John tried to slip the note back into James's pocket. James was pretty out of his mind at this point, so he was able to do this with an awkwardly placed hug. At any other time, James probably would have been unnerved, but now, he made a conscious effort to hug back. "Thanks, bud," James murmured. "'Preciate it."

John had sobered up quite a bit. He made his best efforts to drag an unwilling and deeply intoxicated James from the bar, to the sidewalk, where a bus was driving up the road.

They rode the bus in silence. James dozed off, falling asleep on John's shoulder, which made John substantially more uncomfortable than a drunk person would have been over such a transgression. John didn't make an attempt to move him, though. He kind of just sat there. Staring at the person across from him, who was a young woman reading Pride and Prejudice.

"Overrated," John slurred, hoping to distract himself from the grown, twenty-seven year old man that was drooling on his shirt.

The young lady looked up. "Pardon?"

"Pride and Prejudice. It's overrated."

"Oh." Her smile was perfunctory. She went back to reading. John felt alone.

Every few seconds, John would look down at James, trying to memorize him. Full pink lips, tanned skin. Dark eyelashes and short blonde hair. He looked like a child when he slept. His mouth was open and saliva was threatening to ooze from the corner of his mouth, onto John's coat.

John put an arm around him, and adjusted his body to accommodate James's heavy mass. He remembered when they met, and how time quickened because he was full of energy, full of light, full of something John could never have.

Maybe it was stupid. He wasn't dead.

Not yet.

But he was young. Young enough to die and be a statistic.

James hated hearing about shit like that. Death tolls, and shootings, and bombings, and the Blitz. He hated that stuff. He always told John that people weren't numbers. Loss couldn't be quantified.

Sherlock would say that James's worldview didn't help save people; it only caused more pain, in the end. But if you didn't feel the weight of your actions, how could you make good ones?

That was a concept James understood. He wasn't a wise, stoic man - not like Mark was. He wasn't a father. He cursed too
much, and he called plenty of fucking people racists, and he had an issue with keeping his mouth shut - but he knew how a soul ticked. He knew that there was something else to a human, besides cells and chemicals. He knew that people weren't just numbers.

When a toll was announced, you didn't see his tongue click on the roof of his mouth; he didn't say, "Shame." A silence passed over his features and it reverberated throughout the room. If you were with James, you could feel the weight of the loss.

It was probably why he became a police officer after finishing his tours. Probably why he was going again. Probably why John felt so disgusting around him; like he was inching out of his own skin, pulling against the force of his own morality, his own inherent gravity.

James's home was adjacent to Mark's; a big two story stone wall, on a rural road, away from the buzz of the city. His home was significantly more expensive than Mark's. In America, his family were the elite of the elite; his father was a high ranking officer in The Great War, and when he came home and the Great Depression struck, he took a gamble and bought the recently crashed stocks in the oil industry in anticipation of the surge of automobiles and gasoline fed energy.

James described his childhood as a "clusterfuck of apathetic legacy building." And when James became eighteen, he went to New York West Point Military Academy to receive intensive combat training to please his father. He was a pilot. One of the best, apparently.

He met Francis while on duty. While stationed in Egypt, she was a merchant, selling goods at the local market with her father.

What a world that was. Already a minority in Egypt - her mother's side of the family immigrants from West Africa, and a Jewish convert in a place where Judaism and Islam were in constant conflict with each other - she travelled as an outsider from one country to another after the Italian invasion.

Now she was here, in Britain. When John knocked on the door (with one blackout drunk James leaning on him), she came to the door wearing her worn, dirty denim overalls (and one of James's sweaters, John noticed), her curly black hair neatly tied back in a head wrap. "James," she gasped immediately, stepping out and grabbing him from John.

"John," he mumbled blearily, leaning against the pristine yellow door of his home. He had a sheen of sweat on his forehead, and he looked pale. Francis tried to support the dead weight, but couldn't manage it without John's help. She and John helped him inside, past the pristine kitchen and onto the couch in the living room. He fell into it, his legs looping over the end of the couch.

"We were just gonna have a few drinks," John said to Francis apologetically, across James's limp body.

"What happened to 'a few'?"

John's eyes darted back to James, whose eyes had lidded shut. He was out. "He went overboard."

"Frannie?" James slurred to no one in particular. "Francis."

"Do you know why?" Francis asked, ignoring her boyfriend.

"No," John said, unsure of whether or not Francis knew about James's order of induction. Regardless, he knew that he couldn't be the one to tell her. She already looked pretty torn up. There was a subtle exhaustion in her eyes, hardly unusual for John or Claire - but Francis was optimistic, despite certain circumstances. This imagery, however - James, blackout drunk on the couch - seemed to be poking holes in her.

Francis leaned into James's ear and whispered something in her mother dialect; James smiled and turned over, away from them both. John watched him, too quietly unnerved to be amused.

"He must stop this," Francis whispered, almost to herself, walking briskly away into the kitchen.

"He does this a lot?" John asked, the shock leaching into his voice. He followed her, stepping from the hardwood onto tiling. She was pouring herself a water - almost violently.

"He tells me, 'One drink after work,' but he never has just one," she stated, her voice a hiss. "He says it helps him sleep."

"When did this start?" John's voice was a hushed tone. He feared James was listening.

"Three or four weeks ago." She looked back into their living room, checking to see that James hadn't moved. As was to be expected, he was still there, in a blue lump on the couch. To John: "He will not say why."

John shuffled his feet, looked everywhere but her face. A profound guilt ate at him, acidic and relentless.

Seeing his discomfort, Francis squinted in suspicion; crossed her arms across her chest. In a tone that was more condemning than hopeful: "Do you know why, John?"

John gave her his best sympathetic smile and lied without lying, like a fox.

"If anything is going on, he hasn't told me."

So Francis didn't know. No one knew anything at all.

John wondered, almost bemusedly, what it would cost to keep it that way.

***

"Why are you here?"

John didn't really know.

"Hi to you, too, Sherlock," John said. He still felt a bit dizzy from his drinks. "May I come in?"

Sherlock left the door open when he went back inside. John followed and shut it.

"You don't have any paints with you," Sherlock called back as he slid into his office.

"I know." He went in after Sherlock, then sat on the couch that he suspected was purely for aesthetics. No two people had sat here at the same time, it seemed. Sherlock immediately sat on his desk, scanning John for an answer as to why he was here.

"You look troubled," Sherlock said. "And you stink of beer."

"Just got back from the pub, yeah," John murmured, pinching the bridge of his nose and shutting his eyes tightly. He was quiet for a moment as he exhaustively smoothed out the tenseness in his forehead. "James was selected from the draft."

Sherlock barely missed a beat. "How'd you find out?"

"Paper. It, uh, fell from his pocket," John said, waving his spare hand about.

"Oh." He seemed to think about it for a moment, and then with a forced amount of delicacy, he sounded out, "I'm... sorry."

"You don't need to pretend you care," John murmured.

"What if I do care?" Sherlock said, almost as if it was a challenge.

John gave him a look filled with pain. Like Sherlock even had the ability to. Like there was something in his shattered, twisted psyche that could fathom friendship and loss. Sherlock and John weren't fucking because Sherlock had a complex emotional core. They weren't fucking so Sherlock could offer him strained, half-arsed apologies.

Sherlock got up from the desk, though. He sat down on the green canvas couch next to John, keeping his eyes forward, staring at an undefined point in space.

"I mean" - John's voice cracked, half from anger - "I can't even imagine life without him."

"He's not dead, John."

"But what if he is?"

"By use of common sense and empirical evidence, it is quite obvious he isn't dead. You last saw him thirty minutes ago."

"But what if he is?"

"...He's not."

Sherlock said it like he somehow was certain of that, like he could see the future. John knew better and still, he allowed himself to drift into the warmth of naïveté, moving a bit closer to Sherlock and easing into his chest - which was warm and firm under his head.

Maybe it was the drink talking. He was expecting for Sherlock to jump up, rush out, burn all his clothes and then engage in hate sex to discourage any such affection in the future - but Sherlock stayed. Granted, he made a movement that denoted discomfort, and he didn't seem to know what to do with his hands, and his chest was rising faster than it was before - but he let John put his head under the crook of his neck, his chin touching golden hair.

"I'm tired," John breathed.

"You're drunk."

"Tired and drunk," he agreed. Then, quieter: "He doesn't deserve it."

Sherlock just inhaled. Listened to John speak.

"He's the best man I have ever known. He doesn't deserve it."

"Sometimes we get things we don't deserve, John," Sherlock muttered in a baritone.

"Are you saying that from personal experience?" John asked, looking up at Sherlock's chin. "Your mom, your brother - your family, you never talk about them."

"You never talk about yours, either."

"I don't know what there is to say."

"My brother is a compulsively dangerous eater. Once he ate an entire cake - on my birthday," Sherlock joked, chuckling in that deep, rolling way he did.

John felt the rumbles of infectious, warm laughter in his chest, vibrating all around him. He started laughing, too. "You're so awful," he giggled. "To your own brother, too."

"He's an utter drama queen," Sherlock muttered.

"Does he know about you?"

"Not of my own volition," Sherlock said."He was arguably more keen than I was when I was younger. And of course, I eventually gave myself away."

"How?"

"My second... boyfriend, he, uh, he told."

John sat up from Sherlock's chest and looked back. "Told who?"

"My parents."

"What happened?"

"They didn't believe him; he had a lot to gain from me being an alleged homosexual. They thought it was slander. Sued their entire family, in fact. But Mycroft always knew."

John paused. Then: "You said... boyfriend."

"Indeed."

"What happened to that?"

"I don't go for that sort of thing, nowadays."

"Obviously, but-"

"His family went bankrupt. He never spoke to me again." Sherlock paused, thoughtful. "So I don't do that anymore."

John sat back into Sherlock's body, and this time, Sherlock didn't recoil. It seemed like he was trying to stay as still as possible so John didn't readjust. "My sister doesn't know," John said.

"Will she ever?"

John opened his mouth to answer, but then hesitated. "...I'm not sure if anyone will ever know."

"I know."

John looked straight up to see Sherlock looking down at him. John nodded hesitantly, keeping eye contact, lips open, vulnerability in his features.

With a feather light touch, John put a soft hand to Sherlock's neck, pulling him down and rearranging his body so that he was laying completely on the couch, his back pressed against the pillows. A feeling swelled in his stomach as Sherlock pivoted into view on top of him; lips parted, eyes half-lidded. He was straddling John's body entirely, on his knees and palms, gazing down with a look in his eyes John couldn't entirely place.

Sherlock took John's calf in his hand, lifting it to rest on his waist. John closed his eyes, and swallowed quietly.

The next second, he felt Sherlock's mouth on his, easing his lips open with a painful slowness.

He tasted clean, and minty. John wanted to lick the taste from his lips and teeth. "Mmm," he murmured, as Sherlock's tongue swelled against his own.

"What is it?"

"You taste like candy."

Sherlock grinned, immediately sliding down to John's neck and praising it in pecks and delightful laps of his tongue. John could feel the individual, tensed muscles that he studied in school contracting against his hands, which were feeling everything, passing over dips and rises in Sherlock's architecture.

When John was starting to whine a bit for more contact, the telephone began ringing, which Sherlock promptly ignored, becoming more frantic in his actions. With a huff, he lifted John's other leg onto his waist - John tightened his legs and lifted his arse up off the couch to show Sherlock how hard he was getting.

The sudden contact broke Sherlock's concentration for a moment where a telling groan slipped from his throat as he mouthed all along John's jaw, eliciting little pleasured noises from John's throat. When John's lips finally parted, the whimpers were reedy and desperate, lost to the air, breaking as they escaped his mouth.

The phone began ringing again.

"Don't get it - oh - don't," John whined in a high pitch, his voice cracking.

"I'd never," Sherlock hummed. He pressed his groin into John's, almost as if to show off. His cock felt hard and thick and it was rubbing enthusiastically against John's prick, which immediately became very aware of its presence. "Sherlock," John keened, his fingers pressing impossibly hard into Sherlock's clothed shoulder, "oh my - Christ-"

And the phone. Again. It seemed shrill and urgent.

"Uuuuuuuugh," Sherlock growled. "Must he call now?"

"Who?" John said, trying to calm his breathing. He was still hard; he didn't know whether or not Sherlock was going to have to kick him out (as he sometimes did) and then he'd have to finish himself off. Without answering, Sherlock got up off of John and picked up the telephone a couple of feet away. John exhaustively collapsed his head back on the armrest, making a point of teasing Sherlock by making little broken noises and working the heel of his hand up against his already hardened dick while Sherlock watched, agonizing.

John was about to unzip when he heard Sherlock greet the person on the other end of the line.

"Hello, Mycroft," Sherlock spat.

"Hello, brother dear. How are you?"

John's working turned into more of a persistent caress as he listened closely. He could hear Mycroft's responses, if he stopped making noise.

"Don't pretend like you care," Sherlock said, "what do you want?" He gave one more quick glance at John, who was touching himself, and poutily went back to glaring at the far wall.

"I want to know if you still have them," John heard.

His pulse increased a bit. Almost against his own will, John moaned to disguise the fact that he was listening in.

"No," Sherlock said. His voice was strained, one of his hands fighting to stay out of his pants.

"Where are they?"

"Isn't this a conversation we shouldn't have over the phone?"

John keened, making small nothing noises as he pretended to be lost in ecstasy. Finally, Sherlock turned around, giving John a glare.

"Who was that?" the man on the other side of the line asked.

"A child," Sherlock bit. John, in response, started fucking his hand, rolling his hips into his palm while locking eyes with Sherlock across the room. The sounds he was making must have been loud enough for Mycroft to hear; he made sure they sounded high and impatient so he wouldn't get suspicious as to who was acting like a child.

"So, you haven't told anyone?"

"Of course not," Sherlock hissed, looking away from John, "who do you take me for?"

"It's just that the plans are very sensitive and we can't have anyone finding out they exist." Mycroft paused. "Or who possesses them."

John had to use all his concentration to listen and keep himself hard at the same time. Plans? Sensitive?

"I promise you: they are in the utmost confidentiality. Now, I really must go, as a child is waiting for me to pay attention to them."

"I don't know how you do it."

Sherlock was almost about to hang up - but he paused. "Do what?"

"Children." John could almost hear Mycroft wrinkle his nose. "The smell, the noise..."

"Goodbye, Mycroft." Sherlock slammed the phone down on the receiver with a vehemence, the bulge in his dress pants very obvious as he walked back to the couch where John was waiting, straddling him down by the thighs. "You thought you were awful clever, didn't you?" he asked, unbuttoning his shirt.

"I can't believe you waited," John retorted. "Who was that, the King?"

"Oh, yes," Sherlock murmured, smirking. "We were planning our next midnight rendezvous."

John laughed and canted upwards to expose his neck eagerly. "Well, you tell him that you're otherwise engaged."

"Believe me," Sherlock said as he shouldered off his crisp white dress shirt, leaning down to kiss John's throat, "I will."

John's rumbling chuckle dissolved into a moan soon enough.

***

When Sherlock came, John loved watching his mouth work soundlessly, his body shaking, the balls John had cupped in his hands contracting as he fell apart. It was probably the only time you could see him so open and vulnerable, and the few seconds that it spanned John cherished immensely.

It was usually followed by a quick recovery - they toweled themselves off, put back on their clothes, and John either milled around or went home to Claire. Sherlock was always all business. Today was different - John was exhausted, and even his bottoming was slow and leisurely - he came with no sense of urgency.

In a huff of air, Sherlock collapsed. John nearly had the breath crushed from his lungs, but despite the discomfort, it was nice. Sherlock's head was tucked under his, and his breath was evening out, and John could feel Sherlock's pulse threading through his ribcage, like a song.

It was made apparent that Sherlock wasn't moving. He still was evening out his breaths - deep inhales and exhales racked through his chest, and John could feel all of Sherlock unabashedly. From the round of his calves, to his ribs and nipples, to his cheek against John's collarbones.

He tentatively touched the hair that was tickling his neck, so softly that John wasn't even sure Sherlock felt it. Sherlock made a sound so contented and small; it was almost as if he was with an entirely different person, rather than the indignant, cynical bastard that John was so well acquainted with.

John finally graduated to the nape of his neck, and then his shoulder blades, rolling out the kinks. His back was smooth on the surface, but had places of tension where taut muscle met muscle. John was taking his time - every movement was very deliberate.

"Aren't you spent?" he heard Sherlock say, apparently thinking that this was more than it was. Was he so unaccustomed to affection after sex that he didn't understand the concept?

"I'm spent," John sighed, "yeah."

"Then...?" Sherlock tilted his head to look at John, chin to John's chest.

"Shut up, Sherlock," John said. "You talk too much."

Sherlock still had a questioning look in his eyes.

"Oh, come 'ere," John said.

Sherlock hesitated, but then shimmied his body a bit closer, their heads lining up. John's eyes took him in, trying to manifest the feeling in his chest and show Sherlock in some physical way.

John kissed Sherlock's temple.

"How's that?"

Sherlock held John's gaze for longer than necessary. Softly, John pressed his lips to the corner of his mouth, and then his nose, and then his forehead.

"You alright?" John practically breathed. He didn't know how Sherlock would react. He was scared about how Sherlock would react. Invigorated, but fearful.

Sherlock had a look in his eyes; open, but still guarded, like a glass case. "What we have is good," he replied, much quieter than he usually was. "Don't ruin it by making it personal."

"So you're saying I could," John murmured. "If I wanted to."

Sherlock paused. His internal hurricane seemed to calm down for just a moment, where he thought over only one thing. When Sherlock answered, he sounded concise in a way he'd never been before, although his voice was taking on fear fast. Quietly: "Yes."

But then Sherlock was getting up and he was putting on his clothes and throwing John a wad of paper towels. "Get dressed," he said, his voice filled with those sharp edges John knew so well. "The faster, the better."

***

Sherlock knew that there was no way John was getting out of this without a nasty scar.

A scar where Sherlock kissed him, and touched him, and laid his cheek upon him. His eyelashes fluttered like butterflies and angels. Where Sherlock let his body infect John, and John took to the disease with no resistance at all.

Sherlock had him twisted around his finger like a piece of string. And he'd be goddamned if Sherlock didn't know that, too.

***

Claire was making dinner when John walked inside the house, as per usual. John popped in and kissed her cheek, and hummed, "Hello, dear."

She blinked at him with blank eyes, pausing in her vegetable cutting. "Hello."

"How was sewing club?"

"Today was my shift at the factory." She started chopping a cucumber furiously. "But you wouldn't know, would you?"

John paused behind her, and stayed silent, leaning onto the wall.

She continued, obviously struggling to stay calm. "I told you I was starting to help the war effort yesterday. And the day before, and the day before. What, do you think I sit at home all day and do nothing and your dinner - which you never eat - is conjured out of thin air?"

"Love, Claire, I just got home."

She spun around on her heel, the anger on her face quite evident. "From where, John?!"

John became legitimately taken aback. "From work."

"Really? I talked to Mrs. Morgen at the grocery store. She says you haven't even been coming on some days; that Mr. Morgen is this close to firing you." Claire stepped forward, and John became vastly aware of the fact that she was an inch taller than him with her heels on. "She asked me if you were ill. And you know what I said? I said you were, because if I didn't, my husband would have made me out to be a fool." She smiled, then, mirroring the the tense, sarcastic Cheshire grin that John used so often. There was no laughter in her eyes, just angry, wet tears. "But I am a fool. Aren't I, John?"

John was quiet.

"Answer me!" she shouted hysterically, shoving John, although his back was already against the wall. There were tears flooding her face, now, freckles blended in to the pink of her cheeks. "Am I a fool, John?"

John tried to touch her. He tried to reach out, and make her understand, somehow - but she shielded her face with her arms, crossing the room to the chopping board, where she began furiously chopping vegetables while sniffing. "Guy Fawkes Day is soon," she whispered. "It's a masquerade ball."

When John didn't respond, too shocked to say anything, she went on, wet tears still in her voice. "I want you to go with the girl you're fucking behind my back."

"Claire, that's not-"

"I want to see her."

"Claire," John said more firmly. "I'm not."

"What is it, then?" Claire pressed. "What are you not telling me?"

"I'm not going into work because I found a better offer, okay," John said, hiding the fact that his insides felt toxic. "At the end of this month, in two days, we're getting a massive payoff. Bigger than when I won the poker game. It's going to make us more stable than we ever were, financially."

"Really?" Claire spat, "And pray tell, who is your 'employer'? What's your job?"

John shook his head. "Can't tell you that."

She laughed mockingly, her cheeks still wet. "Alright," she said. "Now I believe you. Thank you for clearing that up."

"I swear, Claire-"

"Get out."

"Claire. Listen to me."

"Please, leave."

"You have to."

"John."

"Claire..."

"Get out."