John without looking. John took it, scanning, feeling the weight of Sherlock’s attention without being under it.

“Patchy necrosis,” John read. “Non-specific. They blamed shock. Blood tests…” He squinted. “They ran the standard panel. Nothing flagged.”

“Of course nothing flagged,” Sherlock said, and the bored tone was gone now, stripped to something cleaner. “They looked for what they knew how to find. They did not look for what wasn’t there.”

Alistair’s cup rattled in his hands. He steadied it. “I don’t—what wasn’t there?”

“Common poisons,” Sherlock said. “Heavy metals. Alcohol. Opiates. They looked for the obvious. They did not consider—” He reached for another photograph, one John hadn’t noticed. A close-up of a fingernail bed, faint discoloration that could be anything. “This. This is wrong.”

John leaned in until his shoulder brushed Sherlock’s sleeve. The contact was brief, but it lodged in him, steadying him in a way that had nothing to do with science. “Subungual staining,” John said. “Barely.”

“Not bruising.” Sherlock’s voice dropped, the way it did when he was speaking to himself as much as to them. “And these,” he flicked to a shot of the inside of a wrist, pinprick marks that looked like insect bites. “No IV at the scene. Your sister hated hospitals, according to your statement.” He glanced up at Alistair, who jerked a nod. “Yes. So not venipuncture from paramedics. Self-inflicted? Unlikely. A vector, then. Environmental. But targeted.”

Alistair’s eyes hunted their faces. “What does that mean?”

John half-smiled without meaning to. “It means he’s interested.”

Sherlock was already somewhere else. “Not aconite. Too dramatic. Not digitalis; there would be arrhythmias noted. Something subtler. Something that degrades quickly, binds transiently, leaves the metabolism in ruins without a signature. A rare alkaloid? No. Look at the liver. And the discoloration—”

He stood. The sudden movement startled Alistair. John didn’t flinch. Sherlock crossed to the kitchen without looking at where he was going, hand landing on his chemistry kit like he’d tethered it there with thought alone. He opened drawers, moved glass with a deft impatience that put each thing exactly where he needed it. The violin on the table caught the edge of his sleeve and rattled. He ignored it.

“Sherlock,” John said, low. He didn’t know what he meant to say. Be kind. Be careful. Eat something.

“Shh,” Sherlock said absently, the syllable not unkind. “Quiet.”

He poured a measure of something clear, capped, sniffed, discarded. His fingers were quick, efficient. The scent of acetone lifted, then iodine, then something acrid that made John blink. Sherlock’s eyes were bright now, not feverish, precise. He was alive in the way he hadn’t been an hour ago.

“Your sister,” he said over his shoulder. “Any new medications? Herbal supplements? Spa treatments? Alternative therapies? She was a creature of fashion. You are not, but she was. Your family subscribes to appearances.”

Alistair shook his head, then stopped. “There was… a clinic,” he said, tentative. “In town. She went twice. For… I don’t know. Detox? She said it helped her sleep.”

Sherlock made a small, satisfied sound. It was not pleasant. “Of course she did.” He set a vial on the burner, flame low, eyes intent. “Plant source. Imported. Poorly regulated. Administered under the guise of wellness. A microdose, cumulative, a stimulant until it isn’t. It binds, it rots, and then—brakes fail. Hands shake. Judgment dulls. An accident that was only waiting for a hill.”

John’s mouth went dry. He could see it, the awful logic of it, the way it tucked itself into the folds of a life until it became the life. “What plant?”

Sherlock’s lips curved, small and sharp. “We’ll see.” He adjusted the flame, watched the liquid shiver. “But if I’m right, the coroner wouldn’t have found it. They never look for it because they don’t think anyone would be mad enough to use it. Which makes it exactly the sort of thing someone clever and desperate would choose.”

Alistair’s breath hitched. “So I’m not mad.”

“No,” Sherlock said. He lifted his head then, finally meeting Alistair’s gaze full-on. “You are not mad. You are late.”

He let that sit, then turned to John, the weight of it all landing in his eyes. John felt the pull like gravity. “We’ll need a list of everything your sister ingested in the weeks before she died,” Sherlock said. “Anything she touched regularly. Cosmetics. Tonics. Teas. The clinic’s name. Their practitioners.”

“I—yes,” Alistair said, already half-standing. “Yes.”

“And,” Sherlock added, softer, the edges still sharp but the center warmer, “you will leave the financial gymnastics for later. This isn’t about your inheritance. This is about someone who thinks patterns can be manufactured without being seen. They’re wrong.”

The flame licked blue. The clear liquid in the vial blushed, faintly, to a shade that meant something only to Sherlock. His eyes widened, delighted. “Oh,” he breathed, and in that sound was the first real joy John had heard from him in weeks.

He took a step closer to the bench. John moved with him, standing shoulder to shoulder as if the two of them had always been designed to fit exactly there, in that gap between a question and its answer. Sherlock didn’t look away from the glass, but his hand knocked against John’s on the edge of the table and didn’t move.

“Good,” Sherlock said, to the vial, to the room, to the puzzle unfolding under his hands. “Good.” He looked up at Alistair, gaze keen and newly, fully awake. “We’ll take the case.”

Alistair sagged as if the decision were a chair under him. He nodded too quickly, almost a bow, and fumbled for his phone. Sherlock was already moving, energy coalescing into purpose. He handed Alistair a notepad with a pen stabbed into the spiral. “Names. Addresses. Your sister’s routines. The clinic. And your siblings’ last twenty-four hours before each ‘accident.’ As precise as you can be.”

Alistair scribbled. John watched Sherlock over the edge of the file. The set of his shoulders had shifted—keener, no longer braced against his own mind. Relief loosened something tight in John’s chest, and right behind it, the old, sharp worry. He knew what came with that light in Sherlock’s eyes: skipped meals, sleepless nights, genius burning hot enough to singe anyone standing too close.

“John,” Sherlock said without turning, “we’ll need one hundred milliliters of acetonitrile, fresh silica, and molecular sieves. And the bookstore on Bentinck—they had a volume on phytotoxins misfiled in travel. Third shelf, spine torn near the index.”

John blinked. “You checked?”

“I looked,” Sherlock said as if that covered both place and time. “Also, chamomile tea. The good kind, not the—” he flicked a disdainful hand toward the drawer where John kept teabags “—dust packets.”

“Right,” John said. He reached for his jacket, checked his wallet, and looked at Sherlock’s profile, the clean line of concentration. “Any chance you eat something while I’m out?”

Sherlock’s mouth tipped. “Conditional: only if the something isn’t bread masquerading as food.”

“Mrs. Hudson’s got shepherd’s pie in the freezer.”

“Mm,” Sherlock said, which, for him, was as good as agreement.

Alistair tore the page from the pad and held it out with both hands. His knuckles were pale. “I’ll get more details from the house. I can have records sent.”

“Send them to my email,” Sherlock said, and rattled it off. “And don’t alert your mother to our involvement yet. Not until I say.”

Alistair swallowed and nodded, a little lost. John stood, his hand landing briefly on the younger man’s shoulder, grounding. “We’ll be in touch by tonight,” he said, and meant it.

When the door closed behind Alistair, the flat adjusted around the absence like a lung filling. The familiarity of it was a balm. Sherlock’s violin lay on the table, a stack of half-sorted newspapers slid to the floor, glass clinked. The silence that had been suffocating for days now felt like a pause before music.

Sherlock began to talk as he moved, words catching on thoughts and releasing. “We’ll need to test for a class of compounds typically used in… alternative settings. The clinic’s ‘detox’ is dressed up quackery, but someone there knows exactly what they’re doing. We get a sample from their product line, we break it down, we find the delivery method. Cosmetic? Ingested? Dermal patch? If the discoloration under the nail beds—”

“Shopping first,” John said, slipping into the rhythm without thinking. He picked up a stray scarf, tossed it onto the chair, and caught Sherlock’s eye. The corner of Sherlock’s mouth softened as if he’d been reminded that the world existed beyond molecules.

“Yes,” he conceded, and there was something almost grateful in it. “Try Patel’s for the acetonitrile. He won’t ask questions, and he owes me.”

“He owes you because you solved the case of his missing lab key by finding it in his shoe.”

“He owes me because I didn’t mention it to his wife,” Sherlock corrected, already reaching for his laptop. “Oh, and magnesium sulfate. And gloves. The nitrile kind, not latex.”

“Anything else?” John asked, half-amused, half-exasperated.

Sherlock looked up, eyes very bright. “Don’t get killed.”

John huffed a laugh that felt like it went somewhere deep. “I’ll do my best.”

On the street, the air was crisp, traffic rolling, London indifferent to the surge in John’s veins. He tucked his scarf tighter and moved with purpose, the list forming in his mind as a map. Patel’s shop first—dim, cluttered, the kind of bell that barked when you pushed the door. He left with a bag clinking softly, a stern warning about the price of glassware, and, because Patel knew Sherlock, a thrown-in packet of silica gel beads.

The bookstore on Bentinck smelled of paper and dust, the owner a woman with half-moon glasses who peered over her book long enough to identify John as “the doctor from the papers.” He found the volume exactly where Sherlock said it would be, misfiled and scuffed, and added a monograph on hepatic enzymes for good measure. The clerk rang him up and gave him a knowing look. “You tell Mr. Holmes,” she said, “that if he wants to hide books in travel, he might try under Scandinavia instead of Spain. Fewer people go there.”

John smiled. “I’ll pass it on.”

At the tea shop, he debated the merits of loose chamomile versus the blend with lavender, heard Sherlock’s voice in his head about adulterants, and bought the plain, best quality. On impulse, he added a lemon tart. Sugar, protein, bribe.

Back on Baker Street, Mrs. Hudson was in the hall with a basket of laundry. “Oh, John,” she said, brightening. “Is he—?”

“Back,” John said, the word filled with several meanings.

“I thought so. The violin stopped.”

He climbed the stairs to find the sitting room transformed. Not tidy—never that—but purposeful. Books constellated around the laptop, sticky notes bloomed like pale flags, and the chemical bench was clearing of clutter in the way Sherlock cleared things: by task, not category. He’d made space on the table near the window, the burner lit again, a different flask humming gently.

“Progress?” John set his bags down, the smell of lemon and tea rising between them.

“Hypotheses,” Sherlock corrected, but his eyes flicked to the pastry box and then back to the screen. “You were quick.”

“You were easy to shop for,” John said. He handed over the acetonitrile and the book. Sherlock took them with care he reserved for instruments and rare texts. Their fingers brushed, a brief, bright point of contact that neither commented on.

“Chamomile,” John added, setting the tin near the kettle, and then, pointedly, “Shepherd’s pie.”

Sherlock’s lips did the almost-smile again. “You’re relentless.”

“Efficient,” John said, echoing the word he had once used to defend Sherlock to a skeptical detective inspector. He moved into the kitchen, put the pie in the oven, and set water to boil. The domestic noise threaded through the clink of glass and tap of keys, filling the room with a hum that felt like them.

“Once we have the list from Alistair, we’ll prioritize the clinic,” Sherlock said, voice floating over the top of the kettle. “I’ve emailed them for an appointment under a false name. They’ll take us if I play it right.”

“We?”

Sherlock looked up. “You think I’m letting you miss the fun?”

John shook his head, a smile tugging. “No. I suppose not.”

The kettle reached a rolling boil. John poured, the steam fogging his glasses for a second, the scent of apple and meadow filling the air. He brought Sherlock a mug, and Sherlock took it without looking away from the screen, hands wrapping around the heat like he’d learned to do that somewhere along the way, likely because John had put cups in those hands enough times to make it habitual.

For a long minute, the only sounds were the simmer on the burner, the faint rustle of pages, and the occasional click of Sherlock’s tongue when a thought landed. John leaned against the table, sipping his tea, watching the line of Sherlock’s profile in the soft afternoon light. Relief eased through him in an even, steady pulse. Trepidation lay under it, a low hum. He would guard the man and the mind both; he always had.

“John,” Sherlock said suddenly, eyes still scanning. “Thank you.”

It was quiet, a thread tucked into the larger weave of the moment. John felt it all the same. He swallowed, set his mug down, and nodded as if they were discussing measurements. “You’re welcome.”

Outside, a siren rose and fell. Inside, the dust motes turned in the sun, and the flat, at last, was alive.