'It's Complicated', part 4
Oct. 24th, 2010 03:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
r_scribblesPart 4 of the story of Victor Trevor. No Mycroft at all in this one, but plenty of Sherlock and John being badass. A bit of violence and implied attempted sexual assault. Oh, and spot the ninja Divine Comedy quote! Thrown in especially for Not!Mycroft.
John was just opening the door to Room 7 when he heard Victor’s voice over his earpiece.
‘Hello again, Sherlock.’
It certainly wasn’t just a simple greeting. John could hear shades of anxiety in Victor’s voice… but shades of something else, too. A certain aggression, mixed with a slight slurring of his words. Victor had had too much to drink.
It was the booze thickening Victor’s voice that made John decide to push ahead with the task in hand rather than run downstairs to help Sherlock out. He’d once witnessed Sherlock talk both of them out of a showdown with a dozen Millwall Supporters in a pub car park, as well as having seen him take on two Bouncers at the same time and still come out relatively unscathed. One middle aged, inebriated man was peanuts to Sherlock.
Still, he decided as he plugged in the first memory stick and started copying files, he’d continue to listen.
Just in case Sherlock needed help.
Which, he was sure he wouldn’t.
‘Hello again, Victor,’ came Sherlock’s voice. ‘Don’t tell me you got lost, too.’
‘We’re all lost, Sherlock.’
‘And you’re drunk.’
There was the faint rustle of fabric over the earpiece. It sounded as though Victor had moved a step or so closer to Sherlock. When he spoke again, his voice was certainly louder.
‘That dance – the little show of the kiss… for who’s benefit was that, Sherlock?’
‘John wanted to dance. He put on a request. It would have been very rude of me to have…’
‘I know he’s just your flatmate. I haven’t seen one of his blog entries where he so much as suggests otherw…’
‘Oh,’ interrupted Sherlock just as John’s own eyebrows raised in amused surprise. ‘You read John’s blog.’
Victor didn’t so much as stall. ‘A Saturday night alone with a bottle of bourbon and the internet. I’ve been having a few of those, lately. Pardon me for feeling a little wistful and Googling you. Quite an exhilarating read, this Personal Blog of John H Watson. What a life you lead. Elegance and danger.’ Victor lowered his voice to a murmur, although from the volume John could hear it, it was clear that Victor had moved well within Sherlock’s personal space. ‘I tell you something else, it’s a damn sight sexier than Belle Du Jour.’
‘You don’t say.’
‘Belle Du Jour doesn’t have as many gunfights or explosions.’ Victor paused for a second before continuing. ‘And besides… look at you.’
‘Victor,’ warned Sherlock, ‘you’re drunk.’
‘And I just couldn’t help myself thinking,’ Victor continued, unabashed, ‘”God, that could have been me. That could have been me having those incredible adventures with you, if only I hadn’t been so bloody stupid”.’
‘You weren’t the one who spoilt the friendship.’
‘Who said anything about just being friends?’
‘Victor,’ warned Sherlock again, but his voice was little more than a whisper now.
John frowned and paused in his work, torn between returning to the downloading and going to break up what was going on down there… did Sherlock even want it to get broken up? John couldn’t be sure.
‘You were right, Sherlock,’ murmured Victor, ‘you were so right about everything. I should have left Cynthia that night. She’s having an affair, you know. Everything’s so… so wretched. She doesn’t love me. I don’t know if she ever really did. But you? You were beautiful and exciting and so full of passion, and you made me want to do things that I knew I really shouldn’t do, and that frightened me. It still does.’
There was the sound of fabric being pushed against something… something textured. Carpet? A curtain? Up in the attic bedroom, John got to his feet, even though he didn’t know where Sherlock was or whether he wanted help.
‘Aren’t you being a little physically overbearing for someone who claims to be frightened of me?’
John decided to take that as a hint that Sherlock wanted him to break up the little tryst. He started heading for the bedroom door. Wherever they were, it was downstairs, at least.
‘Tell me to stop, and I will,’ replied Victor.
‘Victor…’ it wasn’t said as a warning any more. It was practically a sigh.
John faltered, half way out of the bedroom. A sigh? For a tosser like Victor Trevor? Perhaps Sherlock was a genius, but he had a bloody awful taste in men. There was another faint sigh, and a tiny “mmf”, followed by the unmistakable sound of saliva between lips, and John’s heart sank. This was starting to sound less and less like the sort of thing that Sherlock would thank him for barging in and breaking up. He was a grown man, and fully capable of making his own decisions.
What, said a little voice deep in the back of his head, like his decision to play Good Pill Bad Pill Roulette with a Serial Killer?
Along with the noise that John had to accept was the sound of kissing, even though the thought made his skin crawl, came a quiet ‘clink’. He’d heard that sound before. Snooker. The sound of two Snooker balls gently coming into contact. He’d noticed a Pool room downstairs. Ugh. On a Pool table. Very classy. This got better and better.
He carried on down the stairs. As long as Sherlock was around to rescue him from deadly Chinese Circus acts and exploding Parkas, John would continue being around to rescue Sherlock Holmes from Sherlock Holmes. Whether Sherlock liked it or not.
After a few steps, John heard Victor’s voice again, full of self satisfaction. ‘God, I love the way you kiss.’
John grimaced, despite himself.
‘Victor,’ muttered Sherlock.
‘It’s so… so desperate. I love it. The little noises you make…’
‘Victor. There’s something I have to tell you.’
‘What?’
‘Something I suspected for some time, but I’ve only just had the data I’ve needed to be able to confirm my hypothesis.’
Victor laughed, softly, smugly. John started taking the stairs two at a time.
‘And what are your findings, Genius?’ asked Victor.
‘I don’t want you any more.’
John stopped.
‘What?’ asked Victor, his voice flat now.
‘I don’t want you any more,’ repeated Sherlock. ‘I thought that that might be the case, but I wanted to know for sure. I don’t even really know what it was that I saw in you, but it’s gone now.’ Sherlock paused. ‘You can get off me, now.’
Another pause, and the closeness of Victor’s breath even after Sherlock had told him to get off made John start rushing down the stairs again.
‘I said,’ repeated Sherlock, as calmly as he would had John ignored his request for a cup of tea, ‘get off me.’
‘No,’ replied Victor, anger rising in his voice. ‘You’re not doing this to me. Not tonight.’
‘Let me guess,’ said Sherlock, his tone still placid. ‘The more you’ve suspected your wife of infidelity of late – correctly, might I add – the more your thoughts have gone back to that night with me all those years ago. You tell yourself it’s because I warned you things wouldn’t work out with her, but it’s because you can remind yourself that you were unfaithful to her first – you’ll always have that up on her. You remember this silly, lonely boy who was infatuated by you and you look him up on the internet…’
‘You make it sound like I’ve only started thinking about you again the past few months,’ Victor told him. ‘I never stopped thinking about you, Sherlock.’
This seemed to throw Sherlock a little. ‘Really?’
‘It made things easier when you started cropping up on the internet,’ Victor replied, ‘but I’ve always wanted to know how you’ve been doing… what you’ve been up to. Because the older you got, the more amazing the stories coming back to me got. I never thought you were a silly boy. I thought you were brilliant, even back then. So you don’t know what you saw in me… any idea what it was I saw in you? What I still see in you?’
Sherlock didn’t answer. John had come to the bottom of the stairs. Where was that bloody Pool room?
‘I’m not a poof, you know. I don’t fancy blokes, at all.’
‘Yes, I remember your protestations from before. But as I recall, I didn’t really count because “from behind it was just like doing a skinny bitch up the arse”.’
‘I’d have thought you’d be smart enough to work out that it wasn’t that, Sherlock. You’re an exception to the rule. Because I’m an exception to yours. I know he’s just your flatmate. And I know that little dance was for my benefit. You did enjoy the art of the pricktease, didn’t you? Still do, no doubt.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Sherlock’s voice was still calm and neutral.
‘I mean, I know you make people want you, and I know you don’t let people have you. Except for me. I didn’t just fuck this untouchable genius, he begged me to fuck him. I didn’t climb up your pedestal; you knocked it down for me.’
‘And no matter what Cynthia does, you get to keep that in mind,’ concluded Sherlock. ‘You were able to have me. Which, by your logic, means you could have anybody you wanted.’
‘Bingo.’
‘But, you can’t have me.’
‘Of course I can.’
‘No, you really can’t, Victor.’
John picked up his pace. He had been sure the Pool room had been a left turn after the cloakroom. Or should that have been a right turn after the dining room…?
‘Victor,’ came that warning voice of Sherlock’s again, ‘you’re causing a scene.’
‘Only you and me here, Sherl…’
There was a thud, and Victor gasped in indignant surprise as much as pain. John slowed. He’d found the door to the Pool room just as Sherlock had shown himself perfectly capable of handling the situation by himself. If he went in now, he’d probably just get nagged at for abandoning his task with the laptop. John turned back and started making his way towards the stairs once more.
‘I think I’ve made my position on this matter clear,’ said Sherlock, ‘wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Not the one I’d hoped for. Not the one I like.’
‘Victor, stop embarrassing yourself with this ridiculous, aggressive seduction technique. It’s tedious.’
‘”Aggressive”…?’
There was a second thud, and a third, and these ones sounded different. This time Victor wasn’t grunting in pain or shock, but with anger and physical effort. Pool balls clattered on one another. John turned yet again, and started sprinting towards the Pool room.
‘I thought you liked aggressive,’ Victor railed. ‘I thought that was your “position”. When you’re not pressed down in your brother’s upholstery so I don’t have to look at your face when I…’
John threw open the door to the Pool room and was on top of Victor before the man had chance to finish the sentence. For a moment, all John could see of Sherlock were two legs struggling for purchase and a hand outstretched, groping for a makeshift weapon on the Billiards table that Victor had just used his greater body weight and two surprise blows to pin him down on. John grabbed the fist that Victor had raised above his head to bring down in the third punch to Sherlock’s face and twisted Victor round, pulling him away from the Billiards table just as Sherlock swung a Billiard ball up towards where Victor’s head had just been with such force that the thing flew out of his hand, finding no skull to crack against, and embedded itself into a partition wall some ten feet away.
Victor swung a punch at John with his weaker free hand, but this time it was John who had the element of surprise on his side. Victor was strong, but he was drunk and clumsy. John blocked the swing easily and pushed Victor away, sending the larger man careering into a Snooker table. Sherlock pushed himself up off the Billiards table, a cue clenched in his hand, but didn’t strike Victor. It was obvious he wasn’t going to try anything on with two of them about. John wasn’t sure why he’d expected Sherlock to look more shaken than he did. All that seemed different about his friend was a trickle of blood coming from one nostril and a flash of anger over his face that quickly subsided when he saw that Victor was no longer a physical threat.
‘This guy bothering you, Sherlock?’ asked John.
Sherlock dropped the cue. ‘Not any more.’ And, to John’s surprise, put his arm around him, staring defiantly at Victor
Victor glared back at them. ‘I know you’re just his flatmate. He doesn’t do love any more. I know what he’s like.’
‘No, you don’t,’ replied John. ‘You don’t know anything. Does it actually warm your soul to think you managed to ruin him for everyone else? Are you really that twisted? Go back to your wife.’
‘My wife doesn’t want me.’
‘Neither does Sherlock.’
Victor screwed up his face, bitterly. ‘Tell me, doctor, does he still hum Jerusalem to ward off that panic attack when you cram yourself inside his scrawny ar…’
Another sentence Victor would never get to finish, due to a fist in the face, albeit John’s this time.
‘Shall we go upstairs, John?’ asked Sherlock conversationally as John shook the feeling back into his knuckles. ‘I doubt we’ll be much missed down here.’
‘Delighted,’ replied John. He put his arm around Sherlock again, and they left the room together.
By the time they’d reached the foot of the stairs, their arms had untwined and they were both trying their hardest only to laugh quietly.
‘Tell me,’ said Sherlock, failing miserably at remaining straight-faced, ‘are we just going to walk upstairs, or were you planning on throwing me over your noble steed and galloping off into the sunset with me?’
‘Frankly, I’m a bit put out that you haven’t offered me a dainty handkerchief already,’ John giggled. ‘Isn’t that the usual token for saving a damsel’s chastity?’
‘I’m perfectly capable of fending off the attentions of drunken, middle aged lawyers, you know.’
‘Yes, you looked it, sprawled on the Billards table. And who, exactly, did you suppose would have cleaned up the mess if you had smashed his head in with that ball? Because it wouldn’t have been muggins, here.’
‘I wasn’t about to kill him, John. And your moment of Valour has just cost our efforts to copy across all those files a valuable five minutes.’
‘Worth it though, wasn’t it?’
Sherlock glared at John. ‘Are you really asking whether a moment of personal satisfaction over someone who hurt me twenty years ago was really worth risking this whole delicate case…?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Ah. Because it was.’ Sherlock grinned, sharply. ‘It really was.’
-x-
A bit of a short chapter, I know, but otherwise it would have made the final chapter really long. One last one to go in which both the 2010 and 1990 stories will be tied up.
John was just opening the door to Room 7 when he heard Victor’s voice over his earpiece.
‘Hello again, Sherlock.’
It certainly wasn’t just a simple greeting. John could hear shades of anxiety in Victor’s voice… but shades of something else, too. A certain aggression, mixed with a slight slurring of his words. Victor had had too much to drink.
It was the booze thickening Victor’s voice that made John decide to push ahead with the task in hand rather than run downstairs to help Sherlock out. He’d once witnessed Sherlock talk both of them out of a showdown with a dozen Millwall Supporters in a pub car park, as well as having seen him take on two Bouncers at the same time and still come out relatively unscathed. One middle aged, inebriated man was peanuts to Sherlock.
Still, he decided as he plugged in the first memory stick and started copying files, he’d continue to listen.
Just in case Sherlock needed help.
Which, he was sure he wouldn’t.
‘Hello again, Victor,’ came Sherlock’s voice. ‘Don’t tell me you got lost, too.’
‘We’re all lost, Sherlock.’
‘And you’re drunk.’
There was the faint rustle of fabric over the earpiece. It sounded as though Victor had moved a step or so closer to Sherlock. When he spoke again, his voice was certainly louder.
‘That dance – the little show of the kiss… for who’s benefit was that, Sherlock?’
‘John wanted to dance. He put on a request. It would have been very rude of me to have…’
‘I know he’s just your flatmate. I haven’t seen one of his blog entries where he so much as suggests otherw…’
‘Oh,’ interrupted Sherlock just as John’s own eyebrows raised in amused surprise. ‘You read John’s blog.’
Victor didn’t so much as stall. ‘A Saturday night alone with a bottle of bourbon and the internet. I’ve been having a few of those, lately. Pardon me for feeling a little wistful and Googling you. Quite an exhilarating read, this Personal Blog of John H Watson. What a life you lead. Elegance and danger.’ Victor lowered his voice to a murmur, although from the volume John could hear it, it was clear that Victor had moved well within Sherlock’s personal space. ‘I tell you something else, it’s a damn sight sexier than Belle Du Jour.’
‘You don’t say.’
‘Belle Du Jour doesn’t have as many gunfights or explosions.’ Victor paused for a second before continuing. ‘And besides… look at you.’
‘Victor,’ warned Sherlock, ‘you’re drunk.’
‘And I just couldn’t help myself thinking,’ Victor continued, unabashed, ‘”God, that could have been me. That could have been me having those incredible adventures with you, if only I hadn’t been so bloody stupid”.’
‘You weren’t the one who spoilt the friendship.’
‘Who said anything about just being friends?’
‘Victor,’ warned Sherlock again, but his voice was little more than a whisper now.
John frowned and paused in his work, torn between returning to the downloading and going to break up what was going on down there… did Sherlock even want it to get broken up? John couldn’t be sure.
‘You were right, Sherlock,’ murmured Victor, ‘you were so right about everything. I should have left Cynthia that night. She’s having an affair, you know. Everything’s so… so wretched. She doesn’t love me. I don’t know if she ever really did. But you? You were beautiful and exciting and so full of passion, and you made me want to do things that I knew I really shouldn’t do, and that frightened me. It still does.’
There was the sound of fabric being pushed against something… something textured. Carpet? A curtain? Up in the attic bedroom, John got to his feet, even though he didn’t know where Sherlock was or whether he wanted help.
‘Aren’t you being a little physically overbearing for someone who claims to be frightened of me?’
John decided to take that as a hint that Sherlock wanted him to break up the little tryst. He started heading for the bedroom door. Wherever they were, it was downstairs, at least.
‘Tell me to stop, and I will,’ replied Victor.
‘Victor…’ it wasn’t said as a warning any more. It was practically a sigh.
John faltered, half way out of the bedroom. A sigh? For a tosser like Victor Trevor? Perhaps Sherlock was a genius, but he had a bloody awful taste in men. There was another faint sigh, and a tiny “mmf”, followed by the unmistakable sound of saliva between lips, and John’s heart sank. This was starting to sound less and less like the sort of thing that Sherlock would thank him for barging in and breaking up. He was a grown man, and fully capable of making his own decisions.
What, said a little voice deep in the back of his head, like his decision to play Good Pill Bad Pill Roulette with a Serial Killer?
Along with the noise that John had to accept was the sound of kissing, even though the thought made his skin crawl, came a quiet ‘clink’. He’d heard that sound before. Snooker. The sound of two Snooker balls gently coming into contact. He’d noticed a Pool room downstairs. Ugh. On a Pool table. Very classy. This got better and better.
He carried on down the stairs. As long as Sherlock was around to rescue him from deadly Chinese Circus acts and exploding Parkas, John would continue being around to rescue Sherlock Holmes from Sherlock Holmes. Whether Sherlock liked it or not.
After a few steps, John heard Victor’s voice again, full of self satisfaction. ‘God, I love the way you kiss.’
John grimaced, despite himself.
‘Victor,’ muttered Sherlock.
‘It’s so… so desperate. I love it. The little noises you make…’
‘Victor. There’s something I have to tell you.’
‘What?’
‘Something I suspected for some time, but I’ve only just had the data I’ve needed to be able to confirm my hypothesis.’
Victor laughed, softly, smugly. John started taking the stairs two at a time.
‘And what are your findings, Genius?’ asked Victor.
‘I don’t want you any more.’
John stopped.
‘What?’ asked Victor, his voice flat now.
‘I don’t want you any more,’ repeated Sherlock. ‘I thought that that might be the case, but I wanted to know for sure. I don’t even really know what it was that I saw in you, but it’s gone now.’ Sherlock paused. ‘You can get off me, now.’
Another pause, and the closeness of Victor’s breath even after Sherlock had told him to get off made John start rushing down the stairs again.
‘I said,’ repeated Sherlock, as calmly as he would had John ignored his request for a cup of tea, ‘get off me.’
‘No,’ replied Victor, anger rising in his voice. ‘You’re not doing this to me. Not tonight.’
‘Let me guess,’ said Sherlock, his tone still placid. ‘The more you’ve suspected your wife of infidelity of late – correctly, might I add – the more your thoughts have gone back to that night with me all those years ago. You tell yourself it’s because I warned you things wouldn’t work out with her, but it’s because you can remind yourself that you were unfaithful to her first – you’ll always have that up on her. You remember this silly, lonely boy who was infatuated by you and you look him up on the internet…’
‘You make it sound like I’ve only started thinking about you again the past few months,’ Victor told him. ‘I never stopped thinking about you, Sherlock.’
This seemed to throw Sherlock a little. ‘Really?’
‘It made things easier when you started cropping up on the internet,’ Victor replied, ‘but I’ve always wanted to know how you’ve been doing… what you’ve been up to. Because the older you got, the more amazing the stories coming back to me got. I never thought you were a silly boy. I thought you were brilliant, even back then. So you don’t know what you saw in me… any idea what it was I saw in you? What I still see in you?’
Sherlock didn’t answer. John had come to the bottom of the stairs. Where was that bloody Pool room?
‘I’m not a poof, you know. I don’t fancy blokes, at all.’
‘Yes, I remember your protestations from before. But as I recall, I didn’t really count because “from behind it was just like doing a skinny bitch up the arse”.’
‘I’d have thought you’d be smart enough to work out that it wasn’t that, Sherlock. You’re an exception to the rule. Because I’m an exception to yours. I know he’s just your flatmate. And I know that little dance was for my benefit. You did enjoy the art of the pricktease, didn’t you? Still do, no doubt.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Sherlock’s voice was still calm and neutral.
‘I mean, I know you make people want you, and I know you don’t let people have you. Except for me. I didn’t just fuck this untouchable genius, he begged me to fuck him. I didn’t climb up your pedestal; you knocked it down for me.’
‘And no matter what Cynthia does, you get to keep that in mind,’ concluded Sherlock. ‘You were able to have me. Which, by your logic, means you could have anybody you wanted.’
‘Bingo.’
‘But, you can’t have me.’
‘Of course I can.’
‘No, you really can’t, Victor.’
John picked up his pace. He had been sure the Pool room had been a left turn after the cloakroom. Or should that have been a right turn after the dining room…?
‘Victor,’ came that warning voice of Sherlock’s again, ‘you’re causing a scene.’
‘Only you and me here, Sherl…’
There was a thud, and Victor gasped in indignant surprise as much as pain. John slowed. He’d found the door to the Pool room just as Sherlock had shown himself perfectly capable of handling the situation by himself. If he went in now, he’d probably just get nagged at for abandoning his task with the laptop. John turned back and started making his way towards the stairs once more.
‘I think I’ve made my position on this matter clear,’ said Sherlock, ‘wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Not the one I’d hoped for. Not the one I like.’
‘Victor, stop embarrassing yourself with this ridiculous, aggressive seduction technique. It’s tedious.’
‘”Aggressive”…?’
There was a second thud, and a third, and these ones sounded different. This time Victor wasn’t grunting in pain or shock, but with anger and physical effort. Pool balls clattered on one another. John turned yet again, and started sprinting towards the Pool room.
‘I thought you liked aggressive,’ Victor railed. ‘I thought that was your “position”. When you’re not pressed down in your brother’s upholstery so I don’t have to look at your face when I…’
John threw open the door to the Pool room and was on top of Victor before the man had chance to finish the sentence. For a moment, all John could see of Sherlock were two legs struggling for purchase and a hand outstretched, groping for a makeshift weapon on the Billiards table that Victor had just used his greater body weight and two surprise blows to pin him down on. John grabbed the fist that Victor had raised above his head to bring down in the third punch to Sherlock’s face and twisted Victor round, pulling him away from the Billiards table just as Sherlock swung a Billiard ball up towards where Victor’s head had just been with such force that the thing flew out of his hand, finding no skull to crack against, and embedded itself into a partition wall some ten feet away.
Victor swung a punch at John with his weaker free hand, but this time it was John who had the element of surprise on his side. Victor was strong, but he was drunk and clumsy. John blocked the swing easily and pushed Victor away, sending the larger man careering into a Snooker table. Sherlock pushed himself up off the Billiards table, a cue clenched in his hand, but didn’t strike Victor. It was obvious he wasn’t going to try anything on with two of them about. John wasn’t sure why he’d expected Sherlock to look more shaken than he did. All that seemed different about his friend was a trickle of blood coming from one nostril and a flash of anger over his face that quickly subsided when he saw that Victor was no longer a physical threat.
‘This guy bothering you, Sherlock?’ asked John.
Sherlock dropped the cue. ‘Not any more.’ And, to John’s surprise, put his arm around him, staring defiantly at Victor
Victor glared back at them. ‘I know you’re just his flatmate. He doesn’t do love any more. I know what he’s like.’
‘No, you don’t,’ replied John. ‘You don’t know anything. Does it actually warm your soul to think you managed to ruin him for everyone else? Are you really that twisted? Go back to your wife.’
‘My wife doesn’t want me.’
‘Neither does Sherlock.’
Victor screwed up his face, bitterly. ‘Tell me, doctor, does he still hum Jerusalem to ward off that panic attack when you cram yourself inside his scrawny ar…’
Another sentence Victor would never get to finish, due to a fist in the face, albeit John’s this time.
‘Shall we go upstairs, John?’ asked Sherlock conversationally as John shook the feeling back into his knuckles. ‘I doubt we’ll be much missed down here.’
‘Delighted,’ replied John. He put his arm around Sherlock again, and they left the room together.
By the time they’d reached the foot of the stairs, their arms had untwined and they were both trying their hardest only to laugh quietly.
‘Tell me,’ said Sherlock, failing miserably at remaining straight-faced, ‘are we just going to walk upstairs, or were you planning on throwing me over your noble steed and galloping off into the sunset with me?’
‘Frankly, I’m a bit put out that you haven’t offered me a dainty handkerchief already,’ John giggled. ‘Isn’t that the usual token for saving a damsel’s chastity?’
‘I’m perfectly capable of fending off the attentions of drunken, middle aged lawyers, you know.’
‘Yes, you looked it, sprawled on the Billards table. And who, exactly, did you suppose would have cleaned up the mess if you had smashed his head in with that ball? Because it wouldn’t have been muggins, here.’
‘I wasn’t about to kill him, John. And your moment of Valour has just cost our efforts to copy across all those files a valuable five minutes.’
‘Worth it though, wasn’t it?’
Sherlock glared at John. ‘Are you really asking whether a moment of personal satisfaction over someone who hurt me twenty years ago was really worth risking this whole delicate case…?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Ah. Because it was.’ Sherlock grinned, sharply. ‘It really was.’
-x-
A bit of a short chapter, I know, but otherwise it would have made the final chapter really long. One last one to go in which both the 2010 and 1990 stories will be tied up.
