Chapter Text
The night was never quite quiet in the city of London. At least, not after the mass organ failure and the rise of GeneCo in the face of such horror. There was always the sound of screaming and always the heavy weight of apprehension. The repo men were the stuff of nightmares and no one ever knew who they were. There were stories of people who lived in the walls and heard when you admitted your guilt. There were tales of men not made of flesh and blood, but of mechanics who tore your still beating heart from your chest because you hadn’t paid. There were other more believable stories that they were people, just like everyone else and it could be your best friend cutting your chest open to get to your manufactured heart. Those were the most terrifying.
In the city streets botched experiments walked. People who had changed their skin, their nose and even their hearts so much that the only original body part they had left were their feet (for some reason, GeneCo didn’t change feet). Many of them were on repo watch and even more of them could be found bloody and torn open once the next sunrise came. No one knew how many repo men there were or how they found their victims, but no one wanted to ask, either. Locked doors were nothing to the repo men and it was a lonely life of distrust that came with GeneCo and its global domination.
Those who wished to be frugal and safe were sneered at, especially when they were damaged goods. John Watson was one of them. He’d been shot in the shoulder long before GeneCo’s takeover and instead of falling into the trap of trending scalpel use; he budgeted to pay for his kidney and ignored his aching shoulder. In a world of plastic perfection, he was shunned.
The London night found him leaning on his cane while he watched the Grave Robber shoot Zydrate into the thick thighs of the women who sold themselves to pay their bills. None of them looked at him. None of them called out. Why would they? In a world of impeccable looks and appalling taste, john Watson was nothing special.
Sherlock Holmes had a lot on his mind which meant that he wasn’t paying much attention to where he was walking or if there was someone in front of him. When he slammed into the smaller man they both tumbled backward before regaining their footing. For being so much shorter, he was very solid. Sherlock looked down with a displeased frown only to stop. The man in front of him was injured. A past injury, but an injury no less. He was also nearly 100% natural. Out of everyone Sherlock knew, only three were more that 80% natural and one of them was himself. Besides what Sherlock guessed to be a replaced kidney, the man in front of him was purely himself.
“Excuse me,” he snapped, taking in the shorter form.
If the man held himself straight, he would actually have been very attractive. He was young, probably around Sherlock’s age it seemed, with his sandy colored hair, dark coat and slightly opened shirt that showed the beginnings of a gnarled scar. He had an edge that matched with his cool eyes and his GeneCo dog tags were not tucked in, proving he had paid his dues. He seemed on edge and Sherlock tucked his gloved hands into his coat pockets. He didn’t have a job to be at since he’d just finished one, he wasn’t in much of a rush. All that was left to do was bring it to the cataloguing facility and meet with his step brother about future assignments and worrisome little details.
“Look where you’re going next time,” John snapped.
“You’re natural,” Sherlock said with a smug smile. He didn’t need greetings, they were only perfunctory. Polite conversation for him only went so far and he knew he wouldn't need it with this man.
John didn’t turn away from him but instead studied his features. When the taller man had unceremoniously thrown him backward he had been annoyed. Now he was interested. He found that mildly fascinating in itself since he hardly ever got interested in anything since he’d come back to London.
“Mostly. How did you know that?” he asked, peering up into bright blue eyes that couldn’t possibly be natural.
“I am too. Well. Besides my heart. Need a strong heart to survive,” he said. It sounded as if he meant it two ways and John tipped his head slightly so he could look at the man in the badly lit street.
“They are a jumpy lot, aren’t they?” the man said, looking over his head to the women he’d been watching. He turned and noticed the Grave Robber was gone and the women were leaning on the building trying not to look high.
“They don’t like new people. Everyone could be the repo man,” John explained.
Sherlock snorted. “That is hardly true. They are easy to spot.”
“Who are you?” John asked.
Sherlock gave him a fleeting smile, showing off perfect white teeth and John marveled at the beauty of the man all without GeneCo’s influence. He missed the awe of organic beauty, he found.
“I am Sherlock Holmes and you have nowhere to be. Come with me,” he said.
He began to stride down the street making the woman scatter and John turned with a baffled frown.
“I’ve just met you. We know nothing about each other but you want me to come with you?”
Sherlock sighed. “I know everything I need to know about you, John Watson. You’re a doctor but you don’t practice anymore. Possibly because you don’t like GeneCo or possibly because of your injury. You have a sibling but you aren’t close. You don’t trust people easily but you’re standing here talking to me, so it must be something to do with surgery and the inability to trust someone who doesn’t like themselves so much that they replace not only their face but their organs. You don’t have a lot of money and you’re struggling to stay in London, but you don’t want to find yourself anywhere else. That’s all I need to know for right now. Now, come along,” Sherlock spoke quickly.
John blinked and followed along as he asked, “How did you know my name?”
“GeneCo dog tags, you left them hanging out,” Sherlock said without looking back.
They walked side by side; John’s dark jeans clinging to his hips in the heavy heat, making him turn to Sherlock with puzzlement since the mysterious man was wearing a heavy wool trench coat but didn’t show any signs of overheating.
“How are you not boiling?” he asked when the sweat began to make his shirt stick to his chest and his hand began to feel stuck to his cane.
Sherlock shot a glance at John. “I am,” he said seriously.
John laughed. “So you just wear that thing to look cool,” he said.
Sherlock actually wore the coat to hide the blood stains on his shirt from his earlier job, though something in him told him that John wouldn’t balk from the blood. He pulled it tighter around him and said defensively, “There’s a reason, I just can’t tell you yet.”
John chuckled and said to himself, “I must be crazy.”
“Why is that?” Sherlock asked. He seemed to be bringing them deeper into the city and closer to the GeneCo headquarters. Most people stuck to the outer limits of the city except when the opera’s happened. Even then, only the rich and mechanical went to the actual event.
“I’m following you into the city. A strange man in a trench coat when it’s nearly reached a boiling point even at night, who says he knows everything about me. I am crazy,” John marveled.
Sherlock felt compelled to reply, “I don’t know everything. Only the important things.”
“How did you know about the sibling?” John asked.
“Your dog tags. I know how to read GeneCo tags, John. There’s a single slash at the end of your name which means another family member is also in the system. You’re living alone in the city but you seem rather young which means it’s probably a sibling since a parent would never want their child here and you seem the kind to bide a parents wishes. What happened with them? You wouldn’t be on the streets outside of a nearly condemned building that you most likely live in if you still had a sibling to fall back on,” Sherlock never once looked over at John and the shorter man felt a spurt of adrenaline when asked about his sibling.
“She died,” he said stiffly.
“Not repossessed though. Close to it, but she died beforehand. How?” Sherlock seemed to order John to tell him.
John ran his fingers through his hair in frustration making it stand in short spikes. Sherlock peeked at the attractive man out of the corner of his eye before looking back in front of them. People scattered as they walked by. They were nearing GeneCo headquarters and soon there would be no one on the streets at all. Those who lived in central London didn’t come out at night. They didn’t like to see the mess of repo men coming in to catalogue their hauls. He didn’t know how John would react, but Sherlock could tell, John was a dangerous man and Mycroft had been hinting that Sherlock needed a guard just as much as any other repo man. Sherlock wasn’t about to let his step brother choose his guard for him. Not again. He hoped John Watson would be up to the task.
Sherlock swept around the corner of the opera house as John said, “We couldn’t afford to finance another liver. She drank away the first one. She was already about to be repossessed even though we were doing everything we could. Harry and I never got on, but she didn’t deserve that death.”
“No, there is no glory in your body failing you,” Sherlock said softly.
John absorbed that before turning to Sherlock. “Enough. Where are we going?”
“My work,” Sherlock replied.
“Why?” John asked.
“Because I have to catalogue my nightly incomings to make money. And because my step brother requested it.”
John connected the dots. He stopped. The man beside him was a repo agent. The stuff of nightmares. John took another look. Tall, long coat, dark curly hair on the brink of being too long. Beautiful blue eyes and perfect teeth. Alabaster skin and the flash of laced up, knee high boots over tight black pants with a black silk shirt tucked in. The boots had once been standard issue for Genetic Works doctors but had become the sign of a repo agent when GeneCo bought out the company. They also were a trendy piece of clothing for those who wished to instill fear. Sherlock didn’t need to instill fear, people turned away from him just by looking at his face. He was too beautiful in a way that was almost too painful. John decided he must have a weapon on him somewhere and he checked the man’s back.
“What are you doing?” Sherlock sounded amused.
“You’re a repo agent. I’m checking to see if you have a weapon.”
“Knife rings, if you must know, but you won’t find them,” Sherlock replied, “You, on the other hand are carrying a gun on your thigh. Very useful.”
“How did you…?” John trailed off.
“You walk with a cane but you don’t limp very much. It gives you the freedom to cow your leg into yourself so no one can see it,” Sherlock said.
John sighed and nodded. “So why am I coming with you? You deduced that I don’t want to work for GeneCo as a doctor, so why are you bringing me to the headquarters?”
“This is only the London headquarters, as you know so I’m really not bringing into too much of the company,” Sherlock said vaguely. John raised his eyebrows.
“If you must know, my step brother runs the company. He’ll tell you it’s only a minor position of power, but he’s lying through his teeth. Something you probably don’t know is that most repo agents have a body guard. Even though we are all trained in self-defense, working a job can lead to people trying to kill you. Sentiment. Fear. Waste of time, really but I digress. A guard is put with each agent to make sure death doesn’t occur. As you might have guessed, not many wish to choose this is a profession and even fewer actually have the skills. Repo agents are precious. I don’t have a guard since my last one tried to strangle me while I slept. It was taken care of, but since then my step brother has been badgering me to find a new one and when I saw you, I figured you could use the money and the sense of danger. Also, guards live with their agents and as you already know I’m an agent, that’s the worst thing about me out in the open. Potential flat mates should know the worst about each other, don’t you think?” Sherlock asked.
They had reached GeneCo headquarters but Sherlock waited outside the door. He took in John’s fleeting expressions before John spoke and was confident in the answers he would be receiving.
“Who said anything about flat mates?” John asked in a somewhat strangled voice.
“I did. Just now.” Sherlock tapped his toe, giving John the hint that the boots were steel toed.
John didn’t say anything else for quite some time and Sherlock let out a strangled sigh and put his hand on the door.
“We don’t have all night. Are you interested, or not?” he finally snapped.
“I was all the way on the other side of London. Why didn’t you just ask me there?” John queried.
“This was easier,” Sherlock replied.
“No, it wasn’t.”
“Just say you’ll consider it and get inside. While I don’t mind annoying my dear brother by being late, being ridiculously late is not only careless, it’s dangerous. Especially when it comes to Mycroft,” Sherlock said darkly.
John thought about it, resigned himself to the fact that it seemed to be his only option and let Sherlock herd him in the door. Only when they were approaching the startlingly white front desk did he turn and stare at Sherlock with a mix of awe and terror as something fell into place.
“Holmes?! Mycroft Holmes is your brother?” he gaped.
Sherlock put his hand on the small of John’s back and pushed him forward.
“Step brother,” Sherlock corrected.
“Why aren’t you beside him like that Adler woman and Jim Moriarty?” John asked.
Sherlock ignored him to peer at the woman behind the desk.
“So nice to see you, Sally,” Sherlock said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
“Evening freak. Who’s this?” she inclined her head at John. John stayed silent and Sherlock answered.
“He’s with me. I got all but one tonight. Nasty brute hid in a laundry chute,” he said, swinging a bag from inside his coat and emptying it onto the counter.
John felt slightly ill as Sally reached out with black gloved hands and began to pull each separate bag apart to read the names. It wasn’t that they were organs to him, he was a doctor, he’d removed and fixed up many organs in his day, it was the names. They were once a part of people and now they were bags on a table being sorted by a woman dressed all in white.
“Relax,” Sherlock said under his breath, “only one of these people died tonight.”
Sally looked at him sharply. “You aren’t supposed to waste time sorting them out. Cut them and leave,” she snapped.
“This one,” he said, lifting a bag, “was only a teenager. It was an appendix. No idea why she needed a replacement of something so dull, but it was quite easy to sew her back up, I assure you I wasted no time. Besides, she might grow into quite the little customer. She had five tags so far and she isn’t even legal yet. The rest were small hauls and you’d know that if you bothered to read the tags.”
Sally sighed and began to scan the bar codes on the bags.
“You can go on up. I know he’s expecting you,” she said when Sherlock began to fidget.
“This way,” he said to John, directing him to the gray elevator. They stepped inside and Sherlock hit the button for the highest floor.
“Identification,” a somewhat bored voice said over the intercom.
“Lestrade. It’s Sherlock. I’m late, just let me up,” Sherlock said.
“Identify your…companion and you can,” the voice, Lestrade, answered.
John stared at the wall and resolved to not feel dizzy from all the changes in one night. He’d been only days away from living on the streets when Sherlock ran into him and now he was standing in the elevator of the biggest world corporation, about to meet the man in charge of nearly all of it. It was a lot to take in. He leaned on his cane and pressed his fingers against the gun on his thigh. Sherlock gave him a fleeting grin, as if it would put him at ease, and answered.
“Doctor John Watson. Might be on file for Genetic Works. If not, just tell my brother he is the godsend Mycroft has been looking for.”
There was a pause over the intercom where they waited and John wondered what would happen to him if he didn’t pass whatever inspection GeneCo had for him. It was a short lived thought.
“Right then. Up you come. He feels the need to point out you’re late,” Lestrade said.
“As always, Lestrade, as always,” Sherlock said with a smirk.
The intercom turned off with a small whine. The elevator began to move and Sherlock turned to John.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked seriously.
“You’re asking this now?” John snapped backed incredulously.
“Yes. Are you sure. Once we do this there is no going back,” Sherlock said.
John pondered his actions. Harry was dead. Their parents long gone. He didn’t want to practice medicine anymore and since he’d been shot he wasn’t even sure he could. What else did he have? He was bored out of his mind in his life. If he didn’t do what Sherlock asked, he might just end up using his gun on himself. Just as he was about to answer, Sherlock spoke.
“Could be dangerous,” he said darkly, his voice low and rich. There was a spark in his eye that promised excitement and something in John leapt at that. If he hadn’t been about to say yes, that would have changed his mind. He gave a curt nod as the elevator doors opened.
Together they turned and John caught his first in life glimpse of Mycroft Holmes.