The Mystery of Jayden Holmes (A Greg Lestrade fanfic)

Chapter Eight

The air in 221B was stale as Sherlock attempted to hide his smoking. He had taken my laptop and was sitting in the kitchen with his back towards John and I and the doors shut slightly. The cigarette smoke had a revolting smell and everytime he would take a puff on it, I wrinkled my nose in disgust. He had apparently stopped smoking for quite a long time, but decided to give up on the patches around the time that I moved in. At about the same moment, John and I both got the idea to open the windows in an effort to get rid of the God awful stench.

“Do you even realize how bad those things smell? You and Mycroft both reek of those things and it’s disgusting,” I spouted as I fanned the windows to try to get fresh air circulating through the stuffy little flat.

“Yes, because you don’t smoke at all,” Sherlock snapped.

“I don’t, and you should know that. Jim never liked the smell, so that was a habit I never bothered with. Besides, you should be able to tell the difference between the smell of someone who smokes and someone who is constantly around smokers. What you smell on me is mostly Greg,” I corrected matter-of-factly.

“Who?”

I groaned, rolling my eyes as I took his cigarette to throw it out the window. “Greg Lestrade, y’know, the man whose name you can never seem to remember. Are you seriously that thick, or is his name another thing you can’t be bothered to remember like the fact that the Earth goes around the Sun?”

“Are you really bringing that up? My God, who even cares?” he half yelled in irritation, searching for his cigarettes and throwing off his blue dressing robe after he gave up.

“Well, obviously the scientists who discovered that and the ones that use facts like that every day as a real job,” I snapped in reply, falling onto the couch and grabbing my phone. I had another text from Jim, but I had only been out of the hospital for a week and I didn’t want to be back there anytime soon, so I ignored it.

“How is observing the Sun considered a ‘real’ job? It’s a job for those who couldn’t get into the harder sciences because they weren’t smart enough. But I suppose it’s still more of a job than yours.” I gave him a deathly glare and he just smirked in reply.

“Currently, I have no job, thank you very much. And how was my old job any less of a job than yours? Your ‘job’ is more of a hobby so you don’t end up on the other side of the crime scene. Oh wait, that already happened, didn’t it? Charles Augustus Magnussen. The first person the oh so great Mr. Holmes murdered.” I sat up from the couch and stared at him intensely, my playful grin betraying the coldness in my eyes. I stood up, getting closer to my twin as I spoke. “Who’s next, Sherlock? Who’s going to be the one person who snaps you? Makes you what they believe you are? That one last nerve that pushes you into my world?”

By the end of my tease, we were almost nose to nose. Our matching blue eyes were finishing the conversation for us, leaving poor John in an awkward silence. I was about to speak again when I suddenly felt something collide with my face. I looked back to Sherlock to realize he had hit me. It was open handed, but still a hit nonetheless. I was more in shock than I was anything else, but yet it didn’t surprise me one bit. I had almost expected it in a way. Call it twin intuition.

“I’m not and I never will be like you. The murder of Magnussen was by my hand, but not at the purpose of any of your murders. Nothing will ever push me down to your level because you and I are entirely different people,” he whispered with venomous intent.

I stood on my tiptoes to get by his ear so that only he could hear me when I said, “Are we, brother dearest? Are we really?”

And with those last words, I went into my room to lock myself in for the night. I could hear John  and Sherlock speaking to each other in the living room after a long pause before I heard the door slam. The two of them had left, so I fell on my bed with music playing from my phone. I checked the text from Jim, finally, and sighed when I read it.