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flawedamythystTitle: Crime And Commitment
Rating: PG
Pairing: Asexual!Sherlock/John
Word Count: 4,624 words
Summary: Three crime scenes over five years.
A/N: Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
yardirons for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
qldfloodauction. Set in the Horse And Carriage 'verse. Masterlist is here.
Betaed byverityburns, who's lovely.
The first crime scene that John went to after he'd married Sherlock was a bloodbath. Even Sherlock went oddly quiet after seeing the remains spread out in a variety of bizarre and stomach-churning patterns, although John wasn't sure if that meant he was as disturbed as the rest of them, or if he was just concentrating on trying to make some meaning out of the precise arrangements of severed limbs and draped entrails. At any rate, no one there was in the mood to pay attention to details like the acquisition of new jewellery.
The next crime scene was in the middle of a park, in the bitter cold and with freezing rain beating down on them. John hunkered down inside his coat next to Lestrade, wondering why on earth he'd left the warmth of Baker Street just to watch Sherlock frowning over a corpse and asking apparently irrelevant questions about chocolate bars.
The third crime scene was linked, and they only stayed long enough for Sherlock to examine the victim's shoes and make an excited noise before they were sprinting off again, in search of the nearest B&Q.
There was a lull after that, the kind of lull where Sherlock lay on the sofa in his pyjamas for several days, switching between loud, haranguing entreaties at the heavens for some excitement and sulking silences that turned the atmosphere in the flat heavy and oppressive.
By the time that Lestrade called them in to look at a locked-door murder with all the hallmarks of a suicide, unless you took into account the bizarre death of the woman's budgie, John was so used to the ring on his finger that he didn't even feel it any more. He did occasionally find himself rubbing a thumb over the metal whenever Sherlock was at his worst, just to remind himself that whatever insults Sherlock came up with, he'd been the one who suggested they pledge their lives to each other, but he'd stopped thinking of it as something remarkable.
Sherlock studied the budgie for a very long time, pulling gently at one wing until the feathers were all stretched out, then turned his attention to the woman.
“The pills she took were prescribed for her last year,” said Lestrade helpfully, “when she broke her wrist.”
“Obviously,” said Sherlock. He tucked back her hair and squinted at her neck for a moment. “John, look at this and tell me what you think,” he commanded.
By John's count, that was the sixth direct order he'd received from Sherlock in the last three hours, which was roughly his limit. “What's the magic word?” he asked, not moving. He might have been a soldier once but he was a civilian now, and he didn't have to jump just because he was commanded to.
Sherlock looked up at him with a puzzled frown. “I didn't ask for magic,” he said. “I asked for an opinion.”
John exchanged a resigned look with Lestrade. Getting a 'please' out of Sherlock probably would count as magic. “Got any rubber gloves I can borrow?” he asked.
Lestrade dug around in a pocket and found some, but as John reached out to take them, he pulled his back, staring at John's hand. “Is that a wedding ring?” he asked incredulously.
John glanced down at his finger just as Sherlock's gaze leapt up to stare at them rather than the corpse. “Um,” said John. “Yes.”
Lestrade looked up from his hand and raised an eyebrow. “You should have mentioned it,” he said. “We'd have taken you out for a drink to celebrate – you're practically one of the team, after all.” He held the gloves out again and John took them, pulling one on over his left hand first in order to hide the ring.
“I didn't even know you were seeing someone,” added Lestrade.
“I'm not, really,” said John, going to kneel down next to Sherlock in the hopes that concentrating on the case would prevent any questions about who?, and the inevitable What? WHY? that would follow.
“A missed opportunity, John,” noted Sherlock. “We could have got free drinks out of it.” He pointed to a dull red mark on the woman's neck. “Is that a bruise or a lovebite? You've more experience with these things than I do.”
John bent down to examine it properly. “You don't even drink,” he pointed out in a harsher tone than he'd intended. He could feel the approaching moment of Lestrade's realisation creeping up on him, and his shoulders hunched protectively in reaction. He didn't want to have to try and explain this thing to someone who actually knew them both, not when the only explanation he had was 'I couldn't think of a good reason not to'.
“Sorry,” said Lestrade slowly. “Why would you be getting a free drink out of John's marriage?”
Sherlock looked up at him with a wide grin. “Because I'm his husband,” he said with insufferable smugness. John twitched, repressing the desire to elbow him.
Lestrade stared at them both for a moment. “You married Sherlock?!” he asked incredulously which, of course, was when Anderson and Donovan chose to come in.
“Guv, the landlord's here with-” Donovan was saying, but she cut herself off abruptly once his words had sunk in, and John found himself on the receiving end of three very confused stares.
He managed a weak smile but was saved from having to speak by Sherlock.
“Obviously,” he said, as if only an idiot wouldn't jump immediately to the conclusion that a straight man would be married to his male best friend. “John, come on, pay attention.”
John gave the mark one more look. “Definitely a lovebite,” he said. Sherlock let out an interested noise and bent to examine the woman's fingernails.
“You married the freak?” asked Anderson, sounding both fascinated and faintly horrified.
John glared at him. “Don't call him that.”
Sherlock let out a softly amused noise. “No need to defend my honour, John,” he said. “I don't have any interest in what that cretin thinks of me.”
“I wasn't,” said John firmly. “I was defending my own. I'm not the kind of man who marries a freak, you know.”
That earned him an indulgent eyeroll and a faint smile before Sherlock rededicated himself to examining the corpse.
“I didn't even know you were the kind of man who marries a man,” said Donovan.
John shrugged awkwardly. “Special circumstances,” he said shortly.
“Must be pretty bloody special,” said Anderson. “Can't imagine why anyone would marry the-” John glared at him and he swallowed the next word, replacing it instead with, “him.”
John really didn't have any kind of good answer for why he had married Sherlock, other than peer pressure from Mycroft and Mrs. Hudson. He'd found himself lying awake more than once, playing with his ring and trying to work it out and failing, but he was damned if he was going to let Anderson know that.
“Well, for one thing, it seemed reasonably certain that he'd never cheat on me,” he said with a shrug.
Sherlock sprung up from his crouch. “Indeed,” he acknowledged, and spared a moment to look over Anderson and Donovan. “And certainly not in a broom closet at a crime scene.” He looked over at Lestrade, who was regarding his colleagues with a faint scowl. “I shall need a full medical examination on the bird as well as the woman.”
“Ah, right,” said Lestrade, frowning as he clearly tried to work out where he could find someone qualified to autopsy a budgie.
“You said the landlord was outside?” Sherlock asked Donovan, then swept out without waiting for an answer.
John gave Lestrade a slightly sheepish shrug and a smile, and followed after Sherlock, relieved to get away without any more impossible-to-answer questions.
****
Lestrade had called Sherlock in very early on this one, so early that the hysterical wife of the victim was still in the house, corralled in the kitchen with a couple of constables while Sherlock was given free rein of her husband's corpse. He was in one of his most alive and excitable moods, jumping about the crime scene with various unnecessary flourishes, pointing out every tiny detail to John as if he had any idea what any of it meant.
“Window has been open today, but shut and locked since. Recently resown button on his shirt cuff, but the thread's wrong. Scar here is too rough for surgery, too neat for an accident. Ink on his hands – he's been writing, something important. Found a note, letter, anything?”
It took Lestrade a moment to realise that this last part was directed at him. “Ah, no,” he said. “Nothing we know about.”
“Ask the wife,” said Sherlock to Donovan. She glared at him, but he'd already turned back to the scene, stepping back to take in the big picture of it. Donovan redirected her glare to Lestrade, who just shrugged and then nodded at the door. She grimaced, set her shoulders resolutely and headed off in the direction of the noisy, wailing sobs.
Sherlock turned on his heel before she'd even gone, looked both John and Lestrade up and down and then grabbed hold of John's shoulders. “You're the right height,” he announced, dragging him over to the foot of the corpse. “Stand here. Look that way.” He pointed out of the window but stayed where he was, hands firmly on John's shoulders and his body pressed against John's back. “What can you see?” he demanded.
John looked. “Um,” he said, and felt Sherlock's fingers twitch with impatience, although he didn't snap out one of his usual scathing comments. “The street?” he tried. “Houses, cars, woman with a toddler...”
Sherlock let out an infuriated breath against his ear. “What else?” he asked in a slightly gritted voice.
There was a beep from the phone in John's pocket. They both ignored it.
“Well, I can't really see into any of the houses,” tried John. “Windows are at the wrong angle. There's a tiny bit of the park visible between those fences, though.”
Sherlock exhaled with realisation. “The park! Of course!” He squeezed John's shoulders for a moment, then stepped away with a whirl of his coat, already looking something up on his phone.
John let out a breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding in and looked around to see Lestrade regarding him with an odd frown. He shook off the urge to feel self-conscious and returned the look with a bland smile.
Before Lestrade could respond, Donovan came back in, holding an envelope. “Oi, Mr. Watson,” she said to attract Sherlock's attention away from his phone. “She says she found this waiting for her on the hall table, before she came through and found the body.”
She'd taken to calling Sherlock 'Mr. Watson' not long after John had made his feelings about 'freak' as a nickname very clear. She obviously thought it was the perfect jibe – vaguely insulting without being anything that could be objected to – but John had seen Sherlock suppress the tiniest hint of a smile the first time she used it.
Sherlock snatched the card out of her hands, then subjected the envelope to one of his swift but thorough examinations before pulling a card out. “Ah,” he said quietly.
“What is it?” asked Lestrade.
“Anniversary card,” said Donovan, when it became clear that Sherlock wasn't going to respond. “A day early though – she says she thought he'd just left it out by accident.”
There was another message beep from John's pocket. He didn't check it – there'd be time after Sherlock had finished here.
“Clearly not,” said Sherlock, turning the card upside-down and squinting at the signature. “He knew something might happen, and he wanted to make sure she had it. Written in a hurry, but with an expensive pen – it was important to him.” He darted out his tongue and tasted the ink. “Written less than six hours ago.”
“You can tell how old ink is just from the taste?” asked Lestrade incredulously.
Sherlock spared him an irritated frown. “Of course,” he said.
“That's brilliant,” said John, then wanted to bit his own tongue. He'd been trying to cut down on involuntary exclamations about Sherlock's genius, if only because of the amused smirk that Lestrade always sent him. Ah, yes, there it was.
“Their seventh anniversary,” noted Sherlock, still looking at the card. He slid it back into the envelope and handed it back to Donovan. “No real help,” he said dismissively, and moved on to inspecting the windowsill.
“Must be coming up to your anniversary,” said Lestrade to John in a conversational tone. “How long's it been now?”
“Uh,” said John, trying to think back. Had it been September or October that he'd stuttered through the heavily amended vows with Sherlock beside him, wondering what the fuck he was doing? It had definitely been autumn. Probably been autumn. “Nearly three years,” he managed. That was close enough.
“Two years, eleven months and six days,” corrected Sherlock absently. There was a stunned silence from everyone else in the room, and he looked up just long enough to roll his eyes. “I do have an eidetic memory,” he said long-sufferingly. “I'm not the one who always forgets our anniversary.”
“We don't celebrate our anniversary,” said John, hackles rising at the insinuation. He was sure that if he was in a 'real' marriage he'd remember to have a card ready, but what was the point of romance when you were just friends?
Sherlock pulled out his magnifying glass and set about examining the window sill again. “The first year we went to Simpson's,” he said. “You had the pork, I had lamb. Last year we went to the London Philharmonic. They played the music from those ridiculous sci-fi films you like for some undefinable reason.”
John gaped. “That was our anniversary?” he said incredulously.
“Of course,” said Sherlock, as if any fool should have guessed that being taken to The Star Wars Symphony was the clearest sign there could be that you'd been married to your best friend for two years. “Something we'd both enjoy, although that kind of music lacks some of the depth and intensity of Mendelssohn or Mozart.”
“Right,” said John faintly. His phone beeped again. He ignored it again.
“Fascinating as this insight into your married life is,” said Lestrade, sounding more amused than John felt was strictly necessary, “do you think we could have some conclusions about the case?”
Sherlock straightened up abruptly. “Not yet,” he announced. “John and I have to go to the park, and you need to get a DNA sweep done on this window. I'll text you later.”
He left without waiting for a response and John let out a sigh, exchanged looks with Lestrade, and went after him.
It wasn't until half an hour later, after a lot of crawling around in bushes that John wasn't entirely sure had been completely necessary, that he thought to check his messages.
You on your way?
Please tell me you're still coming.
There better be a bloody good excuse for this one. I'm running out of patience.
Oh, shit, Natasha. He glanced at his watch, wincing. He had been meant to pick her up at seven for dinner with some of her friends. It was sort of a big deal – they'd been together nearly four months now, the longest relationship he'd managed since coming home from Afghanistan, and this was the first time he'd made it to 'meeting the friends' stage in ages.
He'd still be able to make it for dinner if he dropped everything and rushed over there, but Sherlock was holding a cab, frowning with impatience as he waited for him.
“Come on, John,” he said sharply. “If the brother has already left London, we may never catch up with him.”
John glanced back down at the last text, then back up at Sherlock. The sad thing was, he knew there should be some sort of conflict, but he was already phrasing his apologies in his head. He let out a sigh and climbed into the back of the cab, wondering why there never seemed to be space in his life for a relationship.
He phoned Natasha, ignoring the sharp gaze that Sherlock kept on him for the painfully brief conversation. She was not pleased and not even a little bit understanding about the importance of the case, and after she'd hung up John thought, glumly, that he was likely to be treated to another one of those special conversations about his priorities that his girlfriends tended to end his relationships with very soon.
Sherlock was blissfully silent for the taxi ride but the moment they pulled up at the victim's brother's house, he was off again, sparking with genius and pulling John along with him as if by gravitational pull. John didn't even bother trying to fight it, he just put Natasha out of his mind and concentrated on the case. As far as he was concerned, his priorities were just fine.
****
The body had been there for a while. A good long while. It had sunk into the leaf mould carpeting the ground before it had been refrozen by the latest cold snap, so that now it was half-frozen to rotting leaves. There were tiny teeth marks nibbled into the bloated, green-tinged skin where scavenging animals had found it. John made a disgusted face and stayed back but Sherlock, as usual, dived straight in, apparently without any concern. He did pull on gloves first and appeared to be taking slightly more care than usual to avoid letting his coat touch the corpse, but apart from that, it was if he was dealing with any other slightly-messy object.
“We're running a compare with recent missing persons,” said Lestrade, “but nothing's come up yet.”
“Of course not,” said Sherlock distractedly, running the tip of his finger over the man's cheek. The skin sagged unpleasantly under the pressure and John had to take a deep, careful breath which, unfortunately, just brought more of the smell into his lungs. “You must have realised by now that his disappearance won't have been reported.”
There was a telling silence from the surrounding police officers, and Sherlock glanced up at them, then rolled his eyes with exasperation. “Imbeciles,” he muttered, then gestured sharply at the corpse. “Look at him!”
John automatically looked down, then regretted it. He had no problems – well, relatively few – with blood or gore, he'd examined dismembered and eviscerated corpses, parts of bodies that had been dipped in acid or torn apart by giant trained rodents from Sumatra (and that really had been a disturbingly bloody case – he hadn't been able to put it on his blog at all) but as soon as a body was more than a couple of days old, it turned his stomach.
“Clearly an illegal immigrant,” continued Sherlock. “Brought in for the sex industry. Look at his teeth!” He let out a long sigh. “How have any of you kept your jobs this long?” he asked.
“Yes, all right,” interrupted Lestrade. “We get it, we're idiots and you're a genius. Anything else you'd care to add, or are we done here?”
Sherlock stood up and dusted the dead leaves off his trousers. “The real question here is not who he is, although that will no doubt prove interesting,” he said, “it's why anyone took such care to mutilate him so thoroughly – clearly as a warning to others thinking of committing whatever his offence was - but then just abandoned him here, apparently without caring if he was ever found or not?”
Oh god, the smell was getting worse. John wondered if he could back away any further without attracting attention. There was just something about the stench of gone-off human meat that made his stomach turn over. He could feel it seeping into his skin and clothes, tiny particles of decomposing flesh finding their way inside him, in his mouth and nose and lungs and- He abruptly cut the thought off when his stomach threatened a revolt.
“What good is a warning if it's never found?” Sherlock looked over at John as if expecting an answer to his question, and frowned slightly when he caught sight of his face.
Damn, thought John. He clearly wasn't managing to cover up his revulsion as well as he'd hoped. Well, Sherlock did see everything, especially when it came to John. Hopefully none of the police officers had picked up on how close John was to having to excuse himself to vomit behind a tree.
“Maybe it -he- didn't need to be found,” hypothesised Lestrade. “Maybe the warning had already been seen by those it was aimed at.”
Sherlock spared him a brief, mildly impressed look, as if he was a pet that had just worked out how to do a trick he'd thought too complex for it. “Perhaps,” he allowed, then turned back to John. He stepped closer to him, holding out his hands, and John couldn't stop himself from flinching back from the rubber gloves he was still wearing.
Sherlock stopped and tipped his head to one side. “Ah,” he said quietly.
“What?” asked Lestrade, glancing back at the corpse. Hopkins, who had replaced Anderson last year after the melodrama that had surrounded the ending of his marriage led to a swift transfer to Manchester, was already stepping into the space that Sherlock had left behind. He was wearing the earnest, sycophantic look of wonder that he always seemed to have on around Sherlock, although he didn't say anything, just started inspecting the corpse's teeth in far more detail than John was really comfortable with.
“Nothing,” said Sherlock dismissively, not looking away from John's face. “Just, there's always something new to learn, even with subjects you've spent years studying.”
John felt caught by the fascinated look on his face and the certainty that Sherlock wasn't talking about crime right now. He found himself faintly smiling, remembering how the same look had been on Sherlock's face just last month, after their one and only kiss, when John had offered Sherlock the opportunity to share his bed without any worry that it would be for more than sleep and the occasional cuddle. I still manage to surprise and interest him, he thought. Even after five years of marriage. Must be doing something right.
“Ah, of course,” said Lestrade dryly, and John had no doubt that he'd see the mildly amused expression that Lestrade adopted whenever he thought John and Sherlock were 'having a couple moment' if he'd chosen to look away from Sherlock. He didn't bother, he'd seen it all too often before. It probably should have been his first clue that he should stop hiding behind the idea that he and Sherlock were still nothing more than friends, even with the marriage certificate.
Sherlock stripped off his gloves and tossed them to one side, where Hopkins dove forward to sweep them up and dispose of them properly, glancing up at Sherlock as he did so as if looking for credit. Both Sherlock and John ignored him. Sherlock took another step forward, and John let him step into his personal space and take hold of his hands now that the traces of decomposing body were gone. Sherlock's wedding ring pressed coldly against his skin and he had to suppress the urge to trace the line of it.
“Tell me, Doctor,” said Sherlock in the excited, gleeful voice that usually signalled the kind of evening that John was unable to explain without using the phrase 'well, it seemed like a good idea at the time', “do you have a great deal of experience with male sex workers?”
John huffed a laugh out. “None at all,” he said. “I take it I'm about to, though?”
Sherlock waggled his eyebrows. “It does seem like an excellent opportunity to explore some of London's seedy underbelly,” he said, as if he was offering John a treat. He probably thought he was.
“Not worried that he'll get seduced away by a rentboy, Mr. Watson?” asked Donovan, and John finally tore his gaze away from Sherlock in order to look over and see that she'd finally turned up at the crime scene, dressed slightly inappropriately and looking quietly smug.
“Hardly,” said Sherlock. “He's not gay.”
There was a confused silence from those in earshot.
“Um,” said Hopkins carefully, but didn't get to form whatever thought he'd had into words.
“You're all so blind,” interrupted Sherlock, looking around at them with more than a little wonder at their stupidity, although he kept hold of one of John's hands as he turned to look at them. “You see but don't observe – how insufferably annoying that must be! I bet none of you have even noticed that Donovan has found her own not-gay man to marry.”
The scrutiny that had been on John suddenly transferred to Donovan. She managed a glare at Sherlock for a handful of seconds, then rolled her eyes and held up her hand, displaying a rather tasteful engagement ring.
“You could have given me the chance to tell people when we're not at as crime scene,” she said, attempting to sound grumpy, but her happiness bled through her voice.
“Crime scenes are the best places for these things,” said Sherlock dismissively. “Means there's something other than dull social conventions to concentrate on. Corpses are far more interesting.”
John elbowed him in the side and gave Donovan a grin, trying to remember the name of the bloke she was seeing and failing. “Congratulations,” he said. “I hope you're very happy.” Like I've been, he thought but didn't say. She'd never really seemed to appreciate the appeal of John and Sherlock's marriage, even if her insults had died down over the years.
“Yeah, congratulations, Sally,” said Lestrade. “We'll have to organise drinks to celebrate.”
“Dull!” said Sherlock. “Come on, John, I know just where we should start.”
He dragged John away without waiting for a response and John let him, relieved to get away from the corpse. He did glance back at Donovan and give her an apologetic shrug, but she just rolled her eyes, still looking smugly happy.
Sherlock was talking a mile-a-minute as they left the crime scene, gesturing emphatically with the one hand that wasn't still clinging to John's. John took a deep breath, filling his lungs with fresh air, and thought that despite the complications caused by being a straight man married to an asexual one, the difficulties of trying to explain his life to outsiders, the certainty that he was never going to be with a woman again, and even the weeks-old corpses, this marriage really was the best idea that Sherlock had ever had. Thank god he'd gone along with it.
Next fic in the verse: Bigots And Allies
*
Rating: PG
Pairing: Asexual!Sherlock/John
Word Count: 4,624 words
Summary: Three crime scenes over five years.
A/N: Written for
yardirons for qldfloodauction. Set in the Horse And Carriage 'verse. Masterlist is here.Betaed by
verityburns, who's lovely.The first crime scene that John went to after he'd married Sherlock was a bloodbath. Even Sherlock went oddly quiet after seeing the remains spread out in a variety of bizarre and stomach-churning patterns, although John wasn't sure if that meant he was as disturbed as the rest of them, or if he was just concentrating on trying to make some meaning out of the precise arrangements of severed limbs and draped entrails. At any rate, no one there was in the mood to pay attention to details like the acquisition of new jewellery.
The next crime scene was in the middle of a park, in the bitter cold and with freezing rain beating down on them. John hunkered down inside his coat next to Lestrade, wondering why on earth he'd left the warmth of Baker Street just to watch Sherlock frowning over a corpse and asking apparently irrelevant questions about chocolate bars.
The third crime scene was linked, and they only stayed long enough for Sherlock to examine the victim's shoes and make an excited noise before they were sprinting off again, in search of the nearest B&Q.
There was a lull after that, the kind of lull where Sherlock lay on the sofa in his pyjamas for several days, switching between loud, haranguing entreaties at the heavens for some excitement and sulking silences that turned the atmosphere in the flat heavy and oppressive.
By the time that Lestrade called them in to look at a locked-door murder with all the hallmarks of a suicide, unless you took into account the bizarre death of the woman's budgie, John was so used to the ring on his finger that he didn't even feel it any more. He did occasionally find himself rubbing a thumb over the metal whenever Sherlock was at his worst, just to remind himself that whatever insults Sherlock came up with, he'd been the one who suggested they pledge their lives to each other, but he'd stopped thinking of it as something remarkable.
Sherlock studied the budgie for a very long time, pulling gently at one wing until the feathers were all stretched out, then turned his attention to the woman.
“The pills she took were prescribed for her last year,” said Lestrade helpfully, “when she broke her wrist.”
“Obviously,” said Sherlock. He tucked back her hair and squinted at her neck for a moment. “John, look at this and tell me what you think,” he commanded.
By John's count, that was the sixth direct order he'd received from Sherlock in the last three hours, which was roughly his limit. “What's the magic word?” he asked, not moving. He might have been a soldier once but he was a civilian now, and he didn't have to jump just because he was commanded to.
Sherlock looked up at him with a puzzled frown. “I didn't ask for magic,” he said. “I asked for an opinion.”
John exchanged a resigned look with Lestrade. Getting a 'please' out of Sherlock probably would count as magic. “Got any rubber gloves I can borrow?” he asked.
Lestrade dug around in a pocket and found some, but as John reached out to take them, he pulled his back, staring at John's hand. “Is that a wedding ring?” he asked incredulously.
John glanced down at his finger just as Sherlock's gaze leapt up to stare at them rather than the corpse. “Um,” said John. “Yes.”
Lestrade looked up from his hand and raised an eyebrow. “You should have mentioned it,” he said. “We'd have taken you out for a drink to celebrate – you're practically one of the team, after all.” He held the gloves out again and John took them, pulling one on over his left hand first in order to hide the ring.
“I didn't even know you were seeing someone,” added Lestrade.
“I'm not, really,” said John, going to kneel down next to Sherlock in the hopes that concentrating on the case would prevent any questions about who?, and the inevitable What? WHY? that would follow.
“A missed opportunity, John,” noted Sherlock. “We could have got free drinks out of it.” He pointed to a dull red mark on the woman's neck. “Is that a bruise or a lovebite? You've more experience with these things than I do.”
John bent down to examine it properly. “You don't even drink,” he pointed out in a harsher tone than he'd intended. He could feel the approaching moment of Lestrade's realisation creeping up on him, and his shoulders hunched protectively in reaction. He didn't want to have to try and explain this thing to someone who actually knew them both, not when the only explanation he had was 'I couldn't think of a good reason not to'.
“Sorry,” said Lestrade slowly. “Why would you be getting a free drink out of John's marriage?”
Sherlock looked up at him with a wide grin. “Because I'm his husband,” he said with insufferable smugness. John twitched, repressing the desire to elbow him.
Lestrade stared at them both for a moment. “You married Sherlock?!” he asked incredulously which, of course, was when Anderson and Donovan chose to come in.
“Guv, the landlord's here with-” Donovan was saying, but she cut herself off abruptly once his words had sunk in, and John found himself on the receiving end of three very confused stares.
He managed a weak smile but was saved from having to speak by Sherlock.
“Obviously,” he said, as if only an idiot wouldn't jump immediately to the conclusion that a straight man would be married to his male best friend. “John, come on, pay attention.”
John gave the mark one more look. “Definitely a lovebite,” he said. Sherlock let out an interested noise and bent to examine the woman's fingernails.
“You married the freak?” asked Anderson, sounding both fascinated and faintly horrified.
John glared at him. “Don't call him that.”
Sherlock let out a softly amused noise. “No need to defend my honour, John,” he said. “I don't have any interest in what that cretin thinks of me.”
“I wasn't,” said John firmly. “I was defending my own. I'm not the kind of man who marries a freak, you know.”
That earned him an indulgent eyeroll and a faint smile before Sherlock rededicated himself to examining the corpse.
“I didn't even know you were the kind of man who marries a man,” said Donovan.
John shrugged awkwardly. “Special circumstances,” he said shortly.
“Must be pretty bloody special,” said Anderson. “Can't imagine why anyone would marry the-” John glared at him and he swallowed the next word, replacing it instead with, “him.”
John really didn't have any kind of good answer for why he had married Sherlock, other than peer pressure from Mycroft and Mrs. Hudson. He'd found himself lying awake more than once, playing with his ring and trying to work it out and failing, but he was damned if he was going to let Anderson know that.
“Well, for one thing, it seemed reasonably certain that he'd never cheat on me,” he said with a shrug.
Sherlock sprung up from his crouch. “Indeed,” he acknowledged, and spared a moment to look over Anderson and Donovan. “And certainly not in a broom closet at a crime scene.” He looked over at Lestrade, who was regarding his colleagues with a faint scowl. “I shall need a full medical examination on the bird as well as the woman.”
“Ah, right,” said Lestrade, frowning as he clearly tried to work out where he could find someone qualified to autopsy a budgie.
“You said the landlord was outside?” Sherlock asked Donovan, then swept out without waiting for an answer.
John gave Lestrade a slightly sheepish shrug and a smile, and followed after Sherlock, relieved to get away without any more impossible-to-answer questions.
Lestrade had called Sherlock in very early on this one, so early that the hysterical wife of the victim was still in the house, corralled in the kitchen with a couple of constables while Sherlock was given free rein of her husband's corpse. He was in one of his most alive and excitable moods, jumping about the crime scene with various unnecessary flourishes, pointing out every tiny detail to John as if he had any idea what any of it meant.
“Window has been open today, but shut and locked since. Recently resown button on his shirt cuff, but the thread's wrong. Scar here is too rough for surgery, too neat for an accident. Ink on his hands – he's been writing, something important. Found a note, letter, anything?”
It took Lestrade a moment to realise that this last part was directed at him. “Ah, no,” he said. “Nothing we know about.”
“Ask the wife,” said Sherlock to Donovan. She glared at him, but he'd already turned back to the scene, stepping back to take in the big picture of it. Donovan redirected her glare to Lestrade, who just shrugged and then nodded at the door. She grimaced, set her shoulders resolutely and headed off in the direction of the noisy, wailing sobs.
Sherlock turned on his heel before she'd even gone, looked both John and Lestrade up and down and then grabbed hold of John's shoulders. “You're the right height,” he announced, dragging him over to the foot of the corpse. “Stand here. Look that way.” He pointed out of the window but stayed where he was, hands firmly on John's shoulders and his body pressed against John's back. “What can you see?” he demanded.
John looked. “Um,” he said, and felt Sherlock's fingers twitch with impatience, although he didn't snap out one of his usual scathing comments. “The street?” he tried. “Houses, cars, woman with a toddler...”
Sherlock let out an infuriated breath against his ear. “What else?” he asked in a slightly gritted voice.
There was a beep from the phone in John's pocket. They both ignored it.
“Well, I can't really see into any of the houses,” tried John. “Windows are at the wrong angle. There's a tiny bit of the park visible between those fences, though.”
Sherlock exhaled with realisation. “The park! Of course!” He squeezed John's shoulders for a moment, then stepped away with a whirl of his coat, already looking something up on his phone.
John let out a breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding in and looked around to see Lestrade regarding him with an odd frown. He shook off the urge to feel self-conscious and returned the look with a bland smile.
Before Lestrade could respond, Donovan came back in, holding an envelope. “Oi, Mr. Watson,” she said to attract Sherlock's attention away from his phone. “She says she found this waiting for her on the hall table, before she came through and found the body.”
She'd taken to calling Sherlock 'Mr. Watson' not long after John had made his feelings about 'freak' as a nickname very clear. She obviously thought it was the perfect jibe – vaguely insulting without being anything that could be objected to – but John had seen Sherlock suppress the tiniest hint of a smile the first time she used it.
Sherlock snatched the card out of her hands, then subjected the envelope to one of his swift but thorough examinations before pulling a card out. “Ah,” he said quietly.
“What is it?” asked Lestrade.
“Anniversary card,” said Donovan, when it became clear that Sherlock wasn't going to respond. “A day early though – she says she thought he'd just left it out by accident.”
There was another message beep from John's pocket. He didn't check it – there'd be time after Sherlock had finished here.
“Clearly not,” said Sherlock, turning the card upside-down and squinting at the signature. “He knew something might happen, and he wanted to make sure she had it. Written in a hurry, but with an expensive pen – it was important to him.” He darted out his tongue and tasted the ink. “Written less than six hours ago.”
“You can tell how old ink is just from the taste?” asked Lestrade incredulously.
Sherlock spared him an irritated frown. “Of course,” he said.
“That's brilliant,” said John, then wanted to bit his own tongue. He'd been trying to cut down on involuntary exclamations about Sherlock's genius, if only because of the amused smirk that Lestrade always sent him. Ah, yes, there it was.
“Their seventh anniversary,” noted Sherlock, still looking at the card. He slid it back into the envelope and handed it back to Donovan. “No real help,” he said dismissively, and moved on to inspecting the windowsill.
“Must be coming up to your anniversary,” said Lestrade to John in a conversational tone. “How long's it been now?”
“Uh,” said John, trying to think back. Had it been September or October that he'd stuttered through the heavily amended vows with Sherlock beside him, wondering what the fuck he was doing? It had definitely been autumn. Probably been autumn. “Nearly three years,” he managed. That was close enough.
“Two years, eleven months and six days,” corrected Sherlock absently. There was a stunned silence from everyone else in the room, and he looked up just long enough to roll his eyes. “I do have an eidetic memory,” he said long-sufferingly. “I'm not the one who always forgets our anniversary.”
“We don't celebrate our anniversary,” said John, hackles rising at the insinuation. He was sure that if he was in a 'real' marriage he'd remember to have a card ready, but what was the point of romance when you were just friends?
Sherlock pulled out his magnifying glass and set about examining the window sill again. “The first year we went to Simpson's,” he said. “You had the pork, I had lamb. Last year we went to the London Philharmonic. They played the music from those ridiculous sci-fi films you like for some undefinable reason.”
John gaped. “That was our anniversary?” he said incredulously.
“Of course,” said Sherlock, as if any fool should have guessed that being taken to The Star Wars Symphony was the clearest sign there could be that you'd been married to your best friend for two years. “Something we'd both enjoy, although that kind of music lacks some of the depth and intensity of Mendelssohn or Mozart.”
“Right,” said John faintly. His phone beeped again. He ignored it again.
“Fascinating as this insight into your married life is,” said Lestrade, sounding more amused than John felt was strictly necessary, “do you think we could have some conclusions about the case?”
Sherlock straightened up abruptly. “Not yet,” he announced. “John and I have to go to the park, and you need to get a DNA sweep done on this window. I'll text you later.”
He left without waiting for a response and John let out a sigh, exchanged looks with Lestrade, and went after him.
It wasn't until half an hour later, after a lot of crawling around in bushes that John wasn't entirely sure had been completely necessary, that he thought to check his messages.
You on your way?
Please tell me you're still coming.
There better be a bloody good excuse for this one. I'm running out of patience.
Oh, shit, Natasha. He glanced at his watch, wincing. He had been meant to pick her up at seven for dinner with some of her friends. It was sort of a big deal – they'd been together nearly four months now, the longest relationship he'd managed since coming home from Afghanistan, and this was the first time he'd made it to 'meeting the friends' stage in ages.
He'd still be able to make it for dinner if he dropped everything and rushed over there, but Sherlock was holding a cab, frowning with impatience as he waited for him.
“Come on, John,” he said sharply. “If the brother has already left London, we may never catch up with him.”
John glanced back down at the last text, then back up at Sherlock. The sad thing was, he knew there should be some sort of conflict, but he was already phrasing his apologies in his head. He let out a sigh and climbed into the back of the cab, wondering why there never seemed to be space in his life for a relationship.
He phoned Natasha, ignoring the sharp gaze that Sherlock kept on him for the painfully brief conversation. She was not pleased and not even a little bit understanding about the importance of the case, and after she'd hung up John thought, glumly, that he was likely to be treated to another one of those special conversations about his priorities that his girlfriends tended to end his relationships with very soon.
Sherlock was blissfully silent for the taxi ride but the moment they pulled up at the victim's brother's house, he was off again, sparking with genius and pulling John along with him as if by gravitational pull. John didn't even bother trying to fight it, he just put Natasha out of his mind and concentrated on the case. As far as he was concerned, his priorities were just fine.
The body had been there for a while. A good long while. It had sunk into the leaf mould carpeting the ground before it had been refrozen by the latest cold snap, so that now it was half-frozen to rotting leaves. There were tiny teeth marks nibbled into the bloated, green-tinged skin where scavenging animals had found it. John made a disgusted face and stayed back but Sherlock, as usual, dived straight in, apparently without any concern. He did pull on gloves first and appeared to be taking slightly more care than usual to avoid letting his coat touch the corpse, but apart from that, it was if he was dealing with any other slightly-messy object.
“We're running a compare with recent missing persons,” said Lestrade, “but nothing's come up yet.”
“Of course not,” said Sherlock distractedly, running the tip of his finger over the man's cheek. The skin sagged unpleasantly under the pressure and John had to take a deep, careful breath which, unfortunately, just brought more of the smell into his lungs. “You must have realised by now that his disappearance won't have been reported.”
There was a telling silence from the surrounding police officers, and Sherlock glanced up at them, then rolled his eyes with exasperation. “Imbeciles,” he muttered, then gestured sharply at the corpse. “Look at him!”
John automatically looked down, then regretted it. He had no problems – well, relatively few – with blood or gore, he'd examined dismembered and eviscerated corpses, parts of bodies that had been dipped in acid or torn apart by giant trained rodents from Sumatra (and that really had been a disturbingly bloody case – he hadn't been able to put it on his blog at all) but as soon as a body was more than a couple of days old, it turned his stomach.
“Clearly an illegal immigrant,” continued Sherlock. “Brought in for the sex industry. Look at his teeth!” He let out a long sigh. “How have any of you kept your jobs this long?” he asked.
“Yes, all right,” interrupted Lestrade. “We get it, we're idiots and you're a genius. Anything else you'd care to add, or are we done here?”
Sherlock stood up and dusted the dead leaves off his trousers. “The real question here is not who he is, although that will no doubt prove interesting,” he said, “it's why anyone took such care to mutilate him so thoroughly – clearly as a warning to others thinking of committing whatever his offence was - but then just abandoned him here, apparently without caring if he was ever found or not?”
Oh god, the smell was getting worse. John wondered if he could back away any further without attracting attention. There was just something about the stench of gone-off human meat that made his stomach turn over. He could feel it seeping into his skin and clothes, tiny particles of decomposing flesh finding their way inside him, in his mouth and nose and lungs and- He abruptly cut the thought off when his stomach threatened a revolt.
“What good is a warning if it's never found?” Sherlock looked over at John as if expecting an answer to his question, and frowned slightly when he caught sight of his face.
Damn, thought John. He clearly wasn't managing to cover up his revulsion as well as he'd hoped. Well, Sherlock did see everything, especially when it came to John. Hopefully none of the police officers had picked up on how close John was to having to excuse himself to vomit behind a tree.
“Maybe it -he- didn't need to be found,” hypothesised Lestrade. “Maybe the warning had already been seen by those it was aimed at.”
Sherlock spared him a brief, mildly impressed look, as if he was a pet that had just worked out how to do a trick he'd thought too complex for it. “Perhaps,” he allowed, then turned back to John. He stepped closer to him, holding out his hands, and John couldn't stop himself from flinching back from the rubber gloves he was still wearing.
Sherlock stopped and tipped his head to one side. “Ah,” he said quietly.
“What?” asked Lestrade, glancing back at the corpse. Hopkins, who had replaced Anderson last year after the melodrama that had surrounded the ending of his marriage led to a swift transfer to Manchester, was already stepping into the space that Sherlock had left behind. He was wearing the earnest, sycophantic look of wonder that he always seemed to have on around Sherlock, although he didn't say anything, just started inspecting the corpse's teeth in far more detail than John was really comfortable with.
“Nothing,” said Sherlock dismissively, not looking away from John's face. “Just, there's always something new to learn, even with subjects you've spent years studying.”
John felt caught by the fascinated look on his face and the certainty that Sherlock wasn't talking about crime right now. He found himself faintly smiling, remembering how the same look had been on Sherlock's face just last month, after their one and only kiss, when John had offered Sherlock the opportunity to share his bed without any worry that it would be for more than sleep and the occasional cuddle. I still manage to surprise and interest him, he thought. Even after five years of marriage. Must be doing something right.
“Ah, of course,” said Lestrade dryly, and John had no doubt that he'd see the mildly amused expression that Lestrade adopted whenever he thought John and Sherlock were 'having a couple moment' if he'd chosen to look away from Sherlock. He didn't bother, he'd seen it all too often before. It probably should have been his first clue that he should stop hiding behind the idea that he and Sherlock were still nothing more than friends, even with the marriage certificate.
Sherlock stripped off his gloves and tossed them to one side, where Hopkins dove forward to sweep them up and dispose of them properly, glancing up at Sherlock as he did so as if looking for credit. Both Sherlock and John ignored him. Sherlock took another step forward, and John let him step into his personal space and take hold of his hands now that the traces of decomposing body were gone. Sherlock's wedding ring pressed coldly against his skin and he had to suppress the urge to trace the line of it.
“Tell me, Doctor,” said Sherlock in the excited, gleeful voice that usually signalled the kind of evening that John was unable to explain without using the phrase 'well, it seemed like a good idea at the time', “do you have a great deal of experience with male sex workers?”
John huffed a laugh out. “None at all,” he said. “I take it I'm about to, though?”
Sherlock waggled his eyebrows. “It does seem like an excellent opportunity to explore some of London's seedy underbelly,” he said, as if he was offering John a treat. He probably thought he was.
“Not worried that he'll get seduced away by a rentboy, Mr. Watson?” asked Donovan, and John finally tore his gaze away from Sherlock in order to look over and see that she'd finally turned up at the crime scene, dressed slightly inappropriately and looking quietly smug.
“Hardly,” said Sherlock. “He's not gay.”
There was a confused silence from those in earshot.
“Um,” said Hopkins carefully, but didn't get to form whatever thought he'd had into words.
“You're all so blind,” interrupted Sherlock, looking around at them with more than a little wonder at their stupidity, although he kept hold of one of John's hands as he turned to look at them. “You see but don't observe – how insufferably annoying that must be! I bet none of you have even noticed that Donovan has found her own not-gay man to marry.”
The scrutiny that had been on John suddenly transferred to Donovan. She managed a glare at Sherlock for a handful of seconds, then rolled her eyes and held up her hand, displaying a rather tasteful engagement ring.
“You could have given me the chance to tell people when we're not at as crime scene,” she said, attempting to sound grumpy, but her happiness bled through her voice.
“Crime scenes are the best places for these things,” said Sherlock dismissively. “Means there's something other than dull social conventions to concentrate on. Corpses are far more interesting.”
John elbowed him in the side and gave Donovan a grin, trying to remember the name of the bloke she was seeing and failing. “Congratulations,” he said. “I hope you're very happy.” Like I've been, he thought but didn't say. She'd never really seemed to appreciate the appeal of John and Sherlock's marriage, even if her insults had died down over the years.
“Yeah, congratulations, Sally,” said Lestrade. “We'll have to organise drinks to celebrate.”
“Dull!” said Sherlock. “Come on, John, I know just where we should start.”
He dragged John away without waiting for a response and John let him, relieved to get away from the corpse. He did glance back at Donovan and give her an apologetic shrug, but she just rolled her eyes, still looking smugly happy.
Sherlock was talking a mile-a-minute as they left the crime scene, gesturing emphatically with the one hand that wasn't still clinging to John's. John took a deep breath, filling his lungs with fresh air, and thought that despite the complications caused by being a straight man married to an asexual one, the difficulties of trying to explain his life to outsiders, the certainty that he was never going to be with a woman again, and even the weeks-old corpses, this marriage really was the best idea that Sherlock had ever had. Thank god he'd gone along with it.
Next fic in the verse: Bigots And Allies
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Date: 2011-03-19 06:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-20 01:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-19 07:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-20 01:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-20 08:27 am (UTC)You already know I love this, but it's worth repeating - I particularly like the line about Sally having found her own 'not-gay man' and I'm glad you kept the title, it's very appropriate.
I feel a bit of a fraud getting a beta credit, when really it was a case of you saying 'who wants to read this fic?' and me being quickest with the 'I do, I do!' :D
xxx
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Date: 2011-03-20 01:25 pm (UTC)I'm so glad you liked it as well, and that you told me to keep the title - it really grew on me whilst it was just sitting around.
Thank you so much!
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Date: 2011-03-20 10:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-20 01:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-20 06:03 pm (UTC)Mr. Watson. :) And also, yay for Sally finding someone.
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Date: 2011-03-23 02:54 am (UTC)Not sure about more. If I did find more, it would be retirement-era, I think. I don't know, it's on the backburner for now while I deal with other things.
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Date: 2011-03-20 06:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-20 09:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2011-03-20 07:32 pm (UTC)Their marriage just works so well.
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Date: 2011-03-23 02:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-20 08:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-23 03:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-20 10:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-23 03:00 am (UTC)oh YEY!
Date: 2011-03-20 11:42 pm (UTC)Loved John being clueless about their anniversaries & Sherlock actually giving a damn.
It's all so normal & dysfunctional & sweet :)
Thank you for writing more in this verse.
BUT WHAT ABOUT CUDDLES?
I think we all deserve some cuddle-time :(
Re: oh YEY!
Date: 2011-03-23 03:07 am (UTC)Not sure about cuddles - there will have to be some at some stage, but not sure when I'll have time to write any.
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Date: 2011-03-21 03:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-23 03:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-21 04:32 am (UTC)1...2...3...oh, wait, infinity.
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Date: 2011-03-23 03:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-21 02:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-23 03:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-21 02:30 pm (UTC)Oh, good fic, by the way.
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Date: 2011-03-23 03:11 am (UTC)Thank you!
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Date: 2011-03-21 06:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-23 03:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-21 08:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-23 03:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-22 03:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-23 03:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-22 04:05 am (UTC)lovely balance of relationship and mystery. let's have more!
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Date: 2011-03-23 03:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-22 04:44 am (UTC)Also, I'm willing to bet that budgie died of some form of bad air. VERY susceptible to it. Like canaries in a coal mine, but worse.
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Date: 2011-03-23 03:17 am (UTC)Hah, I have no idea how the budgie died. Most of the fun of writing this fic was never having to explain these crime scenes.
Thank you!
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Date: 2011-03-22 08:14 am (UTC)I love how you used different crime scenes as snap shots into their marriage and the way everyone treats them (I love how Lestrade pretty much took in stride XD And Sally's 'Mr Watson' is fantastic XD). So many little things: Sherlock keeping track of their anniversaries, the interpretations of John and Sherlock's interactions, Lestrade's amusement, Hopkins (LOL) - they just made my day :D
Thank you! :D It was indeed worth it ;D
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Date: 2011-03-23 03:22 am (UTC)Thank you so much!
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Date: 2011-03-22 05:37 pm (UTC)And I've said it before but you write their voices so well I'm starting to think you're actually Moffat dabbling in fanfic. XD
Sherlock secretly loving being called Mr. Watson and knowing to the exact day their anniversary? Heartclutch ahoy!
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Date: 2011-03-23 03:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-23 08:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 12:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-14 03:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-16 11:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-17 01:38 am (UTC)And the giant rats of Sumatra reference was full of oh so much win :D
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Date: 2011-04-17 12:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-18 10:17 pm (UTC)Or perhaps let me play in it too?
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Date: 2011-04-20 12:31 am (UTC)