It Could be You

Chapter 13

 "I have a shift this morning, will you be all right here?" John asked Sherlock over breakfast the next morning.

"Of course, I'll be all right," Sherlock said indignantly. Did the man think he'd lost all ability to take care of himself overnight simply because they had been intimate?

"I know you'll be...Sherlock. I just meant you we still have some things to sort out. I can stay home today if you'd like," John said smiling and running a finger along the back of Sherlock's hand. It sent shivers up his spine.

Sherlock huffed out a little gasp and smiled back, "I'm going to analyze the contents of that bottle and see if I can pull up those cases I saw in that book. There must be some connection there I'm missing."

"All right, I have a short day. Only six hours and I can be home by two," John said. "I like to talk more about, well, all of it. You, me, Carter."

"There is no more Carter," Sherlock said and stood up from his chair. He crowded John up next to the counter and looked down into his eyes. "He's no longer a person I'd care to..." here he stopped ducking his head and not knowing how to continue. "You're not having second thoughts about last night?"

John reached up and placed his hands on Sherlock's cheeks. He pulled him down into a kiss and said, "Never. I know things will be different now, but I'll never regret anything we did last night. When I asked you if you wanted me to stay home today, I actually wanted you to say yes and pull me right back into that bedroom and have your way with me."

"Hmm," Sherlock rumbled, "You make a tempting offer, but," he said eyes roving over to the empty beer bottle on the kitchen counter.

John laughed good-naturedly and said, "You've got a puzzle to solve. Right, off to work I go." He gave Sherlock one last kiss on the cheek and said, "See you later, honey."

Sherlock looked aghast at him and said. "John, no! No silly endearments, especially not in public."

"You didn't seem to mind last night?" John said looking up into Sherlock's eyes searching for something he might have done wrong.

"I quite liked one in particular," Sherlock admitted lowering his eyelashes and looking at the tops of his bare feet.

John tilted his chin up so he could see his eyes, "Okay, love. Only that one and only in private."

Sherlock smiled and felt the glow in his chest return in full force. When John got back from work, they'd talk about it all. He still didn't know how he would tell Carter he no longer wanted to be with him. Now that he and John were, perfectly together, he found his interest in the other man gone.

John gathered his bag and headed to work. Sherlock sighed as he left; the flat felt empty with John gone but it always did these days. Now that they'd become, Sherlock swallowed down a sharp feeling of excitement and even trepidation, lovers; he thought he might hope that John would stay with him indefinitely. Forever.

Well, he'd run some tests on the substance in the bottle and do research on the stories he'd seen in Carter's book. He remembered most of them, but he'd flipped through pretty fast the previous night. He hoped there would be enough to make some connections.

The substance turned out to be Valium. One or two pills, he guessed. Sherlock wondered who would have wanted to drug Trisha when a thought occurred to him. Perhaps Trisha wasn't the target? Perhaps the drug was meant for John? Or, even himself? John had brought beer, but the ones offered to them had already been in the flat. Sherlock remembered the coldness of the beer pressed into his hand so it couldn't have been the stuff they'd brought. Theirs had not been cold. Sherlock had taken only a cursory sip of his as he despised beer. If there had been something in his drink, he would not have gotten enough in his system to do much. Then he remembered that John had taken one of the drinks from the sack he'd brought to the gathering. Even warm, the beer was the brand he preferred. So, John would not have had any chance to drink tainted beer either. John had only thought to grab Trisha's bottle. "Not enough evidence," Sherlock growled to the room. It seemed solving cases that he was directly involved in took a bit more introspection than it did when he was not involved in the case personally. Interesting.