for Sherry

[formoftherapy]

Kite made it to Christmas break alive, which still feels like an accomplishment. (Sunnydale habits are hard to break.)

She's using the time to get through the rest of her grandmother's journals and the bar seemed like as good a reading room as any. Kite has laid claim to one of the couches, legs sprawled across the cushions and a coffee mug on the floor beside her.

Comments

[if_inconvenient]

Sherlock steps out of the stairwell looking distracted and pensive and heads directly for the bar. He doesn't spare Kite a glance.

His neck is layered with bruises.

[formoftherapy]

Her first instinct is smile, shake her head--

(What would you believe? That the choking thing is universal?)

--but his expression is wrong for that. And those are an awful lot of bruises; even from across the room, they look a little too familiar.


She's on her feet without even thinking about it.

(Could be one she's met; could be somebody else.

Does it really matter?)

Kite runs a hand through her hair and crosses the room.

[if_inconvenient]

Before she's halfway across, he looks up and raises his eyebrows.

[formoftherapy]

She shrugs one shoulder, pulls up a bar stool.

"Hell of a conversation piece," she says, brushing her fingers over the side of her throat.

[if_inconvenient]

"Hardly my intention in acquiring them," he counters mildly.

[formoftherapy]

"I'm sure."

It's harder to pick individual hands with the bruises layered as they are. Not impossible, though, if you know what you're looking for.

"What was?"

[if_inconvenient]

"Not to be asked that question by half the bar, I assure you. What is your interest?"

[formoftherapy]

"There are too goddamn many of you around here, you know that?" she mutters.

"And the answer to your question is that I know you--one of you, anyway--and I therefore give a shit."

[if_inconvenient]

Sherlock considers this for a moment.

Then: "Sunnydale or New York?"

[formoftherapy]

"Sunnydale.



The Sunnydale that's a big-ass crater, specifically."

[if_inconvenient]

"Mine isn't. Next question: Me or Tony?"

[formoftherapy]

You or Tony what? is a tempting question, until she accepts that it doesn't matter.

"Both."

[if_inconvenient]

"Somehow I suspected as much," he says, which might shed some light on what exactly he was asking about.

"Well, in case your Sherlock hasn't proven it yet, Obadiah Stane murdered Tony's parents."

Largely without his conscious intervention, his hand comes up to touch the dark fingerprints on his neck.

[formoftherapy]

"That's...I hadn't heard that one yet."

Here eyes track his hand.


Fuck. She hadn't wanted to be right. Fuck it all.

"Oh, Sherry."

[if_inconvenient]

"And Tony loves him all the same," he continues softly, "because Tony is Tony."

[formoftherapy]

"Fuck."

She's going to look away from his throat. She is.

(But she can still remember the way his ring would be a spot of cold against her throat as her vision tunneled.)


"Has Tony seen these?"

[if_inconvenient]

"Not yet, no. He will likely be annoyed with me when he does. Whatever his troubles with Obadiah, it was never his intention that I should seduce the man."

[formoftherapy]

"I bet not.



Don't--" She catches her lower lip between her teeth, starts over.

"Why did you do it?"

[if_inconvenient]

"I wanted to know what would happen," he says.

That's what it boils down to. Everything else is just added complications.

[formoftherapy]

She laughs, a little weary and a lot unsurprised.

"I should have known."


It's why she did it, after all.

[if_inconvenient]

A little more quietly: "I wanted to know he would be safe for Tony."

[formoftherapy]

Kite's expression closes off.

"He's not safe for anybody," she murmurs, voice tight.

[if_inconvenient]

"He managed not to misbehave too badly with me, despite my every effort."

[formoftherapy]

(Something's bound to break, her arm or the mirror--)

"He must have had himself on quite a leash."

[if_inconvenient]

He shrugs slightly.

"I can only conclude that he is both capable of restraining himself and willing in this case to do so."