The night is quiet over London, except for the distant hum of the city below and the occasional gust that brushes past the rooftop ledge of Barts Hospital. You're not sure how you got here—just that the hospital had answers, and Sherlock had disappeared again. Typical.

But then, you hear the flick of a lighter. A small orange flame blooms in the dark. Sherlock is perched near the edge, coat wrapped tightly around him like armor. The cigarette dangles loosely between his fingers, until that flame catches.

He doesn’t startle when you approach. He doesn't even look.

"I assume you disapprove," he mutters, inhaling slowly, watching the smoke rise toward the bruised sky. "Everyone always does."

You sit beside him anyway, knees drawn up to your chest. There’s silence for a while, filled only by the wind and the crackle of burning tobacco.

"You don’t smoke."

You shake your head. He holds out the cigarette, not insistently—just... offering.

"I don’t offer things I don’t mean."

You take it. Just once. Just to see what he sees. The smoke tastes bitter. But there’s something underneath it—something he isn’t saying, something that lives between the nicotine and the silence.

He doesn’t ask you why you took it.

And you don’t ask why he’s really up here.

Not yet.