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The Prey	By : amandalee Category: S through Z > Sherlock (BBC) > Sherlock (BBC) Views: 3756 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: The authors do not claim ownership to Sherlock or any of its characters, and we make no money from writing this.

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Chapter 9

John was the first to awake the following morning, the sun hardly yet illuminating the sky. Sherlock had to have still been asleep, as no noises of the detective's usual bored activities could be heard through his closed door. No banging on walls, no dangerous experiments involving any household products he could find in the lodge... John opened the door as carefully and quietly as possible, peeked inside, and saw his partner curled up in a foetal position, limbs twisted in bedcovers as though he had lost a fight with them.

Turning on the coffeemaker in the kitchenette, John filled the filters, added water, and removed some sugar from the cupboard, curious as to the quality of the final product. Staring at the little machine and watching the slow drip, he stood silently, taking advantage of the quiet. He did not bother checking on Mary, as she was a light sleeper, and she likely would not be presently interested in seeing his face. The teakettle sat solitarily on the counter, still undamaged but slightly scuffed from its fall from last night.

John briefly wondered if this would be taken out of their lodging pay.

An hour passed, and no one emerged from either bedroom. John speculated that both Sherlock and Mary were trying to wait the other one out, equally determined so as not to be the first to leave their respective strongholds.

John stretched out on the sofa, being for once thankful for his short stature, as it allowed him to sleep without having to keep his legs perpetually bent, or his feet hanging off the end. He'd had breakfast: milk and cereal, and two cups of coffee to kickstart the day. Yet there was absolutely nothing to do, and John felt he might as well fall asleep again out of boredom. Was this how Sherlock felt most of the time?

He swept his eyes across the interior of the picturesque little lodge, seeing if he would discover something not previously noticed, until his gaze landed on Sherlock's laptop. John had hooked it up to an adapter last night before going to sleep, and he assumed the battery was fully charged now. Perhaps he could while away some time by surfing online? Granted the WI-FI connection was insufferably slow to someone who was used to the speed and comfort of modern broadband, but it was the only thing available, and John supposed they should be grateful for that. The area did not even have mobile phone service.

John pressed on the power button, and the device buzzed back to life. The photo he had been studying yesterday with Mary while Sherlock lay passed out on the sofa appeared on the screen, and John clicked it down to the taskbar. There were no more clues for him to figure out. He proceeded to the small Firefox icon on the desktop, half-fearing that Sherlock's internet access would be password-protected. The detective, however, was not that paranoid, and John thanked his lucky star for that, as he never could have been able to guess Sherlock's password.

Just as he opened up Firefox, a Skype window appeared, and the doctor was just about to check it off when it occurred to him that the username and password had already been entered.

Curiosity burning like Sherlock's sun-baked skin, John clicked the sign-in button. The contact list was scant, to say the least. However, there was one name present which left John torn between surprised at its presence and not surprised whatsoever.

And it was online.

Wondering briefly if Mycroft's Skype account had been created exclusively for Sherlock, John selected the contact and skimmed through the previous conversation, although it involved little else but infrequent small talk, perhaps the occasional question of what Sherlock's daily schedule was like. John couldn't help but wonder if the words were codes for something else.

Gazing over the messenger window and noting the video call option, he looked up at a tiny circle on the topmost border of the laptop. It had to be a web camera.

Though Mycroft Holmes was usually the last person John wanted to speak with, he was still an intelligent man who knew his younger brother better than most. Even if he was an overly-preened windbag. Mycroft would know what to do... hopefully.

The doctor clicked the video call button and waited. And waited. And still waited. Though he was fully aware of the time difference, this was still a difference between the morning and five hours from it. Mycroft would be busy "saving the world" and "leading Britain", but at least he would not be sleeping.

John was about to give up and close the laptop when the window expanded and a familiar face filled the screen. Already Mycroft looked vaguely annoyed and slightly puzzled to see not his brother but his brother's assistant.

"Good morning, Doctor," he said guardedly looking at John's blank expression.

"Good afternoon, Mycroft," John returned.

"Enjoying your little vacation to the Land of the Free?" the elder Holmes inquired, and as always, he was able to make a simple question sound like a disguised insult... or threat.

"Oh yes, very much," John said quickly, hoping that Mycroft would not be able to make any brilliant deductions from just seeing a somewhat blurry representative of his face. No body language or other non-verbal signals. Maybe he had a chance.

Mycroft leaned back, away from the camera, and John could see the inside of what was undoubtedly the civil servant's office. It would be past four in the afternoon in England, but the doctor knew, naturally, that Mycroft Holmes did not exactly occupy a regular desk job.

"What do you want, Doctor? And may I ask why you are using my brother's private Skype account? I had it set up so that he could contact me anytime at the event of an emergency."

"Sherlock's fine, I assure you," John hurried to say. Only to realize that it was a blatant lie.

"Well then, Doctor. I have to prepare for a meeting with the US foreign secretary in just one hour, and..."

"Sherlock is not fine," John broke in.

Mycroft raised a questioning eyebrow, face still impassive, but John could tell he was definitely more attentive now.

John cleared his throat. "I wanted to ask you about this... since you've known him longer than I. Or anyone, really."

The politician gave a weary sigh. "Did he bring cocaine with him?"

"No! God, no! Why would---"

"I see." Mycroft waved one elegant hand at John through the screen. "But you did find something else. The medication he sometimes "forgets" to take?"

John nodded. "Clozapine. He told me he has bipolar disorder."

"Which is true. It runs in the family, I'm afraid."

"Mycroft, are you saying that... that you...?"

John's question was met with a scoff from the red-haired man. "Not I, Doctor. I work for the government. I would never have been granted security clearance if I'd had a mental illness. But our father."

Mycroft then paused, his forehead creased from the apparently painful recollection. Yet his Ice-man mask did not falter.

"Has Sherlock ever told you about our father's death?"

"Only that he died when Sherlock himself was seven."

"He killed himself. Filled his pockets with rocks and walked into the Thames. I was in college when it happened, and because of this unfortunate event I had to delay my studies one whole semester. Mummy could not manage Sherlock on her own, not unpredictably, the little hellion he was. I stayed home until we could have him sent off to boarding school. Except for some disciplinary infractions, some bigger than others, my brother did quite well until he had his first manic episode at sixteen."

John could imagine how such an episode had played out, but only a little. Considering how both Holmes brothers behaved, their childhood had to have been far from ordinary, even without mental illness.

"I imagine things were more than a little difficult, especially after your father died," he said. He was not pitying, but sympathetic. His opinions of Mycroft notwithstanding, the doctor knew the man still loved his brother... in his own way anyway.

"Does Sherlock know you've discovered his medication?" Mycroft asked, faintly switching gears.

"He does," John replied, feeling a little more at ease with the particular memory. "He was defensive at first, which was understandable. But I assured him it changed nothing between us."

Even in the blur of the laptop screen, John could see Mycroft pursing his lips at the remark. He was getting suspicious of this conversation.

"And what is between the two of you, Doctor?" he asked. That tone was back in his voice again, sharp edges growing around his voice. "I would have thought someone of your fastidious temperament and mentality would be able to cope with Sherlock's condition... especially considering your profession and... friendship with him."

John picked up on the way the civil servant said 'friendship'. The warnings from the past rang clear in his memories.

"So," Mycroft continued, "what is this talk really about? If this little revelation went as well as you claim, how is Sherlock 'not fine'?"

"He has not come out of his room since yesterday," John said slowly, unsure of how much he should reveal to Mycroft. "And he refuses to speak to me. He's not even invested in the case anymore. I fear he might be lapsing into a depression."

"Are you speaking as a medical man, Doctor Watson, or as a concerned friend?"

John hesitated for a moment. His emotional entanglement with Sherlock surely hadn't hampered his professional eye. He could still recognize depression when he saw it.

"Both," he finally admitted. "His behaviour is not normal, even for him."

"I see." Mycroft cocked his head to the side, and his forehead creased in a way that suggested wheels were turning inside his head, quite rapidly. "Anything in particular that might have triggered it...?" he then inquired. "Did you two have a quarrel, perhaps?"

"I suppose you might call it that," John confessed. "But we have them all the time. You know how he is!"

Any hope at garnering sympathy from Mycroft in this particular matter disappeared when he saw the politician's look of suspicion turn into a look of cold fury. For a moment he believed Mycroft would actually reach out through the screen and throttle him.

"What did you do, John Watson?" Mycroft snarled, his posh, public school accent laced with something that could only be described as primal. "I'm going to find out anyway, so you'd do well to remember it's in your best interest to tell me the truth."

John could both hear and feel the rush of blood in his ears. "Nothing that we haven't done a hundred times before," he murmured and purposely avoided looking into the camera.

When he finally gave a fleeting glance to the face on the screen, Mycroft's eyes had narrowed in a glare like a stern father who was attempting to get a confession from a badly behaved child.

"I swear it was nothing I did to him," John insisted, flustered yet trying to keep his voice down. " I wasn't even planning on shagging him! He wasn't even supposed to come with us. And then suddenly he's initiating sex between us the moment Mary's gone."

Reliving the memories was actually making John angry, and Mycroft could hear the anger in his voice, despite the doctor's attempt at speaking low.

"Christ, I couldn't believe it," John softly exclaimed. "Suddenly Mary's back in the lodge and here I am, stinking of sex musk with Mary knowing exactly what's happened."

John could not help feeling as though he should be laying down on a sofa as Mycroft took notes. He then had to wonder how Sherlock himself would do in a psychologist's office. He had to have been sent to a psychologist at least once in his past, and knowing Sherlock, the interaction could not have gone well.

Mycroft however looked uninterested in John's rant, or at the very least unimpressed.

"And...?"

"And so I'm trying my damnedest to win her back, convince her that it was all a mistake, that it wouldn't happen again. And of course she's not buying it, and..."

John saw Mycroft close his eyes, his expression grave.

"And yet you thought sex was the way to comfort my brother following a harrowing revelation such as the one you described? Especially since you are, as you say, now committed to someone else."

"I... I didn't mean it like that," John tried, but everything he could think of to use for his defense suddenly seemed hollow, if not downright ludicrous. Instead he had to fight back the urge not to simply scream 'I made a mistake, now tell me how to make it right!' Mycroft, for all his savvy, did not have all the answers. This was John's mess, and thus also his to sort out.

"My brother has feelings for you, and has had them for some time," Mycroft said. "Surely this can't come as a complete surprise?"

"He's certainly never made them known!" John snapped back, realizing that this was exactly the reason for his bitterness toward Sherlock. The detective had his chance with him, but he'd elected to ignore it.

"Of course not, he's Sherlock Holmes." Mycroft stated this as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "It's all new to him, Doctor. He's afraid - no, terrified - to let anyone close. And with good reason."

"What is that supposed to mean?" John demanded, getting angrier by the second. "You've had it in for me from the beginning, and why? I'm not good enough for a Holmes? Because of my upbringing? Or am I simply not clever enough to be deserving of your brother's attention? I'm just a poor ex-army surgeon, after all. Just your average bloke, not a bloody genius!"

"Yes," Mycroft said calmly, unfazed by the tirade. "I admit I was suspicious of you when you and Sherlock first got acquainted, but I assure you it had nothing to do with neither your upbringing nor your level of intellect. I was merely looking out for my brother, since Sherlock has previously had problems with your type."

"My type?!"

"Yes, soldier fellows. Veterans, like yourself." Mycroft's tongue snaked out to wet his lips. "What if I told you that Sherlock's last 'boyfriend' was a Gulf war vet who trampled him half to death?"

The question mentally stopped John in his tracks. He frowned at the notion and stared at Mycroft's unreadable expression.

"Being serious..."

Mycroft gave him another stern glare as though daring John not to believe him.

"He never told me about that." John's voice was quiet, to the point that he thought Mycroft might not be able to hear his reaction.

"I don't imagine he's told anyone. I only knew about it because I was there to see the damage done to him."

TBC...
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The Prey