and the property values just keep going up

[cross_and_bow]

Time passes. Juliet practices, Shell Bell makes squares - increasingly irritable about it, she really doesn't like the perpetual discomfort, but she bites down on that as best she can and churns them out - and Tony installs things.

Finally he has installed enough things.

Comments

[poeticterms]

Jarvis opens a door.

[cross_and_bow]

Bells go through it.

[toblameforit]

Tony hesitates, hugs Sherlock, then follows them.

[eversomuchfun]

Sherlock comes last.

[she_sells_seashells]

"Oh, look -"

[cross_and_bow]

"I don't see an us..."

[she_sells_seashells]

"Not an us. A Sherlock. Or maybe a Tony but I think a Sherlock, there, see? Sherlock!" calls Shell Bell brightly in that direction.

[dearsweetsoulful]

The named party glances back at her in mild confusion.

"Yes?"

[she_sells_seashells]

"Hi! I'm Shell Bell and this is Bella but we call her Juliet 'cause there are lots of Bellas and this is another Sherlock and this is a Tony - they're not a matched set, Tony and me were visiting Juliet and this Sherlock. And my girlfriend back home is another Sherlock too. And her matching Tony is not this Tony, but another one who is also in my world, and you guys need your own Tower to coordinate about nicknames in, really."

[cross_and_bow]

"All of that," agrees Juliet, amused.

[dearsweetsoulful]

He looks from person to person, following this introduction, until he comes to the other Sherlock.

Him he does not look away from.

[eversomuchfun]

"You have a soul," Sherlock observes. "How'd you manage that trick?"

[dearsweetsoulful]

"With difficulty," he says dryly. "What's it matter to you?"

[eversomuchfun]

"Oh, stop it," he says, irritated. "I'm doing well enough without one."

[toblameforit]

"Yeah, don't be a dick," says Tony.

[dearsweetsoulful]

"All right, all right," he says.

[she_sells_seashells]

"Oh, are you a vampire one too?" Shell Bell asks. "I can't tell at all, how can anyone else? Let alone tell about the soul?"

[cross_and_bow]

"By rights I should have been able to tell he was a vampire from across the room. I'm hexing that up first thing when I get minted," Juliet mutters. "But I second the question about the soul. Amariah had her explanation, what's yours?"

[eversomuchfun]

"He smells like a vampire, and he doesn't breathe except when he needs to speak," says Sherlock. "And he has that familiar look of contained self-loathing."

[dearsweetsoulful]

"I remember what it was like when my soul was missing, and your Sherlock looks like he feels like that," says the other one.

[cross_and_bow]

"What happened in which world to make you want your soul back and mine to not?" Juliet wonders.

[she_sells_seashells]

At "contained self-loathing", Shell Bell flies in soulful-Sherlock's direction and holds her arms out in an offer of a hug. "I know you don't know me, but I know one of you, and I love her very much," she says.

[dearsweetsoulful]

Sherlock blinks.

Then, hesitantly, he hugs Bell.

[she_sells_seashells]

She hugs him as comfortingly as she knows how.

[cross_and_bow]

Juliet waits until this has gone on for a bit before saying, "So no one knows the answer to my question?"