Title: Four Men and a Baby

Author: Milliecake

Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)

Category: Adventure

Rating: T

Spoilers: Set between The Great Game and the introduction of Ms Adler in a Scandal

Warnings: Violence, murder, mentions of prostitution and drug use

Disclaimer: Do not own, just a fan creation

Summary: When an infant is found abandoned on the doorstep to 221B Baker Street, Sherlock and John find themselves caught in a battle between Social Services, Scotland Yard...and the Russian Mafia.

Author's Notes: Despite the title, the little heroine of my story is not the illegitimate daughter of the four men in question - I know how fandoms can get over that kind of thing. Dedicated to my little nieces - happy 1st birthday girls! - for whom changing nappies was certainly an experience...as Robin Williams once said 'What the ^%$ are they feeding you? Algae?'

Additional: The murder/suicide case at the start, I'm pretty sure, is something I saw way back when I was a teenager somewhat in love with Jeremy Brett's Sherlock. Too long ago, but if anyone can remember where it came from, much appreciation!

OoOoO

Blue and white flashes sent long shadows darting over the stony, debris-ridden bank of the river. There, several police officers wearing bright reflective vests were picking carefully through the washed up rubbish, flashlights flickering over the detritus of a rusted Sainsbury's trolley, several plastic carriers, fishing line, discarded needles.

John Watson, hands shoved into his pockets against the summer night's chill, could have told them they were wasting their time. Sherlock had already given them all the evidence they'd need to close the case. Now the rest was merely procedure and overtime. And a waste of resources in his opinion.

"Ready?" The man in question had come to stand alongside John and, following his line of sight down to the bank, he gave a little huff. Annoyance that they weren't simply taking his word for it that the recovered gun left no uncertainties. It was suicide and the fingerprints would prove it. "Idiots."

John nodded. "Let's go." Somewhere in the distance a clock was chiming. Midnight, he realised, with a sigh, as they trudged towards the busy main road.

He'd promised Sarah he'd go in tomorrow...well today now. One GP off on maternity leave, another on holiday, a third sick, the surgery was struggling to cope. Although he wasn't sure if the dinner she'd promised him in return was an incentive to show up and stay awake or more of an intimate invitation. He'd been wondering...hoping their relationship might move on to the next level, a level that didn't involve sofas or lilos. If a killer circus act hadn't put her off, if learning her boyfriend had been used as a bomb puppet by a criminal mastermind hadn't sent her screaming...maybe nothing would. Even that bloody ASBO. Even Sherlock...

'Dependable' they'd called John in the army. Now he was dashing out in the middle of the night on the whim of his flatmate or ditching Sarah in the midst of a date or letting her down at work.

But he knew that 'safe reliable John Watson' couldn't re-emerge, not while he lived and worked with Sherlock Holmes. Not while the battlefield waged across London continued to draw him in, into ever concentric circles. An urban field of strife amongst the mundane of shops and banks and museums. If only people knew what went on under their noses.

Still, if they got back to Baker Street within the next hour, he could look forward to at least a few hours of uninterrupted rest. Assuming the criminal underclass were willing to leave off for just one night that was.

"You're quiet."

John kept his eyes on the road, away from that perceptive glance, following the double yellow lines. "Thinking. Other people do that too sometimes you know."

Alongside him in his long coat, Sherlock Holmes was trailing a red helium balloon on a ribbon, a picture of whimsical elegance as he raised a cool eyebrow. "Thinking about what?"

"It's not important." A nonchalant shrug, but he knew Sherlock wouldn't be fooled. He hadn't been overstating when he'd once said Sherlock could see through everyone. But he didn't feel comfortable talking about Sarah to his flatmate. Sherlock's response would no doubt be clinical and brutal in its honesty but skewed by his lack of understanding on relationships. "I'll write this one up tomorrow when I get home from work. Bit different I guess. A murder that's turned out to be a suicide."

Talking about the case was one way of steering Sherlock away from more intimate conversations. The man had no sense of shame or boundaries or...humiliation, when it came to social niceties. John still hadn't quite forgiven him for the incident a week back, when Sherlock had airily informed Lestrade and his entire division the reason for John's bad mood was because Sarah had made him sleep on the lilo yet again, that he'd missed out on a shag. As if Scotland Yard needed the details of John's sex life!

Or lack thereof.

It wasn't Sherlock's fault, John knew at heart, when he'd finally recovered from the excruciating embarrassment. He didn't do it deliberately, most times at least. Like a young child, there was just this gap, this missing part where Sherlock just didn't comprehend society's norms or even when he'd done or said something wrong or shocking, and actually seemed surprised at the reactions he caused. Didn't help that he didn't care though.

When John finally met the other's stare, Sherlock's wry, piercing look told him he knew exactly what his friend was thinking, but he let it slide. "Suicide, yes. It was obvious once I saw her lipstick."

Ok maybe he was learning, a little at a time, John conceded. Before, Sherlock probably would have rattled off exactly what he could see playing like a film strip through John's mind, with no regard for his flatmate's discomfort. "Her lipstick?" John echoed dutifully.

"Bright. Very red. Very thick."

"Right." John didn't have a clue.

Sherlock gave an impatient little sigh. "Think about it John. You've received constant threats from your ex-lover, someone so insanely jealous he can't bear to live without you. He stalks you, bombards you with text messages and leaves flowers at your work place, goes as far as to break into your flat. After living with that for weeks on end...?"

He deliberately left the question open ended. Occasionally, he liked to beckon a member of the audience, in this case John, up onto that strange, wonderful stage inside his incredible mind.

John considered. "I'd be scared, I guess. Nervous. I'd be looking over my shoulder."

"Yes but think further. If a man found you attractive, was constantly pestering you, what would you do to lessen his interest?"

"I dunno. Punch him?"

"As a woman John." The veneer of patience was thinning. "You'd dress less provocatively, less colours. Make yourself plain, unattractive, unassuming."

"But...she didn't, the victim didn't do any of those things." Now John was catching on. Slowly, but in his defence it was midnight and he'd been up since six.

"The make up John. Lots of make-up, including the lipstick. And lots of red, red skirt, new shoes, jacket. She'd had her hair done. And all this supposedly under the threat of death from her previous lover? Please." The last word dripped with disdain.

"So, what are you saying? She enjoyed it?"

"Enjoyed it?" Sherlock scoffed. "She loved it. The thrill of the chase. Imagine, all that power over one man. Imagine having someone who would be willing to do anything, anything at all that you ask at the drop of a hat. Cater to your every whim. At your beck and call night and day."

"Yeah, imagine that." Constant trips to Tesco's, scrubbing Sherlock's latest experiments off the walls, dashing out in the middle of work, played through John's mind.

Sherlock was either oblivious to or simply ignored John's deadpan reply. "But then he meets someone else, someone who threatens to take away his interest. Suddenly, the spotlight...is gone." A snap of his gloved fingers.

"Good god," John said, quietly, unable to help but compare the parallels. "If you ever decide to stitch me up for your murder like that, I'd be done for."

"Hmm?" A distracted murmur and John knew he'd gotten away with that one as well.

"But still," John persisted, as they neared the main road, the rush of traffic growing louder, busy despite the late hour. "Killing herself. That was a pretty extreme way of getting revenge."

"Revenge had nothing to do with it. Faking her own murder was just the upping of stakes, if you will. She dies, her ex-lover goes to prison for a very long time. It wasn't important that he'd stopped playing. It was the ultimate risk, dealing one final, fatal hand. For her, all that mattered was the game."

"Now that does sounds familiar," John shot back, dryly, then mentally kicked himself.

Ever since what they were delicately calling 'the pool incident' he'd avoided even thinking about that psychopath Moriarty and his 'great game'. He'd taken to calling him He Who Shall Not Be Named to Mrs Hudson...Sherlock never did get the reference of course. But an air of expectation still hung like a pall over the flat, every phone call, every case, every murder, just waiting for the needle to drop once more. Sherlock in anticipation, John in something akin to dread.

"So," he interjected, before the conversation fell on that particularly loaded topic, "she sends all the evidence of her stalking to the police, steals her lover's unlicensed gun, goes to the river and shoots herself. Nice." He'd write it differently in the blog of course.

Sherlock held out the balloon. "Exhibit A. She ties inflatables to the weapon so when the bullet enters her brain the evidence is literally washed away down stream, until the gas is depleted and the gun sinks. Nothing for the diving teams to find in the general locale so...clearly murder."

"And too much circumstantial evidence for the police to ignore."

"Clever," Sherlock smiled appreciatively, pale eyes alight under the orange glow of the streetlight. "Until the evidence was washed ashore at this particular river curvature of course. Something she clearly had failed to take into account."

Internally, John sighed. Only Sherlock could be appreciative of the underhanded, desperate dealings of the mentally deranged people they encountered on their cases.

"Still, it wasn't an actual murder," he pointed out.

"No it wasn't was it." Sherlock pulled a face, a small, playful frown. "Not sure how I feel about that to be honest."

John smiled back. "Happy maybe that an innocent man won't go to jail?"

"Hmm, maybe." Said dismissively. "Taxi!"

Sherlock never did particularly care about the victims and he was disappointingly honest about it.

But he did have an uncanny knack for finding a taxi that would stop for them. Something about the driver's placement of his hands on the steering wheel he'd once informed John.

"Two two one B Baker Street," Sherlock told the cabbie as John climbed in.

The world's only consulting detective stuck his head back outside and released the balloon. John watched as it floated upwards, skipping against the side of a building, before disappearing into the night's sky.

"So what will you call this one?" Sherlock asked, faintly curious, as he settled.

"I dunno. The Air Head Suicide?"

As the car pulled away, the resulting groan was audible.

OoOoO

Drizzle dotted the windscreen as the taxi wound through the darkened streets, turning to a light rain as they finally arrived back at the flat. Typical, the cabbie told them, morosely. After the last few months of dry heat and an announcement the day before on the BBC that they had officially entered a drought, the weather was changing for the worse. Right in time for Wimbledon too.

John stepped out of the cab, glad to be home, glad to have his bed ready and waiting. Stretching, he took a step forward, then pulled up short. There, on the doorstep. A large package. A very large package.

"Sherlock," he called over one shoulder. "Did you order something?" Chemicals, equipment, weaponry, more skull paraphernalia, drugs...

He felt the other man come to stand alongside him as the taxi pulled away and they both considered the box awaiting them, two lone men standing in the rain.

"Too late for deliveries John," Sherlock stated the obvious, eyes roaming over the item. "And the box is too old and worn to contain anything of retail value."

He took a step forward and suddenly John itched to grab his arm, drag him back. The word 'bomb' flashed through his mind, the brilliance of an exploding building flaring in his memory.

It had been two months since the pool. A mere eight weeks since Sherlock had been outsmarted not once but twice, by an insane 'criminal consultant'.

The first round had gone to Moriarty because as a 'high functioning sociopath' Sherlock had never once considered that Moriarty had actually liked watching him go through his routine, watching him 'dance'. Intellectually superior Sherlock might be but when it came to emotions, feelings, obsessions of a human nature regarding his own person, he was very much out of his depth, a devastating gap in his mental armour.

The Bruce-Partington plans had actually been Mycroft's distraction as it turned out, the older brother well aware of Moriarty's peculiar interest in Sherlock and had been desperate to stave off the inevitable confrontation. But Sherlock's brother hadn't counted on his sibling's ability to multitask both the problem created by Andrew West's murder and the puzzle of the pink phone. Or that he would deign to delegate to John.

The second time Sherlock had lost, at least according to the consulting detective if anyone cared to ask, had come moments later, the escalating brinkmanship between the pair as Sherlock pointed John's army-issue browning at the Semtex. Another game. Another test. Moriarty had wanted to see how far Sherlock was willing to go, how far he could push him, testing his limits. And now Jim Moriarty knew what those limits were.

The unexpected phonecall had ended their game prematurely, the banality of the ringtone doing nothing to lessen the tension, though subsequently John felt a jolt of adrenalin everytime he heard Staying Alive played on the radio. With the breezy, carefree manner of a game show host, Moriarty had called off his snipers. It was the wrong day to die apparently.

No wonder Mycroft was concerned. Constantly.

"Sherlock." John forced the words out, stiffly, in warning as Sherlock crouched down over the box.

"I'm aware," Sherlock acknowledged, softly, hand poised over the opening.

Moriarty wouldn't want Sherlock dead, John reasoned. Not like this anyhow. Nothing so simple, so...basic.

Sherlock must have come to the same conclusion as he unfolded the cardboard, bared the contents. Then rocked back on his haunches, a look of...surprise? It wasn't often something could catch the great consulting detective off guard. "John." His voice was strangely hesitant. "John, I think you should look at this."

Must be something terrible, John thought, steeling himself. Body parts, maybe a head? But no, Sherlock loved body parts. Especially when kept in a freshened state in the fridge.

Hunkering down beside his flatmate, John peered into the darkened box. Perplexed, he stared for a moment. As his eyes adjusted, they widened.

"That...that's not a..."

Sherlock shot him a look. "Oh I think it is."

"Bloody hell," John said, stunned. "It's a baby."

END OF CHAPTER ONE