By eleven, St Bartholomew’s had gone hushed in that particular hospital way. Under the fluorescent of the lab lights, everything looked a little too pale, a little too tired.

Including you.

Molly had insisted you stay.

She’d smiled and said she just needed help with a few things. But you knew her too well by now not to see what sat underneath it.

Sherlock sometimes turned up late.

Sherlock sometimes turned up very late.

And if he did, Molly wanted to be here when he did.

You were, at best, a convenient excuse not to be the only one still hanging around at nearly eleven o’clock at night.

So here you were, squinting into a microscope with a stiffness beginning to gather at the back of your neck, trying to convince your eyes to focus on something they had long since lost the patience for. One hand reached up to pull your ponytail loose, then gather it again, tighter this time, fingers clumsy with fatigue as you retied it and leaned back over the eyepiece.

The image blurred.

You adjusted the focus.

Still wrong.

Behind you, somewhere out in the corridor, a door opened.

Molly looked up so fast it was almost painful to watch. “Oh,” she breathed, already smiling. “It’s Sherlock.”

Of course it was.

You didn’t even turn around right away. You just sat back from the microscope a fraction, suppressing the sigh that threatened to rise. Across the room, Molly was smoothing her hair with both hands, brightening all at once like a light had been switched on inside her.

Then she glanced at you.

“I’ll just—” she said quickly, already halfway to the door, “he’s probably looking for me—”

Which he almost certainly wasn’t, but she was gone before the thought fully formed.

The lab door swung shut behind her.

You looked back into the microscope, jaw tightening faintly as the slide refused, once again, to cooperate.

A beat passed.

Then another.

No cheerful voices in the corridor. No Molly returning in flustered delight. No immediate sound at all.

And then the door opened again.

You looked up.

Sherlock Holmes stepped into the lab as though it belonged to him.

He was tall enough to make the room feel smaller at once, all long lines and sharp angles in a dark coat left unbuttoned over a black suit. The collar sat turned up slightly at his neck, his scarf dark and loose—skin almost stark against the shadow of his curls, which fell untidily over his forehead in dark, damp bends from the night air. His face was all clean, severe lines: high cheekbones, narrow nose, a mouth that always looked as though it had just withheld a comment. And his light eyes, sharp enough to make you feel looked through rather than looked at.

At the moment, they were fixed on you.

You blinked once, caught off guard enough that the words came out before you’d quite arranged them.

“M-Molly went looking for you.”

Sherlock’s expression did not change. “…Did she.”

It wasn’t even dismissive, exactly. More like genuine uncertainty as to what he was supposed to do with that information.

You cleared your throat, suddenly feeling faintly ridiculous on Molly’s behalf.

Turning back to the microscope, you lowered yourself toward it again with more concentration than confidence. The image swam immediately. You adjusted the focus, then the slide, then the light, and only succeeded in making it worse.

Behind you, Sherlock said, “You’re too tired.”

You went still for half a second, then tried again anyway. “No, I’m not.”

A pause.

“Yes,” he said. “You are.”

Before you could quite decide whether to be annoyed, he had crossed the space between you. You became aware of him beside you first as movement, then as presence: coat brushing the side of the bench, one hand bracing lightly against the table near your shoulder as he leaned in to look.

His eyes dropped at once to the microscope, then to the slide, then briefly to your face.

“You’ve overtightened the fine adjustment,” he said.

With one long-fingered hand, he reached past you and turned the dial back by the smallest degree. The motion was precise, effortless.

“There,” he said.