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Blood… There’s so much blood… The sound of gunfire is growing heavier around him, and he’s panicking. But why is he panicking? He’s used to this; he’d learned a long time ago to keep his cool under stress, to trust his fellow brothers and sisters in arms to watch his back in the field so he could focus on his patient and keeping them alive long enough to get them back to base to give them a chance of being put back together. He’d been called out for a field rescue more than once during his service, and although it was stressful and a bit nerve-racking at times he’d never panicked… So why was he panicking now?
It took a moment for him to realize the sound of gunfire was slowly being swallowed by a ringing in his ears, and he could hear someone shouting nearby.
“Watson!”
“Fuck! Murray, get over here!”
“I can’t! I haven’t stabilized Thompson yet!”
“The Captain’s been hit! It’s bad, Murray! Get your ass over here now!”
The Captain’s been hit? What were they talking about? John was fine, he was working to stabilize one of the many wounded soldiers that had been dragged behind the barricade.
“Shit, Watson!”
John furrowed his brows in confusion as he realized he wasn’t looking down at the wounded soldier beneath him or the blood soaking through the upper part of his uniform anymore. He was staring up at the sky, his friend and fellow surgeon Bill Murray hovering over him and cursing.
“Hang in there, Captain.”
And as soon as the words left Murray’s mouth, that’s when the pain hit him–a wave of white-hot agony burning through his left shoulder and taking his breath away as black spots started lining his vision and a wave of dizziness washed over him as he felt what he now realized was his own blood spreading over his shoulder and chest and sliding to pool underneath him.
He was dying… He’d just been shot, and he was dying… He wasn’t ready… He’d thought he would be fine with it if it happened like this, but instead he was panicking as Murray’s voice and face started fading. His last conscious thought, “Please, God, let me live…” whispering through his mind before everything went dark.
John gasped, eyes flying open as he bolted upright. His hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat, his lungs aching as he panted for breath, and his shoulder throbbing as his heart thundered in his chest. It took him several moments for his vision to clear and the familiar dreary walls of his bedsit to come into focus, but once it finally registered where he was he felt the tension in his body releasing and he was able to start focusing on getting his breathing under control.
He let out a frustrated groan as he let himself fall back to the bed, a small grunt of pain escaping him as the movement jarred his shoulder and it twinged. It was healed now–he’d been kept in the hospital on the base until it had healed up enough for him to be shipped home–and he’d just recently finished with physiotherapy and had regained full movement in his left shoulder, but some days it still radiated sharp jolts of pain.
He gently massaged the tender scar tissue as he blankly stared up at the ceiling above him and tried to empty his mind of the nightmare that woke him enough to try and get a little more sleep. It was pointless, he knew; he could never get back to sleep after one of his nightmares…
“Might as well go ahead and get up…” he thought with a frown as he looked to the clock on the small nightstand next to his bed to see it was just a few hours away from sunrise.
If he got up now he could go ahead and get his day started, and he’d have more than enough time to try working on the blog Ella kept suggesting he try to write. Honestly, he didn’t see how blogging about his day was supposed to help anything, but every time he would head to his appointment with her she would ask him if he’d started a blog yet and give him this look that grated on his nerves when he told her he hadn’t started it yet. If he could even just get one little sentence written maybe it would be enough to shut her up when she inevitably asked about it during their session later that day.
It was with that thought he forced himself to sit up and moved to get up, eyeing the cane leaning against the wall next to his bed with disdain before he grabbed ahold of it and got to his feet. He slowly limped over to the fridge and opened it up, only taking a moment to look inside before he merely grabbed an apple and made his way over to his desk and took a seat. He pulled open the top drawer and pulled out his laptop, his eyes straying to his service weapon he kept stored underneath. He paused to stare at it, his fingers twitching as he had the passing thought of picking it up and putting it in his mouth.
It was getting harder and harder to remember why he shouldn’t, to convince himself that he still wanted to live…
He was running out of money, and once it was gone it would be impossible for him to remain in London on his lousy army pension. He’d started looking for a job now that he was done with physio, but even though he’d regained full range of motion in his shoulder he now had a tremor in his left hand that meant the end of his surgical career, so he couldn’t apply to any hospitals, and the few non-surgical clinics he’d applied to so far had all turned him down for being overqualified and thinking he could do better than them or would just leave them once he got a better offer. His nightmares were often enough he found it nearly impossible to sleep, and when he didn’t sleep well that only seemed to agitate his wounded shoulder and right leg that much more–his stupid leg that hadn’t even been damaged but still somehow hurt enough he couldn’t even walk without a damn cane.
He didn’t have a good relationship with his family–he’d more or less told his parents they could take a long walk off a short pier after they’d disowned his sister when she came out to all of them, and his relationship with Harry was rather strained since they’d never gotten on all that well even if he had always stood up for her and tried to be there for her before he’d gone off to university and joined the army to pay for his medical classes when he’d decided he wanted to be a doctor. His relationship with his sister had only been strained further when he’d become aware of her drinking problem and tried to help her with that before he ended up getting deployed, so he didn’t really have anyone here for him now that he was back home…
He was alone… And, worse than that, he was broken… So it was hard to remind himself that he wanted to be here, because all he could think when he tried to remember that was, “Why?”
John took a deep breath and tried to push away the depressing thoughts as he quickly closed the drawer and set his laptop on the desk and opened it up. He reluctantly navigated to the blog page he’d created months ago when Ella first told him to start one, but again he found himself merely sitting there staring at the blinking cursor for ages as he failed to find anything at all to say…
Eventually he had to admit defeat and closed the laptop lid a little more forcefully than he would have liked before he limped off to the bathroom to take a long hot shower, hoping it would help him de-stress and relax a bit.
It didn’t.
By the time he’d made it to Ella’s office for his session he had the beginnings of a migraine coming on, he was tired and in a bit of a sour mood, and after the first two minutes he was ready for the session to be over. But he managed to just suck it up and make it through while carefully dodging questions about how he was sleeping, how the job search was going, and if he had anything in particular he felt he needed to talk about. He knew it was rather counterproductive to keep everything bottled up to himself when the point of a therapist was to talk about things you didn’t normally like to talk about or think you could talk about with other people, but he’d always hated talking about his feelings and feeling like he was burdening others with his problems.
They had just about made it to the end of their hour when Ella suddenly asked, “So how’s your blog going?”
John tried not to make a face even as he felt himself tense and tried to cover his reaction with a shrug. “Oh, fine. Good… Very good,” he offered, feeling his skin prickle in irritation when she gave him that damn look.
“You haven’t written a word, have you?” Ella asked, though it really wasn’t a question, as she looked down to her notepad and made a note as John’s eyes zeroed in on what she was writing.
“You just wrote still has trust issues,” he commented, feeling that irritation tugging on him that much more.
Ella arched a brow as she gave him a pointed look. “And you just read my writing upside down. See what I mean?”
When she noticed John’s jaw clench before his face was stoic once more, Ella’s eyes gentled. “John, you’re a soldier. It’s going to take a while to adjust to civilian life–I honestly feel writing a blog about everything that happens to you will really help you,” she encouraged.
John felt a hollow ache in his chest as he looked off to the side. “Nothing happens to me.”
He didn’t feel like talking anymore after the reminder that he literally had nothing going for him in his life, so he was glad when she told him their time was up and he was finally able to make his escape.
Once he was outside he took a few moments to just breathe and try and shake off the empty feeling he was left with after today’s chat. He debated for a moment on whether he should hail a cab, but if he was being honest with himself he knew it wasn’t a good idea to be anywhere near his gun while he was feeling like this. So, even though his leg was giving him more pain than usual today, he decided he would walk home. He’d even take the scenic route through the park.
He felt marginally better by the time he reached the park, at the very least the walk was good for his stress and seemed to actually be helping with the pain in his leg rather than making it worse.
“John!”
Maybe he could try and do some stretches when he got back to his place. It hadn’t really seemed to help after he’d first tried it out when he got back and thought he must have just pulled a muscle or something at first, but maybe he just hadn’t tried long enough?
“John Watson!”
John was pulled from his thoughts at the sound of his name, and he stopped and quickly looked around to see a plump man roughly the same height as him with dark hair and glasses and smiling brightly as he was making his way over to him.
“I thought it was you!” the man exclaimed happily. “It’s me, Mike. Mike Stamford. We went to Bart’s together,” he informed him when he noticed the confused look on the other man’s face.
John blinked just to perk up a bit in recognition. “Oh! Sorry, yes, Mike, hello! I didn’t recognize you for a moment there.”
Mike chuckled. “Yeah, I know, I’ve put on a few pounds since the last time you saw me. I heard you were abroad somewhere getting shot at. What happened?”
John’s smile fell a bit. “Ah… I got shot.”
Mike blinked, grimacing a bit as he finally noticed the walking cane. “Oh. Sorry to hear that, mate.”
“It’s fine,” John lied. “It happened awhile ago–I’m doing a lot better currently. Anyway, it’s been ages. How have you been?”
“Oh, good. You wanna grab a coffee and catch up a bit? I have to get back to Bart’s soon, but I’m still on my lunch break at the moment so I can take a few minutes.”
“Sure.”
John followed Mike away from the park and over to the nearest cappuccino stand to grab a drink, wincing a bit as they found a table nearby and took a seat.
“You ok?” Mike asked with concern.
“Just my leg,” John explained as he stretched said leg out a bit and used the knuckles of his right hand to massage into the muscle.
“Bad is it?”
John gave a small shrug with his good shoulder. “My therapist thinks it’s psychosomatic.”
“And what do you think?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I got shot, but it wasn’t my leg. In fact, I haven’t had any kind of injury to my leg during my service, but… It feels too real to just be in my head. I’ve tried walking on it without the cane before, but every time I do it gives out on me.”
“Yeah, well, trauma can do weird things to people.”
John gave a small hum in agreement as he took a sip of his drink. “So you’re still at Bart’s then?” he asked, deciding to change the subject.
“Yup. Teaching now–bright young things like we used to be. God, I hate them,” Mike joked, glad to see that earned a chuckle from his old friend. “What about you? You working anywhere or just taking it easy ‘til you get yourself sorted?”
“I’ve been looking recently but haven’t managed to find anything yet, which sucks since I can’t afford London on an army pension.”
“And you couldn’t bear to be anywhere else. I’m sure you’ll find something–you’re not one for giving up. Not the John Watson I know,” Mike chuckled.
“I’m not the John Watson you–” John cut himself off, not wanting to get into that, and brought his drink up to his lips for something to do more than for an actual drink only to nearly slam his cup down on the table when he noticed Mike staring at his hand and he realized it was shaking rather noticeably at the moment.
He pressed his lips and gave Mike a sharp look when he noticed his friend open his mouth while still staring at his hand even as John quickly covered it with his right to hide the tremors.
He definitely didn’t want to get into that.
Mike decided to change his question at the look he was receiving. “Couldn’t Harry help?”
John gave him a different kind of look at that. “Yeah, that’s going to happen,” he said sarcastically.
“Right, sorry,” Mike mumbled with a frown.
“It’s fine.”
“Well, what about a flatmate?”
John grimaced at the thought of subjecting someone else to himself in the sorry state he was in. “Who’d want me for a flatmate?”
Mike couldn’t help but let out an amused bark of laughter as he suddenly had the mental image of Sherlock more bluntly telling him he was a difficult man to find a flatmate for just before Sherlock had gone down to the building’s morgue to run some experiments on some corpses with Molly.
“What?”
“You’re the second person to say that to me today.”
John curiously arched a brow at that. “Who was the first?”
Imbeciles. They were all imbeciles–honestly, it was a wonder any cases ever actually got solved in this city when every last officer down at New Scotland Yard was lacking a single brain cell.
Three suicides within the past four months. No notes, no prior signs of suicidal tendencies/self-harm/depression, each of them in a strange location that meant nothing to them and where they had never gone before, all ending their lives with the same exact type of poison. But they’re all definitely suicides? If Sherlock were planning to kill himself that’s definitely not the way he would do it, and he’d told Detective Inspector Lestrade as much once he messaged the man to meet with him–after hacking his way into every phone at the press conference to let him and everyone else there know through a massive shared text that the NSY were wrong, of course.
But Lestrade didn’t wish to listen. Or the man honestly believed they were actually nothing more than suicides–again, imbeciles.
Unfortunately there was nothing Sherlock could do at this point as he wasn’t asked to consult on the case yet and there have been no fresh crime scenes involving these suicide murders for him to show up at and pester Lestrade until the man finally gave in and let him look at the body. There were also no other interesting cases going on at the moment for him to solve, and already he found himself growing bored and itching for something interesting to do.
Naturally he jumped at the chance when his phone pinged with a message and he looked at it to see he had a message from Molly letting him know they just got a fresh body in if he was in the mood to stop by and run the experiment on bruising he’d mentioned he wished he had a fresh enough body to experiment on the last time he’d been at the lab.
He was eager to get started when he arrived, though he paused long enough to chat with Mike when the man curiously asked him if he was actually looking for a flatmate and how that was going since he remembered he’d been grumbling about his brother being even more meddlesome than usual recently and how he found himself wondering if Mycroft would back off if he had a flatmate to keep the man from worrying about what he might get up to if left alone for too long.
That and the landlady at the new flat wasn’t someone who Mycroft could manipulate to try and keep tabs on him at home like his current landlord, and Sherlock was hoping having someone else occupying the flat would make it harder for Mycroft to send someone in to bug the place.
He let Mike know he had indeed decided to find someone to share a flat with, though actually finding someone was proving to be a bit of a challenge since he couldn’t find anyone he would want to share a space with, and the few times he did find someone he’d deduced would be a fine choice they had immediately gotten annoyed with said deductions he’d made of them and refused to accept his offer. So when Mike asked if he’d like help finding someone Sherlock simply told him he was free to try, though he didn’t expect anything to come of it since he was a difficult man to find a flatmate for.
With Mike’s question answered, he let him know he was going to be down in the morgue with Molly if he was needed and eagerly headed downstairs.
A few hours later he found himself back up in the lab and setting up a few different slabs to look at under a microscope when his phone pinged and he looked to see he had a message from Lestrade asking for help with a case, his excitement only lasting for a second before he solved the case just from the details Lestrade gave him without even having to see the actual police file.
“Dull,” he thought with a sigh, half tempted not to answer just to see if the man really couldn’t figure out something so blatantly obvious on his own.
Before he could start texting the reply, he glanced over to the main door leading into the lab to see Mike walking in with a handsome man with short-cropped dirty-blond hair, a light dusting of freckles across his tan face, and piercing blue eyes that were darting around the room and appeared to be taking it in.
“Early thirties, unmarried, recently returned from travel–somewhere sunny. Perfect posture, even when walking with a cane. Clean-shaven and cropped hair along with posture–definitely military,” he noted with his passing glance.
“Bit different from my day,” John commented as he noted all the differences to the lab since he’d last been inside the place.
“Oh, you have no idea,” Mike told him, eager to show him around but wanting to introduce him to Sherlock and see how they get on first.
“Mike, can I borrow your phone?” Sherlock asked suddenly. “No signal on mine,” he lied, knowing Mike didn’t have it on him since he always forgot it in his lab coat in his office when he went out to lunch but curious to see if the man with him might offer his so he could get a closer look at him and see what else he could glean from his phone.
John looked to the other man in the room at the sound of his voice, his breath admittedly catching a bit as he finally took notice of him.
He was gorgeous…
Tall, slim but not lanky, pale skin, dark hair that curled at the ends and looked so soft John couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like to run his fingers through it, and the dress shirt and jacket he was wearing had him looking almost regal and honestly out of place in the middle of a medical lab.
“What’s wrong with the landline?” Mike asked in confusion even as he started patting at his pockets.
“I prefer to text,” Sherlock reminded him.
Mike sighed as he found his pockets empty and mentally cursed himself as he realized he must have forgot to take it with him when he left for lunch. “Sorry, it’s in my other coat,” he informed him, not bothering to offer to go retrieve it since Sherlock was more likely to move about to try and get a signal on his own phone since it would be quicker.
Sherlock gave a soft, “Hmm,” as though in disappointment just to glance over to the unknown man out of the corner of his eye as he heard his clothes rustling and saw him digging into his jacket pocket.
“Here. Use mine,” John offered as he pulled out his phone and held it out for the other man, suppressing a bit of a shiver as the man turned to him in a bit of surprise and he noticed his eyes were a dazzling shade of blue and green.
“Oh, thank you,” Sherlock said softly as he got to his feet and made his way over to take the phone, his eyes sweeping over the man’s outstretched arm and noticing the lack of a tan past his wrist and a faint tremor in his hand but nothing in his stance or expression that said he was nervous for any reason.
“Shoulder injury, possibly from a bullet–which is more than likely what invalided him home. He hasn’t made a move to look for a chair even once yet, but he hasn’t made a show of using his cane or his leg being injured so he isn’t just faking it. Prognosis, psychosomatic, most likely from PTSD,” Sherlock deduced as he took the phone, fingers feeling the engraving on the back and making a mental note of what it said based on the feel of the letters, and he curiously noted the model of the phone and the look of the dark screen and charger port before he opened it to send his message to Lestrade.
“This is an old friend of mine, John Watson,” Mike informed Sherlock, not surprised when the man didn’t respond or offer his name in turn. But before he could give John Sherlock’s name in return, he was interrupted by the detective suddenly asking, “Afghanistan or Iraq?”
John blinked, caught off guard and thinking he must have misheard since the man wasn’t even looking at him and was instead starting his text. But the amused look he could see on Mike’s face suggested he had in fact just heard the man ask a question. “…I’m sorry?”
“Which was it? Afghanistan or Iraq?” Sherlock asked curiously.
John frowned as he looked to Mike just to see him grinning before he turned his attention back to the man standing next to him. “Afghanistan… I’m sorry, how did you–”
“How do you feel about the violin?” Sherlock asked now that his curiosity was satisfied as he handed John his phone back.
John furrowed his brows in confusion, utterly lost as to what exactly was happening right now. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I play the violin when I’m thinking, and sometimes I don’t talk for days on end. Would that bother you? Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other,” Sherlock said simply as he gave the phone he was holding a little shake to remind the man he was trying to return it.
John was at a loss for words as he idly accepted his phone back, just to look to Mike and only find himself more confused at how amused his friend was looking. He would ask Mike if he’d told this guy about him on their way to the lab, but he said he didn’t have his phone on him and John surely would’ve noticed if Mike had messaged anyone. Not to mention this guy said his phone didn’t have a signal here, hence why he needed to borrow John’s phone in the first place.
“…Who said anything about flatmates?” he finally asked as he returned his gaze to the other man to find he’d moved to the other side of the room and was now typing at a computer.
“I did,” Sherlock said simply. “I said to Mike this morning that I was a difficult man to find a flatmate for. Now here he is just after lunch with an old friend clearly just home from military service in Afghanistan. Wasn’t a difficult leap.”
John frowned, still finding himself extremely confused as to how on earth this guy knew he was former military. “…How did you know about Afghanistan?” he asked, getting a little frustrated to see the man clearly wasn’t listening as he logged off of the computer and began pulling on a coat and scarf in obvious preparation to leave.
“I’ve got my eye on a nice little place in central London–together we could afford it. We’ll meet there tomorrow morning, seven o’clock,” Sherlock informed him just to start making his way towards the door. “Sorry, got to dash. I think I left my riding crop in the mortuary,” he said thoughtfully.
John’s head was spinning as the man brushed past him, so confused by the conversation he couldn’t even process the fact this guy just said something about having a riding crop in a morgue for some reason. “Wait, is that it?” he asked incredulously before the man reached the door.
Sherlock paused just to curiously look back at John. “Is that what?”
“We just met and we’re going to go look at a flat?”
Sherlock arched a brow at the shorter man’s flummoxed tone. “Problem?”
John couldn’t help but gape at the man for a moment, because there was no way he honestly didn’t see the problem here!
“We don’t know a thing about each other, I don’t know where we’re meeting–I don’t even know your name!” John pointed out.
It was quiet for a moment, Mike curiously looking between the two as they stared each other down before he noticed a smirk tugging at Sherlock’s lips in a way that said he clearly found John amusing. He only hoped John could handle Sherlock like he thought he might, otherwise he had no idea where to even begin looking for someone that would be able to share a flat with the detective.
“I know you’re an army doctor and you’ve been invalided home from Afghanistan. I know you’ve got a brother with a bit of money who’s worried about you, but you won’t go to him for help because you don’t approve of him–possibly because he’s an alcoholic, but more likely because he recently walked out on his wife. And I know that your therapist thinks your limp is psychosomatic, quite correctly I’m afraid. That’s enough to be going on with, don’t you think?”
John was utterly stunned as the man suddenly turned on his heel and headed back towards the door just to pause with his hand on the handle and look back at him once more.
“The name’s Sherlock Holmes, and the address is two-two-one Baker Street,” Sherlock informed him just to give him and Mike a parting nod. “Afternoon, gentlemen.”
Mike couldn’t hold back his amused chuckles anymore when John looked at him like he was having trouble processing his encounter with Sherlock. “Yup. He’s always like that,” he warned. “Bit eccentric, that one. But, if you can handle him, he grows on you.”
John’s mind was still reeling by the time he made it back to his place, his encounter with Sherlock playing on a loop inside his head and trying to figure out how he felt about it.
He felt a bit dazed as he took a seat on his bed and tried to gather his thoughts, only growing more puzzled as he tried to figure out how Sherlock could possibly know so much about him when they’d never met before and Mike hadn’t told the man about him on their way to the lab. He also doubted Mike had ever mentioned him at any time before then since Mike hadn’t even known John was back in London until they ran into each other in front of the park earlier. And John had definitely never met Sherlock before now–he would definitely remember meeting someone like him even if it was only for a few minutes–and he hadn’t talked to anyone other than Ella, Harry, and Clara since he’d been back in town.
Ella couldn’t legally talk about anything they’d talked about to anyone else, he’d barely really spoken to Harry after letting his sister know he was finally doing well enough to be sent back home and she’d stopped by to see him and give him her old phone since he didn’t have one, and he’d talked to Clara when she’d seen him a couple of weeks after Harry and had told him she would have come to see him sooner but she hadn’t known he was back until that point because she and Harry weren’t really talking since Harry had decided drinking meant more to her than Clara did. It seemed highly unlikely that either Harry or Clara had met Sherlock, and even less likely that they’d spoken of their marital problems and Harry’s alcoholism, especially since the only thing Sherlock had been wrong about was thinking Harry was his brother rather than his sister.
So how had Sherlock known all that about him?
He let out a frustrated huff as he couldn’t figure it out, though he paused when he had a thought.
He pulled his phone from his pocket and opened it up to his messages and looked to see if he could see anything from any of the recent preview of Harry’s last message to him that would have somehow explained how the man was so confidently–and correctly–able to state so many facts about him after just meeting. When he didn’t see it saying anything about any of the things Sherlock knew about him he opened up his message log with her and scrolled through them, but they really didn’t say much of anything about anything since he and Harry didn’t text each other much. Even after he’d first come back, Harry had preferred to either call him or talk to him in person.
But even if there had been something in their messages, Sherlock had never appeared to be scrolling through his phone. He had almost immediately started his text to whoever as soon as he opened the phone up.
Of course, recalling this, it had him curious about Sherlock’s message, and he backed out of his text log with his sister and opened the message to the only unnamed number currently sitting in his messages.
If brother has green ladder arrest brother.
SH
John furrowed his brows in confusion at the strange text, unable to help but find himself wondering, “Sherlock Holmes… Who are you?”
Eventually his eyes flicked over to his desk where his laptop was still setting out from earlier that morning, and he decided to see if anything would come up if he did a search on the man’s name.
The immediate result to pop up turned out to be a website created by Sherlock himself called The Science of Deduction, and he curiously looked it over. He had to admit he found it quite interesting, and he assumed this must be how Sherlock seemed to know so much about him, but it still didn’t explain how exactly the man was able to make his deductions–and some of the claims he made about how he could deduce someone based on their clothes or even just their hands seemed impossibly far-fetched to him. There had to be more to it, had to be some other way he made deductions besides just looking at someone.
He shook his head as he leaned back in his chair, deciding he would just ask Sherlock how he did it at some point tomorrow. And then he froze as he realized he’d apparently just decided he was actually going to meet up with the man in the morning to look at a flat together.
He must be going mad, clearly. At the very least today had been an interesting change in the monotony of his daily life these days. And as he once more reflected on the strange turn of events after his session with Ella earlier, he found himself logging onto his empty blog page and began typing as a small smile tugged at his lips.
Sherlock had already been getting ready to permanently move into 221 Baker Street over the past week, with or without a flatmate since he’d reached the end of his tolerance for his current landlord’s obvious spying for his brother, so when he finally returned home for the evening and found the man in his flat and searching it he decided why wait.
He spent the rest of the evening moving his things to Baker Street after letting Mrs. Hudson know he was taking the flat and was going to be moving in that night and that his potential flatmate would be over in the morning to look the place over for himself, Mrs. Hudson telling him she would leave 221b unlocked for him since she was just heading out to go spend the rest of the evening with her sister and didn’t expect to be back until late and that she would see them in the morning. And after he had everything unpacked and, admittedly, a bit chaotically placed around the flat he pulled out his violin and cycled through a few of his favorite pieces to play when he was angry and blatantly ignored his phone when someone called him several times.
He knew it would be Mycroft wanting to know why he’d seemingly just up and moved out of his place all of a sudden.
“Probably assumes it has something to do with drugs seeing as how he clearly already thinks I’m using again if he had his little spy searching my place,” he thought, seething to know his brother still didn’t trust him even after all this time.
It had been five years that he’d been clean already–he’d even been trying to stop smoking these past several months and had switched to nicotine patches just so he didn’t have to listen to Mycroft bitching every time his brother decided to pay him an unwanted visit and seemed to find a reason to bring up how he was surprised Sherlock even had lungs at this point when he smoked like a chimney every time he saw him.
He was sure he’d be receiving a visit from Mycroft in the near future after his brother figured out where he’d moved to, which Sherlock knew wouldn’t take him very long, but he’d deal with that when he had to. For now, he didn’t want to even think about the annoying bastard and merely focused on his playing until long after his phone finally stopped ringing.
The next morning he was feeling more refreshed and made his way downstairs and outside to wait for John to show up, confident that he would since the man hadn’t said no to meeting up and had only told him he didn’t know where he was supposed to be meeting him. That and he hadn’t immediately told him to fuck off after he had told John his deductions of him like most other people tended to do. And even though he knew John would show up, he still found himself smiling to see he was right when a cab pulled up to the curb in front of him and the doctor stepped out and took a look around the street for a moment before limping his way over.
“Good morning,” John greeted just to motion towards the building. “This is a prime spot, Sherlock.”
“Yes, which is part of why I chose it,” Sherlock said simply.
“It’s gotta be expensive,” John pointed out.
He wasn’t sure he’d be able to afford this place even though he’d only be paying half the rent since places in the dead center of the city like this one tended to be outrageously pricey, but he rang the bell anyway since it wouldn’t hurt to look around and ask what they’d be looking at for rent here.
Sherlock decided not to stop him from ringing the bell even though they could just head inside seeing as how he had already moved into the flat since Mrs. Hudson had said she wanted to meet John when he came by anyway.
“Mrs. Hudson, the landlady, is giving me a special deal. Owes me a favor. A few years ago her husband got himself sentenced to death in Florida. I was able to help out.”
John arched a brow as he gave the man a look. “You stopped her husband being executed?” he asked in disbelief.
“Oh, no. I ensured it.”
Before John could ask more about that, an older woman was opening the door and looking them over with a warm smile.
“I take it you’re the flatmate?” Martha guessed.
“Potentially,” John agreed before he held out his free hand. “John Watson.”
“Martha Hudson,” the woman returned as she took his hand and gave it a shake. “Come in, come in. The flat’s just upstairs here,” she said just to turn and start heading up the stairs to 221b.
John’s eyes darted around the living space once Mrs. Hudson opened the door for them and ushered them inside.
The living room was nice and spacious, and he noticed two comfortable looking armchairs positioned in front of a fireplace that already had him imagining sitting down in front of the fire with a nice cup of tea and a good book to relax before bed. The kitchen was also rather spacious, and he loved the thought of actually having room to move around as he cooked since he barely had any room at all in his cramped bedsit. The décor was a little outdated, and the place was a bit of a mess–stacks of newspapers, several computers, boxes of files along the shelves, books everywhere, a terrifying collection of what looked to be weapons, a human skull on the fireplace mantle covering the living room while test tubes, jars, and Bunsen burners were piled around the kitchen–but he had to admit the place had potential.
“This could be very nice. Very nice indeed,” John said thoughtfully.
“Yes, I think so. My thoughts exactly,” Sherlock agreed.
“Soon as we get all this rubbish cleaned out.”
“So I went ahead and moved in.”
It took John a moment to process what Sherlock said since they’d spoken at the same time, and he blinked just to look around again once he did. “Oh… So this is all…”
Sherlock frowned as he moved to pick up a couple of books that had fallen off of the cluttered coffee table and into the floor and put them back on the table. “Obviously I can straighten things up a bit.”
John pointed to the fireplace as he gave the man a look. “That’s a skull.”
“Friend of mine. Well, I say friend…” Sherlock shrugged as Mrs. Hudson tutted as she moved about the room.
John felt a smile coming to his face as he shook his head. “Anyway, where are the bedrooms?”
“Mine’s right down the hall there next to the bathroom,” Sherlock informed him.
“There’s another bedroom upstairs,” Martha cut in before offering a smile as she looked between the two. “If you’ll be needing two.”
John shot her a confused look. “Well of course we’ll be needing two.”
Martha waved him off when she noticed his eyes dart over to Sherlock where he was tidying up a desk. “Oh don’t worry, dear, all sorts ‘round here. Mrs. Turner next door’s got married ones,” she assured him.
John opened his mouth to ask her what on earth she was talking about just to frown as she seemed to notice the state of the kitchen and disappeared into it with another tut as she started attempting to tidy it up a bit.
John sighed just to take a seat in one of the armchairs and look back to Sherlock, watching him cleaning up his desk for a moment before he told him, “Looked you up on the internet last night.”
Sherlock leaned against his desk as he turned to look at John. “Anything interesting?”
“I found your website. The Science of Deduction.”
Sherlock perked up at that. “What did you think?” he asked curiously only to frown when the other man gave him a skeptical look.
“You said you could identify a software designer by his tie, and an airline pilot by his left thumb.”
“Yes. And I can read your military career in your face and your leg, and your brother’s drinking habits in your mobile phone,” Sherlock told him matter-of-factly.
John eyed him for a moment as he tried to determine whether he was serious or not, and when he realized he was he couldn’t help but ask, “How?”
Sherlock opened his mouth to answer only to be interrupted as Mrs. Hudson made her way back out into the living room with a newspaper in hand.
“What do you make of these suicides then, Sherlock?” Martha asked curiously, having overheard the boys talking about how Sherlock noticed things just now. “Thought that would be right up your alley. Three of them, exactly the same. That’s a bit odd, isn’t it?”
Sherlock turned to look out the window when he noticed some kind of light out of the corner of his eye, and he perked up as he saw a police car had just parked in front of the building and Lestrade was getting out of the car. “Four,” he corrected Mrs. Hudson as he realized that had to be why the DI was there. “There’s been a fourth. And there’s something different this time.”
“A fourth?” Martha asked in surprise. “How do you know?”
Rather than answering, Sherlock pointed to the window before he looked to the open door to the flat at the sound of footsteps to see Lestrade making his way into the living room.
“Where?” Sherlock asked before the man could say anything.
“Brixton. Lauriston Gardens,” Greg informed him.
“What’s different about this one? You wouldn’t have come to get me if there wasn’t something new.”
“You know how they never leave notes?”
“Yes.”
“This one did.” When Greg noticed Sherlock get an intrigued look on his face, he asked, “Will you come?”
“…Who’s on forensics?”
“Anderson.”
John curiously watched as Sherlock made a face for some reason.
“Anderson won’t work with me,” Sherlock reminded the DI.
“He won’t be your assistant,” Greg corrected.
“But I need an assistant,” Sherlock argued.
Greg sighed just to give the other man a weary look and repeated, “Will you come?”
“Not in a police car. I’ll be right behind you.”
Greg let out a relieved sigh as the consultant waved him off. “Thank you.”
It was quiet for a moment as Lestrade left, though as soon as Sherlock heard the main door open and close downstairs he couldn’t help but let out a shout of excitement as he clapped his hands together. “Brilliant!”
John’s eyes widened as he watched the other man leap over the coffee table to grab his jacket from the back of the sofa and start pulling it on.
“And I thought it was going to be a boring evening! Serial suicides, and now a note! Oh, it’s like Christmas!” Sherlock said excitedly. “Mrs. Hudson, I more than likely won’t be back until late–might need some food.”
“I’m your landlady, dear, not your housekeeper.”
“Something cold is fine,” Sherlock said as he ignored her. “John, make yourself at home–don’t wait up!”
With that, he was rushing out the door and down the stairs. Though, before he made it halfway down he paused as he heard Mrs. Hudson’s voice floating through the open doorway up top and saying, “Oh, look at him dashing about. My husband was just the same. But I can tell you’re more the sitting down type. I’ll make you a cup of tea, just this once. You rest that leg of yours, dear.”
Sherlock turned and looked up towards the flat, frowning at the sound of pity in the woman’s tone. He imagined, as a soldier used to jumping into action at the drop of a hat, the comment had to sting. He also imagined the pity grated on John’s nerves and didn’t do anything to help his leg improve. Sherlock wasn’t a doctor or a psychologist, but he would imagine the cure for a psychosomatic injury wouldn’t be to keep reminding the person their injury was there–if anything it would likely make it worse. And he wasn’t sure why he even found himself caring about it in the first place, especially when there was an intriguing murder to solve… But when he made his way back upstairs without even thinking about it and stopped in the doorway just to see the bitter look on the man’s face and his hands tightly gripping his cane in his lap, he found himself wanting to help. But how?
And then it hit him.
“He needs a distraction.”
And then it was obvious what the best thing to help with that would be, especially because it would help make things easier on Sherlock himself as well since Anderson never wanted to work with him and tell him what he wanted to know even when Lestrade ordered him to.
“You’re a doctor,” Sherlock stated.
John jumped a bit and looked around to see Sherlock had returned and was leaning against the doorframe into the hallway and had a thoughtful look on his face for some reason.
“In fact, you’re an army doctor.”
“Yes,” John agreed as he got to his feet, feeling a sudden itching sensation under his skin that had him almost standing at attention under the other man’s gaze.
Sherlock’s lips twitched with a hint of a smile at the instant change in John’s demeanor, his face losing all traces of bitterness and instead looking like a soldier awaiting orders from his commander. “Any good?”
“Very good.”
“Quick response, steady voice, holding eye contact–not lying or arrogant, just stating a fact.”
“Seen a lot of injuries then? Violent deaths?”
John blinked just to give the other man an incredulous look. “Well, yes. Obviously.”
“Bit of trouble too, I bet.”
“Of course, yes. Enough for a lifetime.”
Sherlock smirked as he nodded towards the stairway out in the hallway behind him. “Want to see some more?”
When it hit John that Sherlock was asking if he wanted to come with him, he eagerly blurted out, “Oh, god, yes!”
“Get your coat.”
Sherlock watched as John immediately grabbed his coat from the arm of the chair he’d been sitting in and pulled it on, and as the man headed towards the door Sherlock felt confident he’d made the right call as he noticed his limp suddenly seemed less prominent than it had been when he first got here.
“Sorry, Mrs. Hudson, I’ll skip the tea. We’re heading off,” John called out.
“Both of you?” Martha asked in surprise as she popped her head out from the kitchen.
“Impossible suicides–four of them! No point in sitting at home when there’s finally something fun going on!” Sherlock told her as he and John headed out.
“Look at you, all happy. It’s not decent, you know,” Martha pointed out even as she smiled in amusement and followed them both out of the flat.
“Who cares about decent? The game is on, Mrs. Hudson!” Sherlock shouted back to her as he and John dashed down the stairs and out the main door.
John was buzzing with restless energy as Sherlock hailed them a cab and they slid into the back, excited to just be doing something after so long of just going through the motions of his day-to-day life. Of course, after a few minutes he felt his curiosity grow and found himself watching Sherlock as he flicked through something on his phone.
Sherlock, feeling eyes on him, put his phone down and looked to John. “Ok, you’ve got questions,” he noted.
“Where are we going?”
“Crime scene. Next.”
“Who are you? What do you do?”
Sherlock smirked in amusement. “What do you think?”
“I’d say you were a private detective…”
“But?”
“But the police don’t go to private detectives.”
Sherlock nodded. “I’m a consulting detective. Only one in the world–I invented the job,” he explained.
John furrowed his brows in confusion. “What does that mean?”
“It means when the police are out of their depth, which is always, they consult me.”
John gave a small huff of a laugh in disbelief. “But the police don’t consult amateurs,” he pointed out.
Sherlock bristled at the insult and gave the other man a sharp look. “When I first met you yesterday I said, Afghanistan or Iraq? You seemed surprised.”
John frowned, not understanding what that had to do with anything but deciding now was a good time to bring up what he’d been wanting to ask about that anyway. “Yes. How did you know that?”
“I didn’t know. I saw. Tanned face but no tan above your wrists, so you’ve been abroad but not sunbathing. Your haircut and the way you hold yourself says military, but your conversation with Mike as you entered the room says you trained at Bart’s, so army doctor. Obvious. Your limp is really bad when you walk, but you don’t ask for a chair when you stand. It’s like you’ve forgotten about it, so it’s at least partly psychosomatic. That says the circumstances of the original injury were traumatic–wounded in action then. Wounded in action, a suntan? Afghanistan or Iraq.”
John was speechless for a moment, amazed the man had gotten all of that just from looking at him and hearing him tell Mike Bart’s looked a lot different from back in his day there, though that still didn’t explain everything else.
“You said I had a therapist,” John reminded him.
“You’ve got a psychosomatic limp, of course you’ve got a therapist,” Sherlock said as if it were obvious. “Then there’s that brother of yours. Your phone…”
John blinked as Sherlock held his hand out to him before he realized he was asking to see his phone, and he pulled it out of his pocket and placed it in the other man’s waiting palm.
Sherlock held the phone up. “Expensive, email enabled, M-P-three player. You’re looking for a flatmate, you wouldn’t waste money on this–it’s a gift then.”
He points to the dark screen. “Scratches, not just one but many over time. This has been in the same pocket as keys and coins. The man sitting next to me wouldn’t treat one of his luxury items like this, so there’s been a previous owner. The next bit is easy–you know it already.”
John watched as Sherlock flipped the phone over to reveal the back with the engraving:
Harry Watson
From Clara
xxx
“The engraving,” John realized.
Sherlock nodded. “Harry Watson. Clearly a family member who’s given you his old phone. Not your father–this is a young man’s gadget. Could be a cousin, but you’re a war hero who can’t find a place to live–it’s unlikely you’ve got an extended family, and certainly not one you’re close to. So brother it is…
Now Clara. Who’s Clara? The three kisses says it’s a romantic attachment, and the expense of the phone says wife not girlfriend. She must have given it to him recently since this model’s only six months old. It’s a marriage in trouble then–six months old and he’s just given it away. If she’d left him he’d probably have kept it, I’ve found people tend to be sentimental about that sort of thing, but he wanted rid of it. He left her. And giving the phone to you? That says he wants you to stay in touch.
You’re looking for cheap accommodations, but you’re not going to your brother for help. That says you’ve got problems with him. Maybe you liked his wife, maybe you don’t like his drinking.”
“How can you possibly know about the drinking?” John cut in.
“Shot in the dark, good one though.” Sherlock turned the phone once again, this time to show the bottom edge of the phone, and held it up closer for John to look at. “The charger port. Tiny little scuff marks all around it–he plugs it in every night to recharge but his hands are shaking. You never see those marks on a sober man’s phone, never see a drunk’s without them,” he explained just to give the phone a shake to indicate John could take it back now.
“There you go. You see? You were right.”
John blinked just to give Sherlock a confused look. “I was right? Right about what?”
“The police don’t consult amateurs,” Sherlock said smugly just to turn to stare out his window.
John was honestly stunned. Even having him explain how he’d come to his conclusions, it was still insane to him how he’d gotten so much information from a few glances at him and his phone and connected the dots to not only make a guess about him but a confident and pretty damn accurate guess. He didn’t know anyone else who could do something like that.
“That was…amazing,” he said in awe.
Sherlock froze, the words utterly unexpected, and he looked to the other man in surprise to see him staring at him with a look of wonderment on his face he wasn’t used to seeing on people after he told them what he deduced about them. “…You think so?” he couldn’t help but ask.
“Of course it was. That was extraordinary.”
Sherlock found himself smiling at the compliment. “That’s not what people usually say.”
“What do they usually say?”
“They usually tell me to fuck off,” Sherlock informed him, unable to help but feel a pleasant warm feeling in his chest at the look of disbelief on John’s face. It was a nice unexpected change for once…
“Did I get anything wrong?” he asked curiously as their cab came to a stop.
John got out and waited for Sherlock to pay the cabbie and join him and Sherlock began leading them along the street before he answered. “Harry and me don’t get along, never have. Clara and Harry split up three months ago, they’re getting a divorce. Harry’s an alcoholic–”
“Spot on then! I didn’t expect to be right about everything,” Sherlock admitted.
John’s lips quirked up in a smile. “And Harry is short for Harriet,” he finished.
Sherlock stopped in his tracks. “…Harry’s your sister.”
John hummed in agreement before he finally took in the cluster of police cars parked outside of the building just ahead, and he faltered a bit in his steps as it finally seemed to hit him that Sherlock had just brought him to a crime scene.
“Uh… Ok, what exactly am I supposed to be doing here?” he asked in confusion.
“Your sister,” Sherlock said with a frustrated huff at himself for assuming.
“No, seriously, why am I here?” John tried again, frowning when Sherlock didn’t appear to be paying attention and merely started walking past him.
“There’s always something,” Sherlock muttered as he shook his head and continued up to the crime scene tape blocking their way, steeling himself and putting on a blank face as Donovan crossed her arms and gave a bit of a sneer as he and John stopped in front of her.
“Hello, freak,” Sally greeted boredly.
“I’m here to see Detective Inspector Lestrade,” Sherlock said simply, ignoring the insult as usual.
“Why?”
“I was invited.”
“Why?”
John curiously looked between them, wondering what the obvious hostility was about.
Sherlock’s eyes narrowed as he gave the woman a look that said he thought she was a moron. “I think he wants me to take a look.”
Sally scoffed. “Well you know what I think, don’t you?”
Sherlock rolled his eyes as he grabbed the tape and lifted it up so he could slip underneath it, holding it up for John to follow him. “Always, Donovan. I even know you didn’t make it home last night.”
John arched a brow as he watched the officer tense up before shooting Sherlock a glare that the man ignored in favor of looking to him and nodding towards the tape he was still holding up out of the way. He hesitantly ducked underneath it just to pause when the officer suddenly placed a firm hand on his chest, the unexpectedness of it almost causing him to lose his balance if not for Sherlock grabbing the sleeve of his jacket to steady him.
“Who’s this?” Sally asked suspiciously.
“Colleague of mine. This is Dr. Watson. Dr. Watson, this is Sergeant Sally Donovan,” Sherlock introduced before adding sarcastically, “She’s an old friend.”
Sally barked out a laugh at that. “A colleague?! How did you get a colleague?!” she asked in obvious disbelief just to look to the doctor and motion back towards the freak. “Did he pay you to follow him?”
John frowned as he glanced to Sherlock and noticed his jaw clenching before it was gone and his face was a perfect mask of indifference once more.
“You’re wasting my time,” Sherlock said pointedly.
Sally rolled her eyes just to bring her walkie-talkie up to her lips. “Freak’s here. Bringing him in,” she announced before she turned and led the two up the garden path and towards the front door of the abandoned, slightly rundown house.
John was a little caught off guard as they got closer and a man in a crime scene coverall came storming out of the front and heading straight towards them with a glower on his face as his eyes locked onto Sherlock.
Sherlock smirked at the clear irritation he could see on the man’s face. “Ah, Anderson! Here we are again.”
“It’s a crime scene. I don’t want it contaminated. We clear on that?” Philip warned.
“Quite clear,” Sherlock said dismissively, pausing for a moment as he was hit with the same smell he’d noticed just a minute ago just to smirk at the man once again. “And is your wife away for long?”
Philip was taken aback by the statement for a moment before he gave the weirdo an annoyed look. “Don’t pretend you worked that out. Someone clearly told you that.”
“Your deodorant told me that,” Sherlock informed him, amused at the baffled look on the man’s face.
“My deodorant?”
“It’s for men.”
Philip scoffed. “Of course it’s for men! I’m wearing it!”
“So is Sergeant Donovan.”
John’s eyes widened as he looked from Sherlock’s smirking face to Anderson to see the man sharing a slightly panicked look with Donovan before his face was turning red and he was giving Sherlock a furious look.
“You listen to me, ok. Whatever you’re trying to imply here–”
“I’m not implying anything,” Sherlock cut in flippantly as he moved past him and began heading towards the door. “I’m sure Donovan just came around for a lovely little chat and happened to stay over–and I assume scrubbed your floors going by the state of her knees,” he said simply before he disappeared into the house.
John bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling in amusement as he watched Donovan’s face turn a dark red and tug at the bottom of her skirt in an obvious attempt to pull it down enough to cover her knees more, and he quickly rushed into the house after Sherlock and followed him down a dark narrow hallway and into an open room filled with police officers bustling around in crime scene coveralls and over to the man that had come to get Sherlock back at Baker Street.
“I can give you two minutes,” Greg informed Sherlock when he spotted him making his way over.
“I may need longer,” Sherlock pointed out as he grabbed one of the sets of protective coveralls and tossed them to John. “You’ll need to put this on,” he told him.
Greg blinked as he took notice of the man with Sherlock, vaguely seeming to recall seeing him when he’d gone to get the consultant after finding out he’d moved again. “Who is this?”
“He’s with me.”
“But who is he?”
“I told you, he’s with me.”
John hesitated for a moment as he watched the two having some kind of mental sparring match as they stared each other down, though he started pulling on the coveralls when Sherlock’s eyes darted towards him and he arched a brow.
After a moment he noticed Sherlock was making no move to put on a set of coveralls himself, and he cleared his throat just to nod towards the table where a bunch of others were still stacked. “Aren’t you going to…?” he trailed off when he merely gave him a look.
“So where are we?” Sherlock asked as he turned his attention back to Lestrade.
“Upstairs.”
Once Sherlock’s man had his coveralls on Greg led them upstairs to the room the body was in, taking the stairs slowly at first when he noticed the man’s cane and limp until Sherlock shot him a sharp look for some reason. He was tempted to make a remark about how it was nice to see Sherlock seemed to also be a dick to his friends rather than just the NSY, but Sherlock was hard enough to work with without Greg antagonizing him like his other officers tended to do. That and he noticed when Sherlock rushed past him his friend seemed to be keeping up with him just fine.
When they got to the top of the landing Greg led them over to the room where a woman was laying facedown in the middle of the floor. “Jennifer Wilson, according to her credit cards. We’re running them now for contact details. She hasn’t been here long–some kids found her and called it in,” he explained as the three of them walked into the room, unable to help but wonder what exactly Sherlock was thinking as he saw his eyes immediately darting all around the room and the body.
“Shut up,” Sherlock said as he took in the state of the woman–facedown, bright pink coat, pink skirt, pink high heels, left arm extended next to her with broken bloodied fingernails and something scratched into the floor near the hand.
Greg made a face just to give Sherlock an exasperated look. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking. It’s annoying.”
Greg sighed and rolled his eyes just to look to Sherlock’s friend to see him watching the consultant with rapt attention.
Sherlock moved closer to the body and crouched down next to her left hand where a word was scratched into the floor next to her head. “Left handed… Rache? German for revenge… No, irrelevant. Rache… Rachel–only thing it could be.”
He pulled on the latex gloves he’d grabbed for himself from the table downstairs before he reached out and rubbed a hand over the woman’s back and brought his hand back up to look at it and see his glove was now wet. He moved to pat down along her sides at her coat pockets, finding what he was looking for and pulling a white umbrella from the left pocket and running his other hand over this just to see his gloved hand was still dry. He narrowed his eyes in thought as he leaned over and ran his hand under the folded collar of her coat to find his gloved fingers came away wet from that.
John curiously shuffled closer to get a better look at what Sherlock was doing as he noticed him pull something out of his pocket and saw he appeared to have a magnifying glass and was currently hovering it over the necklace on the woman’s neck before using it to look at her bracelet on her wrist and her wedding set on her ring finger even though there was no blood here so John couldn’t figure out what exactly Sherlock was looking for.
Upon noticing the woman’s wedding set was dirty even though the rest of her jewelry was clean, he curiously pulled it off of her finger to take a look at the inside to see the inside was clean. “Many scratches on the ring–married for ten years at least. Doesn’t bother to clean her rings, but the inside is spotless–regularly removed. Serial adulterer.”
Sherlock smirked as he put her wedding set back on her and stood up to remove his gloves.
“Got anything?” Greg asked when he noticed the smirk.
“Not much,” Sherlock said absently as he pulled his phone from his pocket and began flicking through it to check the local weather.
“I can tell you she’s German,” Philip said smugly, having come up and stopped to lean in the doorway right before the freak got to his feet, happy to have one up on the bastard for once. “Rache is German for revenge. She could be trying to tell us something.”
Sherlock idly made his way over to the door without looking up from his phone. “Yes, thank you for your input,” he said sarcastically as he slammed the door in the idiot’s face.
“So she’s German?” Greg asked Sherlock, wanting a confirmation.
“Of course she’s not German. She’s from out of town though. Planned to spend a single night in London before returning home to Cardiff,” Sherlock said simply as he put his phone back in his pocket. “So far so obvious.”
John couldn’t help but give Sherlock a dumbfounded look at that. “Sorry, obvious?”
“What about the message though?” Greg pointed out.
Ignoring the DI, Sherlock asked, “Dr. Watson, what do you think?”
“About the message?” John asked in confusion.
“Of the body. You’re a medical man.”
Greg pressed his lips as he gave Sherlock a pointed look. “We have a whole team right outside–”
“They won’t work with me, and Anderson is utterly incompetent.”
“I’m breaking every rule just letting you in here.”
“Yes, because you need me.”
Greg sighed in defeat. “Yes, I do…”
“Dr. Watson,” Sherlock called when he saw John watching the inspector.
John looked to Sherlock to see him nod towards the body in indication for him to go over to it, and he paused for a moment as he gave the DI another curious look.
“Best to just do as he says,” Greg grumbled as he crossed his arms and leaned back against the nearest wall out of the way.
John slowly moved closer to the body and knelt down next to it with Sherlock.
“Well?” Sherlock prompted.
John frowned as he looked the body over before he looked back to Sherlock and once again quietly asked what he’d been wanting to know since they arrived. “What am I doing here?”
“Helping me make a point.”
“I’m supposed to be potentially helping you pay the rent.”
“Yes, but this is more fun.”
John couldn’t help but give the man a look at that. “Fun? There is a woman lying dead here.”
Sherlock nodded. “Perfectly sound analysis, but I was hoping you’d go deeper.”
John searched the detective’s face for a moment before he decided, “Why the hell not?” and carefully leaned down to inspect the woman more closely, even going so far as to lean close to her mouth and give a sniff.
“Cause of death seems to be asphyxiation. Based on the smell, she passed out and choked on her own vomit. I can’t smell any hint of alcohol on her though, so it could’ve been a seizure or possibly drugs.”
“You know what it was, you’ve read the papers,” Sherlock reminded him.
John nodded. “Based on what I’ve read about the suicides, I would say she appears to be one of them. The fourth one.”
“Sherlock, I said two minutes,” Greg cut in. “I need anything you’ve got.”
“Dr. Watson has confirmed she’s one of the supposed suicides,” Sherlock started as he got to his feet, finding himself hesitating for a moment as he felt the odd impulse to hold a hand out to help John up and furrowing brows in confusion at himself as he gave in to the impulse.
“Thanks,” John mumbled as he accepted the hand up, glad for the help so he didn’t have to struggle to use his cane to push himself up.
Sherlock shook his head to clear his confusion at why he just did that when he had something more important to be focusing his thoughts on at the moment. “Victim is in her late forties, professional person going by her clothes. I’d guess something in media going by the frankly alarming shade of pink. She’s traveling from Cardiff today, intending to stay for one night–that’s obvious from the size of her suitcase.”
Greg furrowed his brows. “Suitcase?”
“Suitcase, yes. She’s been married for at least ten years, but not happily. She’s had a string of lovers but none of them have known she was married.”
Greg scoffed. “For god’s sake, Sherlock, if you’re just making this up…”
“The wedding ring is ten years old at least. The rest of her jewelry has been regularly cleaned but not her wedding set–says a lot about the state of her marriage right there. The inside of the rings are shinier than the outside, which means they’ve been regularly removed. The only polishing they get is when she works them off her finger. It’s not for work either. Look at her nails. She doesn’t work with her hands so what, or rather who, does she remove her rings for? Clearly not one lover, she’d never sustain the fiction of being single over time, so it’s more likely a string of them. Simple.”
“That’s brilliant,” John blurted in awe, feeling his face heating up when Sherlock and Lestrade both turned to look at him. “Sorry.”
“Cardiff?” Greg asked as he looked back to Sherlock.
“Obvious, isn’t it?”
“It’s not obvious to me,” John said when he noticed Sherlock staring at him as if waiting for him to agree.
Sherlock frowned just to look between John and the DI for a moment. “Dear god, what’s it like in your funny little brains? It must be so boring,” he mumbled before he pointed down to the body.
“Her coat! It’s slightly damp. She’s been in heavy rain within the last few hours, but there’s been no rain anywhere in London in that time. Under her coat collar is damp too, so she’s clearly turned it up against the wind. She’s got an umbrella in her left pocket but it’s unused and dry, so not just wind but strong wind–too strong to use her umbrella. We know from her suitcase that she’s staying overnight so she must have come a decent distance, but she can’t have traveled more than two or three hours because her coat hasn’t dried. So where has there been heavy rain and strong wind within the radius of that travel time?”
Sherlock pulled his phone back out and turned on the screen to show them both where he still had the weather forecast pulled up. “Cardiff.”
“That’s amazing!”
Sherlock looked to John once more at his praise. “Do you know you do that out loud?”
John felt his face flame once more. “Sorry… I’ll shut up.”
“No, it’s fine,” Sherlock quickly assured him, honestly not wanting him to stop.
Greg arched a brow at the two for a moment before shaking his head. “Why do you keep saying suitcase?”
Sherlock turned his attention back to the inspector. “Yes, where is it? She must have a phone or an organizer so we can find out who Rachel is.”
“She was writing Rachel?” Greg asked in surprise.
Sherlock gave him an unamused look. “No, she was leaving an angry note in German. Of course she was writing Rachel! No other word it can be. The question is why did she wait until she was dying to write it…”
Greg shook his head. “Ok. How do you know she had a case?”
Sherlock pointed to the body once more. “Back of her right leg. Tiny splashes on her heel and calf, not present on the left. She was dragging a wheeled suitcase behind her with her right hand–you don’t get that splash pattern any other way. Smallish case going by the spread. Case that size, woman this clothes-conscious, could only be an overnight bag. So we know she was staying one night. Now, where is it? What have you done with it?”
“There wasn’t a case.”
Sherlock froze just to slowly look to the inspector. “…Say that again.”
“There wasn’t a case. There was never any suitcase here.”
Sherlock’s mind was racing as he processed what he was just told for a moment before he was rushing out of the room and calling out, “Suitcase! Did anyone find a suitcase?! Was there a suitcase in this house?!”
“Sherlock, there was no case,” Greg called down as he and Dr. Watson made their way over to the stair railing to see the detective was already halfway down the stairwell.
Sherlock looked up to Lestrade. “But they take the poison themselves! They chew and swallow the pills themselves! There are clear signs–even you lot couldn’t miss them.”
Greg glared at that. “Right, yes, thank you. And?”
“It’s murder. All of them. I don’t know how, but they’re not suicides, they’re killings–serial killings. We’ve got a serial killer,” Sherlock told him just to find himself smiling as he excitedly bounced on the balls of his feet for a moment. “Love those! There’s always something to look forward to.”
Greg brought a hand up to massage the bridge of his nose. “Why? Why are you saying that? You told me yesterday these are serial killings, but where’s your proof?”
“Where’s her case? Come on, where is it? Did she eat it?! Someone else was here and they took the case! The killer must have driven her here, probably forgot the case was in the car.”
“Maybe she checked into her hotel and left her case there,” John suggested.
Sherlock tutted as he shook his head. “She never made it to her hotel, John. Look at her hair! She color coordinates her lipstick and her shoes! She’d never have left a hotel with her hair still like–” Sherlock cut off as his eyes widened in realization. “Oh! Oh!”
John blinked as Sherlock suddenly turned and began racing down the stairs. “Sherlock?”
“What? What is it?” Greg called.
Sherlock paused once more. “Serial killers, always hard! You’ve got to wait for them to make a mistake!” he called back.
“We can’t just wait!” Greg snapped.
“Oh, we’re done waiting! Look at her! Really look! Houston, we have a mistake!” Sherlock said as if it was obvious. “Get on to Cardiff, find Jennifer Wilson’s family and friends–find Rachel!”
Greg threw his hands up in exasperation as Sherlock took off once more and disappeared out of sight. “Of course, yes, but what mistake?!”
Sherlock moved to pop his head back into sight just long enough to say, “Pink!” before he was gone.
John frowned as he looked to Lestrade just to see the man shaking his head and turning to make his way back into the room with the body while calling out for his forensics team to get back in there.
He stepped off to the side and out of the way as several people came upstairs, waiting for the way to clear before he carefully made his way downstairs and stripped out of the coveralls. With that done, he made his way out of the house just to frown as he didn’t see Sherlock anywhere. He looked around a bit and made his way over to where the barrier was set up, but he still didn’t see him.
Sally, noticing the man that had showed up with the freak by himself and looking around, called out to him, “He’s gone.”
John stopped and looked to the woman when he realized she was talking to him. “Sherlock Holmes?”
“Yeah, he just took off. He does that.”
John frowned. “Is he coming back?”
“Didn’t look like it.”
John sighed, feeling more than a little put out to find himself stranded at a crime scene and not even knowing where he was exactly. “Right… Um, where am I?”
“Brixton.”
“Know where I can get a cab? It’s just…” John looked down and nodded towards his leg. “Well, my leg…”
“Try the main road down that way,” Sally offered as she pointed towards the far end of the street.
“Thanks,” John mumbled as he turned to start making his way down the sidewalk.
“Hey,” Sally called before the man could disappear. “You’re not his friend, the freak doesn’t have friends, so who are you?”
“I’m… I’m nobody. I only just met him,” John admitted.
“Hmm. Bit of advice then. Stay away from that guy.”
John furrowed his brows at that. “Why?”
“You know why he’s here? He’s not paid or anything. He likes it. He obviously gets off on it, and the weirder the crime the more he gets off. And you know what? One day just showing up won’t be enough. One day we’ll be standing ‘round a body and Sherlock Holmes will be the one who put it there.”
“…And why would he do that?”
Sally snorted. “Because he’s a psychopath. And psychopaths get bored,” she said simply before she heard Greg calling for her and offered the doctor a nod. “Stay away from Sherlock Holmes,” she advised once more as she turned to make her way towards the house.
John frowned in thought as he watched her disappear before he turned to make his way down the street, unable to help but wonder on what she said for a moment. After all, he had just heard Sherlock seemingly excitedly exclaiming that he loved serial killers because there was always something to look forward to. That wasn’t exactly normal for someone to say… But, at the same time, he didn’t strike John as someone that could be considered a psychopath. Eccentric like Mike had told him, sure, but not a psychopath.
Still, probably something he should take the time to be absolutely sure of before agreeing to move in with him.
He was pulled from his thoughts for a moment when he suddenly heard a phone ringing, and he glanced around just to see an empty phone booth to his left. He was a bit curious as to why it would be ringing, but he figured someone must have dialed a wrong number and happened to get a phone booth. So he ignored it and continued on his way and eventually made it to the main road and attempted to hail a cab, sadly with little luck.
He continued a little further along the street, hoping to find a better spot for a cabbie to see him, only to glance around when he heard a phone ringing again, and again he noticed it was coming from an empty phone booth nearby. He frowned as he felt something prickling in the back of his mind telling him it was too much of a coincidence that he just so happened to walk next to two empty phone booths that had someone calling them. But he forced himself to dismiss the thought that the call could be for him, since that was just ridiculous, and instead continued on his way only to hear the ringing immediately cut off as he passed the phone booth.
Of course, when he passed another phone booth just to have that one start ringing as well, he decided there was definitely no way it could be a coincidence and made his way into the booth and answered the phone. “Hello?”
“There is a security camera at the top right corner of the building opposite you. Do you see it?”
John furrowed his brows in confusion, not recognizing the voice of the man in the least. “Sorry, who’s this? Who’s speaking?”
“Do you see the camera, Dr. Watson?” the voice asked in lieu of answering.
John glanced through the window of the booth to see the camera the voice was talking about. “Yeah, I see it.”
“Watch.”
John blinked as the camera suddenly began to rotate until it was completely turned away from him.
“There is another camera on the footbridge to your left. Do you see it?”
Again John looked just to see the camera rotate away from him, and he felt his heart beginning to race at the slight sense of danger beginning to creep into his mind as the voice pointed out a third camera that again turned away when John looked at it. “How are you doing that?”
“Get into the car, Dr. Watson,” the voice said calmly as John watched a black limousine pull up and stop in front of the booth. “I would make some sort of threat, but I’m sure your situation is quite clear to you.”
John tensed as he heard the phone click to indicate the mystery speaker had hung up on him, and he watched as a man in a suit stepped out of the driver’s side of the limo and opened the backdoor just to stare at him as if waiting for him to get in.
His instincts were telling him to run, but he had a feeling whoever wanted him in that car wouldn’t let him get very far. So he took a deep breath and tightened his grip on his cane as he kept himself tense and ready to fight at a moment’s notice, and he made his way out of the booth and slipped into the back of the car where he was a bit thrown off to see a gorgeous woman in what looked like a business suit staring down at her phone and not paying him any attention as he slid into the seat next to her.
“Hello,” he greeted hesitantly, though still keeping his guard up since he knew for a fact women could be just as dangerous as men–some of the best soldiers he’d served with were women.
“Hi,” the woman returned idly as the car began moving.
“What’s your name then?”
“Anthea.”
“Is that your real name?”
“No.”
“…I’m John.”
The woman smiled in obvious amusement. “Yes, I know.”
“Right… Any point in asking where I’m going?”
“None at all, John.”
John let out a frustrated sigh as the woman continued to ignore him and type away at her phone, feeling more than a little irritated that he’d just been forced to get into a car and go somewhere he didn’t even know where and for a reason he couldn’t even begin to guess. It had his adrenaline pumping and his nerves on edge, and the silence in the car was only adding to the tension he felt.
He wasn’t sure how long they drove, though he would wager to guess an hour or so at the least since they’d driven what appeared to be all the way to the other side of the city near the docks since they eventually managed to pull up to an old deserted industrial area filled with warehouses and shipping containers, and it only had him wondering even more what the hell this was about as the car came to a stop and the driver got out just to open his door for him.
Once he got out of the car he looked to Anthea as she got out behind him and brushed past him with a firm, “This way,” and he reluctantly followed after her.
They eventually came to a stop at the entrance to one of the warehouses and Anthea opened the door just to motion him inside, John pausing and taking a look through the door before he even attempted to walk through.
The inside of the building was lit but completely empty, save for a single chair sitting across from a tall man with dark hair cut short and parted to the side and wearing a ridiculously expensive looking suit that left him looking entirely out of place in his surroundings. And once John noted the man was alone he made his way through the door and over to him.
The man offered him a seemingly polite smile as he got closer and motioned towards the chair across from him. “Have a seat, Dr. Watson.”
John pressed his lips as he blatantly ignored the chair and moved to stand in front of the man instead in clear challenge. “You know, I’ve got a phone. That was very clever, all that back there, but you could have just called me on my phone,” he pointed out.
“When one is avoiding the attention of Sherlock Holmes, one learns to be discreet. Hence this place. Your leg must be hurting. Sit down.”
John’s eyes narrowed as he straightened his back and widened his stance at the condescending tone. “I’m good.”
The man’s smile tightened, clearly not liking the challenge.
“You don’t seem very afraid,” he noted.
“You don’t seem very frightening,” John shot back.
The man chuckled. “Ah, yes, the bravery of the soldier. Bravery is by far the kindest word for stupidity, don’t you think… Tell me, what is your connection to Sherlock Holmes?”
John eyed the mystery man in suspicion at hearing him bring up Sherlock for a second time in just a couple of minutes. “I don’t have one, I barely know him. I met him yesterday,” he answered truthfully.
The man gave a sharp scoff in disbelief. “And since yesterday you’ve moved in with him and now you’re solving crimes together? Might we expect a happy announcement by the end of the week?”
John bit back the retort that he hadn’t actually decided to move in with him as of yet since that wasn’t exactly important, and instead asked, “Who the hell are you?”
“An interested party.”
“Interested in Sherlock. Why? I’m guessing you’re not friends seeing as how you’re apparently trying to avoid his attention.”
“You’ve met him. How many friends do you imagine he has? I’m the closest thing Sherlock Holmes is capable of having to a friend.”
John let out an irritated sigh, getting more than a little sick of this guy’s cryptic bullshit already. “And what’s that?”
“An enemy.”
John just barely bit back a laugh at that. “An enemy?”
“In his mind, certainly. If you asked him he’d probably say his arch enemy in fact. He does love to be dramatic.”
John gave the man a pointed look. “…Well thank god you’re above all that,” he said sarcastically, pausing for a moment as he heard his phone ping and pulling it out to look at it since nobody ever messaged him.
Baker Street. Come at once if convenient.
SH
John furrowed his brows at the message, curious as to how Sherlock got his number when he hadn’t given it to him.
“I hope I’m not distracting you,” the mystery man said with a clear hint of annoyance in his voice now.
“Not distracting me at all, no,” John said boredly as he put his phone back in his pocket without answering.
“Do you plan to continue your association with Sherlock Holmes?”
John gave the man another pointed look. “I could be wrong, but I think that’s none of your business.”
“It could be.”
“It really couldn’t.”
“If you do move into,” the man paused as he reached into his suit’s inner pocket and pulled out a journal to open it up and flick to a certain page, “two-two-one Baker Street, I would be happy to pay you a meaningful sum of money on a regular basis to ease your way.”
“What? Why?”
“Because you’re not a wealthy man.”
“Uh-huh. And in exchange for what?”
“Information. Nothing indiscreet, nothing you’d feel uncomfortable with. Just…tell me what he’s up to.”
John shot the man a glare at that. “Why?”
The man’s smile dropped completely. “I worry about him. Constantly.”
“That’s nice of you.”
John could see a muscle twitch in the man’s jaw at his sarcasm, and he just barely managed to keep from smirking.
The mystery man took a deep breath as he obviously decided to ignore the comment. “But I would prefer, for various reasons, that my concern was unmentioned. We have what you might call a difficult relationship.”
John said nothing, merely staring the man down and waiting for him to be finished so he could leave, just to pull his phone from his pocket when he heard it go off once more.
If inconvenient, come anyway.
SH
John looked back to the man as he put his phone away once more. “No.”
“I haven’t mentioned a figure.”
“Don’t bother.”
“For someone who claims he just met Sherlock, you’re very loyal very quickly,” the man noted, again in obvious disbelief.
“No I’m not, I’m just not interested.”
The man hummed as he flipped through the journal in his hands once more. “Trust issues, it says here.”
John tensed. “What is that?”
“Can it be you’ve decided to trust Sherlock Holmes of all people?”
“Who says I trust him?”
“You don’t seem to be the kind to make friends easily,” the man continued, and John was starting to realize this guy didn’t believe what he’d been telling him and was seemingly trying to get him to admit to actually knowing Sherlock longer than he claimed.
“Are we done?” he finally asked, more than over this conversation that was going nowhere.
“You tell me.”
John glared at the look the bastard was giving him, as if he were waiting for him to change his mind and accept his offer and start spilling information on Sherlock he seemed to think John had, and he simply turned and started walking back towards the warehouse door.
“I’ll be in touch. Should you change your mind,” the man called after him.
“Don’t bother. I won’t,” John said firmly before he quickly made his way out of the warehouse, pausing to pull his phone from his pocket when it pinged for a third time.
Could be dangerous.
SH
“I’m to see you home.”
John looked up to see Anthea patiently waiting next to the limo.
“Address?”
“Baker Street. Two-two-one Baker Street,” John informed her before his eyes darted down to the new text once more. “But I need to stop off somewhere first,” he decided, figuring it might be a good idea to pick up his gun, and gave her the address of his bedsit when she nodded.
Once he was settled in the back of the car he sent back a reply.
On my way
JW
Sherlock found himself feeling disappointed when he got home with the suitcase just to find John wasn’t there for him to show him he’d found it. He hadn’t really thought of the fact he’d taken off without the doctor until he’d gotten a look at the surrounding neighborhood from the rooftops and was down in a back alley searching his first skip. He just wasn’t exactly used to having someone with him on cases, so he’d acted on autopilot and was already following his next lead without even considering John.
It was at that point he’d realized he should probably warn the man that was likely to be a common occurrence on cases, but he was sure it wouldn’t be too much of an issue for John once they had that limp of his taken care of and it was easier for the man to keep up with him.
Either way, he had assumed John would have gotten a cab back to Baker Street since it would be the most logical spot to meet up after getting separated. Hence the disappointment at finding the flat empty once he’d made his way inside. But Sherlock had been searching for the suitcase for a while, so there was always a probability that John had decided to take the time to pack his things at his current place. Sure, the man hadn’t actually said he would be moving in, but he seemed to like the flat, and the two of them seemed to get on surprisingly well so far. That in itself was a good indication he would accept the offer of being flatmates.
So he decided to push down his disappointment and search through the case as he waited for John to eventually show up, and he slowly felt himself growing frustrated as he looked through every last inch of the suitcase but didn’t find the victim’s phone anywhere. This left his mind racing as to where the phone could be since it hadn’t been on Jennifer’s body or anywhere else in the house she’d been found in, and it was hard to think with no one here to bounce theories off of. Normally he’d use his skull for moments like this, because even just having something to talk at tended to help him, but it appeared Mrs. Hudson had moved said skull when she’d been trying to tidy the flat up some earlier, and she hadn’t answered him when he called for her–probably because it was about the time she usually took her evening soothers for her hip that left her a little out of it for a couple of hours afterwards.
He found himself growing more restless as the time slowly ticked by, because he couldn’t get himself to focus enough to think! The next step to take here was right there, he could feel it, but actually figuring out what that was seemed to be skirting along the edges of his racing mind just out of reach. He would play his violin in an attempt to focus, but his thoughts were too scattered and his body too restless at the moment.
When half an hour passed in the flat he couldn’t stand it anymore and pulled out his phone and messaged Mike to ask if he had John’s number and sent the doctor a message after receiving it.
A few minutes passed with no answer so he sent off another, only waiting for a few minutes once again before he sent off a third. He was just about to send off a fourth when he finally got a response, and he felt himself settle down a bit to read the man was on his way. Of course, the longer he waited for John to arrive the more irritated and restless he was getting.
He finally couldn’t handle himself any longer as it felt like the time was stretching on forever after John said he was on his way and he looked to the clock to see only a few minutes had passed, so he made his way into his room and grabbed his nicotine patches just to pull out three of them and head back out to the living room to stretch himself out on the couch as he opened the patches up and stuck them to his left forearm over the few lingering track marks that were barely visible by this point.
Sherlock closed his eyes and impatiently waited for the patches to start kicking in, counting the time in his head in an attempt to give his mind something to do other than focus on how he was feeling, and by the time an hour had passed he felt himself relaxing into the couch as he felt the patches finally starting to work. His head was finally starting to clear as his racing thoughts slowed down, and it finally hit him what the next step in the case should be as he heard the door to the flat opening and he cracked an eye open to see John making his way into the room.
John frowned as he noticed Sherlock laid out on the couch with his clothes rumpled, hair in a bit of disarray as if he’d been excessively running his fingers through it, and the sleeve on his left arm rolled up to his elbow. “What is that?” he asked as he noticed a hint of something on his arm.
“Nicotine patch. Helps me think,” Sherlock explained. “It’s been more than a little annoying for me to attempt to sustain a smoking habit these days, so I’ve been trying to quit. Bad news for brain work.”
“Good news for breathing though,” John pointed out, a smile tugging at his lips as Sherlock made a face.
“Oh breathing,” Sherlock said just to roll his eyes. “Breathing’s boring.”
“Yes, well, I’m sorry to have to inform you it’s also vital to living,” John said in amusement as he moved further into the room and closer to the other man, freezing as he was better able to see his arm from the new angle. “Three patches?!” he asked in shock.
“It’s a three patch problem today,” Sherlock said simply, blinking as the doctor was suddenly kneeling in front of the couch and grabbing ahold of his right wrist just to push his sleeve up enough to press a thumb over his pulse and hold it there. “What are you doing?”
John ignored him as he counted his pulse, not surprised it was a little fast since it was easier to see his breathing was a little quick now that he was up close to him, but at least he didn’t look like he was broken out into a sweat and his skin appeared to be only slightly flushed rather than any alarming tints of blue. “I’m just making sure you’re not accidentally poisoning yourself at the moment. You do know you’re only supposed to use one of those at a time, right?”
“Sometimes one isn’t enough. Besides, it’s fine. I have a high enough tolerance to nicotine that three patches are perfectly safe for me.”
John snorted. “I beg to differ. It doesn’t mean it’s safe for you, just means you have a slightly less chance of poisoning yourself.”
“Exactly. Safe,” Sherlock repeated.
John shook his head as he continued to keep an eye on the detective’s vitals for a moment. “Your definition of safe is quite different from mine. Are you feeling alright? Any nausea or dizziness?”
“None. I’m fine.”
John hummed in acknowledgment as he finally dropped the man’s wrist even as he kept an eye on his breathing to make sure it didn’t start getting any quicker. “If you’re sure…”
“Quite.”
“Anyway, you asked me to come,” John reminded him. “I’m assuming it’s important.”
Sherlock blinked as his mind suddenly snapped back on track at the reminder “Oh, yes, of course. Can I borrow your phone?”
“…My phone?”
“I don’t want to use mine, there’s always a chance the number will be recognized. It’s on the website,” Sherlock explained.
John just stared at the detective for a moment, because surely he hadn’t seriously asked him to come here just to use his phone. “Mrs. Hudson’s got a phone,” he pointed out.
“Yes, but she’s downstairs. I tried shouting earlier but she didn’t hear me, so she probably wouldn’t respond right now either.”
“I was on the other side of London! How was asking me here to borrow my phone quicker than just walking yourself downstairs and knocking on Mrs. Hudson’s door?!”
“There was no hurry, John, and I didn’t realize I needed a phone that’s not mine until about…thirteen minutes ago,” Sherlock admitted.
John felt slightly less annoyed to know he was asked here for more than just his phone, though he was still a little irritated the man had made it seem more urgent than it actually was and had him starting to worry for nothing.
He took a deep breath to help calm himself down as he reached into his jacket to pull out his phone and hold it out. “So what’s this about? The case?”
“Her case.”
“Her case?”
“Her suitcase, yes, obviously. The murderer took her suitcase. The first big mistake.”
“Ok, he took her suitcase, so what?” John asked in confusion as he gave his phone a shake since the other man still hadn’t moved to take it.
“It’s no use. There’s no other way–we’ll have to risk it.”
“Risk what?”
“There’s a number on my desk. I want you to text it.”
John let out a bit of an aggravated sigh at that, feeling his irritation raise a little more at having the man treating him like a secretary at the moment and not even telling him what exactly was going on, but he decided not to argue that he could just do it himself and limped over to the man’s cluttered desk.
“By the way,” he said conversationally as he searched the desk for a number, “I just met a friend of yours. It’s why I was on the other side of London when you messaged me.”
Sherlock furrowed his brows in confusion at this; he didn’t have friends, he had acquaintances… Yes, he knew Mike and Molly seemed to consider him a friend even though he never saw them outside of when he visited the lab for a case or to run an experiment, but John already knew Mike and it was unlikely he’d just run into Molly and she asked him to go across the city with her. Although John was a very handsome man, so he wouldn’t be surprised if the woman would want to ask him on a date if she were to meet him, but he doubted it would be upon their first meeting since it had taken her ages to gather up the courage to ask Sherlock himself out on a date even though he’d noticed the signs that she was attracted to him when he first met her. He’d ended up waiting for weeks before she finally approached him and he’d had to inform her that even if he was looking for a romantic attachment she was unfortunately lacking a certain chromosome that would have him even glancing in her direction.
“A friend?” he finally asked when he couldn’t puzzle out who John could be referring to.
“An enemy,” John corrected himself.
Sherlock perked up at that. “Oh? Which one?”
“Your arch enemy, according to him. Do people actually have arch enemies?”
Sherlock frowned at the dramatic term, his mind immediately going straight to one person and one person only. “…Did he offer you money to spy on me?” he asked just to be certain.
“Yes.”
The detective gritted his teeth at the confirmation, extremely annoyed to know he’d found out about John already when he’d at least hoped it would take the bastard a few days to realize he’d found himself a flatmate on top of moving to a new place. And even then it pissed him off to know he’d apparently kidnapped said flatmate and was already trying to get him to spy on him!
“Did you take it?” he asked calmly as he turned his head to look at John and watch his reaction, not really caring if the man did take the offer considering his obvious money troubles but more so caring about seeing if he’d lie to him about it or not.
“No.”
Sherlock was honestly stunned as he easily read from his voice and his body language that he was actually telling the truth.
John hadn’t taken the offer to spy on him… He wouldn’t have been bothered if he’d told him he had taken the offer, because at least it meant he wouldn’t be fully in the bastard’s pocket and would be willing to let Sherlock tell him what he wanted him to report, but he didn’t expect to feel so…happy to hear he’d refused the offer altogether.
He found himself smiling as he turned to stare up at the ceiling once more. “Pity. We could’ve split the fee. Think it through next time.”
“Who is he?”
“The most dangerous man you’ve ever met and not my problem right now. Do you have the number yet?”
“I’m looking. Your desk isn’t exactly organized at the moment,” John pointed out before he finally spotted a small card with a name and number on it, frowning as he read the name. “…Jennifer Wilson? Hang on, wasn’t that the dead woman?”
“Yes, doesn’t matter, just enter the number.”
“Alright.”
“Have you done it?” Sherlock asked impatiently.
“Hang on! There.”
“Now, these words exactly. What happened at Lauriston Gardens? I must have blacked out. Twenty-two Northumberland Street. Please come.”
John was having trouble focusing on typing out the message and listening to Sherlock since the man was talking a bit too quickly, so he paused when it registered he’d just heard him say something about blacking out, and he looked to him in concern. “You blacked out?”
Sherlock furrowed his brows in confusion at the question, and he looked to John to see he looked a bit…worried for some reason. “What? No, no. That’s part of the message,” he assured him as he got up to make his way into the kitchen to grab the suitcase. “Type and send, quickly.”
John looked over when he heard Sherlock coming back into the living room, about to ask him what he said the address was again only to freeze as he noticed him carrying a wheeled pink suitcase with an extendable handle.
“Sent it yet?” Sherlock asked as he grabbed the chair from his desk and pulled it in between the armchairs in front of the fireplace just to set the case down on it.
“What was the address?” John asked as he eyed the case.
“Twenty-two Northumberland Street. Hurry up.”
John quickly typed out the address and gave the message a quick glance to make sure it was right before he hit send and turned his full attention to Sherlock as he watched him open the suitcase before taking a seat in one of the armchairs.
“That’s…that’s the pink lady’s case. That’s Jennifer Wilson’s case,” he noted, unable to help eyeing the other man for a moment.
“Yes, obviously,” Sherlock agreed, frowning when he noticed the look John was giving him, and he felt himself bristle a bit as the look reminded him way too much of the looks a lot of the officers at NSY tended to give him on certain cases he helped with. “I should probably mention that I didn’t kill her.”
“…I never said you did,” John said hesitantly even as he tried to push away the memory of Donovan telling him Sherlock was a psychopath.
“Why not? Given the text I just had you send and the fact I have her case, it would be a perfectly logical assumption.”
John immediately found himself feeling guilty at the unsurprised look on Sherlock’s face as if he were expecting this. Again he was reminded of what Donovan had said to him, though this time he felt angry at the thought that enough people apparently shared her thought that Sherlock seemed to be used to being accused of being a murderer.
“Do people usually assume you’re the murderer?” he couldn’t help but ask.
“Now and then, yes.”
Well, if John wasn’t pissed before, he definitely was now after hearing Sherlock say that so matter-of-factly.
“And they don’t stop to think about how stupid it would be for you to take a case where you’re the one who committed the crime?”
“Easier to mislead them and cover up evidence if I did.”
“…Ok, fair point. I guess a better question would be do they really think you’d be stupid enough to leave behind a crime scene in the first place? With how brilliant you are I wouldn’t think you’d let there be anything to find that indicated a crime even happened.”
Sherlock curiously eyed the man as he took in what he was saying, part of him sure the only reason he was saying this at all was because he clearly felt guilty for at least having the passing thought when he first saw the suitcase, and another part of him amused at hearing him defending him by complimenting him on being too brilliant to leave behind a crime scene.
In the end he let himself be amused and offered a smile. “Yes, well, the police are idiots. Anyway, back to more important matters.”
John nodded when Sherlock looked back down at the suitcase, and he made his way over to the other armchair that he’d sat in earlier that morning and took a seat as he looked to the detective. “So how did you get this?”
“By looking.”
“Where?”
“The killer must have driven her to Lauriston Gardens. He could only keep her case by accident if it was in a car. No one could be seen with this case without attracting attention–particularly a man, which is statistically more likely. So obviously he’d feel compelled to get rid of it the moment he noticed he still had it. It wouldn’t have taken him more than five minutes to realize his mistake. I checked every back alley wide enough for a car within five minutes of Lauriston Gardens and looked for anywhere you could dispose of a bulky object without being observed. Took me less than an hour to find the right skip.”
John found himself staring at Sherlock in awe yet again before he let out a huff of a laugh and shook his head. “Pink… You got all that ‘cause you realized the case would be pink.”
“It had to be pink. Obviously.”
“Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Because you’re an idiot.” When Sherlock noticed the almost hurt look on the doctor’s face, he added, “No, no, no, don’t look like that–practically everyone is.”
John was about to point out that that wasn’t any less insulting as Sherlock seemed to think it should be, though before he could Sherlock was motioning towards the open case.
“Now look. Do you see what’s missing?”
“From her case? How could I?”
“Her phone. Where’s her mobile phone? No phone on the body, no phone in her case. We know she has one, the number’s right there,” Sherlock motioned to the card John was still holding with her phone number on it, “and you just texted it.”
“Maybe she left it at home.”
“She has a string of lovers and she’s careful about it–she never leaves it at home,” Sherlock said firmly as he plucked the card from John’s fingers and put it back in the luggage tag on the suitcase.
John furrowed his brows. “So why did I send that text?”
“The question is where is that phone now?”
John shrugged his good shoulder. “She could’ve lost it.”
“Yes. Or?”
John frowned in thought as Sherlock patiently watched him, obviously waiting for it to click, and he blinked as he realized what the man must be thinking. “…The murderer? You think the murderer has the phone?”
“Maybe she left it in his car when she left her case. Maybe he took it for some other reason. Either way, balance of probability is that the murderer has her phone.”
“Sorry, what are we doing here?” John cut in as he processed what he was just told. “Did I just text a murderer? What good will that do?”
Two sets of eyes looked to John’s phone as it suddenly started ringing next to him, John hesitantly picking the phone up to see the number calling him was the one he just texted before looking over to the detective.
Sherlock grinned. “A few hours since his last victim and now he’s got a text that can only be from her. Someone who’d just found the phone would ignore a text like that, but the murderer,” he glanced down to the phone as it suddenly stopped ringing before meeting John’s eyes once again, “would panic.”
John watched as Sherlock jumped to his feet and began pulling on his coat. “Have you talked to the police?”
“Four people are dead–there isn’t time to talk to the police.”
“Then why are you talking to me?”
“Mrs. Hudson took my skull,” Sherlock informed him, only half serious since he found he was surprisingly very much enjoying the other man’s company even though he usually got tired of speaking with the same person for longer than a few minutes at a time. Not to mention he rather liked that John didn’t seem to mind letting him talk and even tried to offer up suggestions here and there and didn’t get angry when Sherlock immediately shot them down and told him why he was wrong.
“So I’m basically filling in for your skull?” John asked with an amused huff of a laugh.
“Relax, you’re doing fine,” Sherlock found himself joking as he finished tying his scarf around his neck. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“Well, you could just sit here and watch TV… Or…”
John perked up as Sherlock gave him a patient look. “You want me to come with you?”
“I prefer company when I go out. I think better aloud, and the skull just attracts attention.”
John snorted as he got to his feet. “I can imagine.”
As soon as they were outside and Sherlock turned to start making his way down the street, John surprisingly easily found himself falling into step with him and curiously asked, “Where are we going?”
“Northumberland Street. It’s a five minute walk from here.”
“You think he’s stupid enough to go there?”
“No, I think he’s brilliant enough. I love the brilliant ones, they’re all so desperate to get caught.”
“Why?”
“Appreciation! Applause! At long last, the spotlight!” Sherlock explained as he spread his arms and gave a theatrical twirl that had John ducking to keep from being smacked accidentally. “That’s the frailty of genius, John, it needs an audience.”
John grinned. “Yeah, I think I’m starting to notice that.”
“This is his hunting ground, right here in the heart of the city,” Sherlock continued. “ We now know the victims were abducted, and that changes everything.”
“How so?”
“Because all of his victims disappeared from crowded places, from busy streets, but nobody saw them go. They walked out of their lives with a complete stranger and trusted him right up to the moment they swallowed his poison. He can do the impossible, this one–he needs to take a bow.”
“If it is a he. The pink lady did write Rachel,” John said thoughtfully.
“Yes, that’s true. Until we know who Rachel is there’s no point in speculating. Mustn’t assume in advance of the facts,” Sherlock acquiesced just to frown in thought. “Hmm… Think. Who do we trust even if we don’t know them? Who passes unnoticed wherever they go? Who hunts in the middle of a crowd?”
“I don’t know, who?”
Sherlock let out an annoyed huff as he admitted, “I haven’t the faintest… Hungry?”
John blinked, caught off guard by the sudden question, just to quickly follow after the detective as he suddenly turned and made his way across the road to a little Italian restaurant called Angelo’s without waiting for an answer.
As soon as they made it through the door and were hit with a wave of delicious smells, John’s mouth watered and his stomach growled as he was reminded he hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast.
“Hello, Mr. Holmes,” the host greeted.
“Evening, Billy,” Sherlock returned as he made his way over to his usual table in front of the large windows that gave him a perfect view of the surrounding street without waiting to be seated, John hesitantly moving to sit at the booth with him when he saw the host move to remove the little placard on the table saying Reserved.
“Twenty-two Northumberland Street,” Sherlock reminded John as Billy handed them a couple of menus. “Keep your eyes on it.”
John glanced out the window at the order to see they were right across from the address, and now he understood why Sherlock had wanted to pop into the restaurant seemingly out of nowhere. “He’s not just going to ring the doorbell though, is he? He’d have to be mad.”
“Well, he has killed four people,” Sherlock pointed out.
John gave a small shrug in agreement. “Fair point.”
“Sherlock!”
John looked over at the cheerful voice to see a jovial looking man with a neatly trimmed salt and pepper beard and his long hair tied back out of his face making his way over to their table.
“Been awhile since I’ve seen you in here. Don’t worry about the bill, it’s still anything on the menu on the house for you,” Angelo assured him before glancing to the man sitting across from him and assuring him, “For your date too,” while giving him a small nudge and a wink of approval since he was happy to finally see him with someone, especially since he’d tried to set the man up with one of his nieces only to be told he didn’t date women and Angelo unfortunately didn’t have any nephews interested in men to offer to set him up with instead.
“Do you want to eat?” Sherlock asked John curiously, not bothered by Angelo’s assumption and not feeling the need to correct him since he figured this at least would make it so Angelo stopped trying to talk to him about some of his guests he thought might be single and bent anytime Sherlock came in to use the place as a surveillance spot or to actually eat.
John felt his face heat up at that. “I’m not his date,” he corrected him just to glance to Sherlock, glad to see he didn’t look upset or uncomfortable by the assumption since he knew most guys didn’t exactly like for someone to think they weren’t straight.
Sherlock blinked as Angelo suddenly threw an arm around his shoulders and seemed to be trying to impress John for him by informing him, “This man got me off on a murder charge! As brilliant as he is handsome, this one!”
“This is Angelo. Three years ago I successfully proved to Lestrade that at the time of a particularly vicious triple murder, Angelo was in a completely different part of town housebreaking,” Sherlock explained.
“He cleared my name.”
“Of the murder charge.”
“If not for this man, I’d have gone to prison,” Angelo continued.
“You did go to prison,” Sherlock reminded him.
“I get you a candle for the table,” Angelo decided. “More romantic,” he added with a wink to the detective’s date.
John sputtered as he felt his face heat up once again. “I’m not his date!” he tried again as the owner disappeared.
“You may as well eat. We might have a long wait,” Sherlock informed the other man as he slid his own menu off to the side and continued to stare out the window to watch the street opposite them.
John frowned as he glanced to the discarded menu. “Aren’t you going to eat too then?”
“I don’t eat when I’m on a case.”
“Why?”
“Digestion slows brain function, and I’d rather not be slowed down on a case because my ability to think and process information is compromised,” Sherlock explained.
“I’d think it would slow you down a lot more to not have the energy to work a case if you don’t eat anything during it. I would imagine some cases could take days to solve.”
“Yes, and if I feel I must refuel, so to speak, a cup of tea or a sugary drink tends to suffice.”
“…That’s not very healthy.”
Sherlock waved him off. “It works for me, and I eat more regularly when I’m not on a case or if a case isn’t very puzzling.”
It was quiet for a bit after that as Angelo returned with the promised candle and set it between them before he lit it, John once again finding himself feeling a little flustered but deciding it was fine since Sherlock still didn’t seem to be bothered by the assumption. Angelo took his order since he was already at their table, and after he was gone again John helped Sherlock keep watch of the street in a comfortable silence.
When his food arrived he eyed Sherlock’s drink with a frown and idly pushed the small plate with his side of garlic bread a little closer to the detective’s side of the table in offering in the hopes he might be tempted to take one of the two slices at least since he hated the thought of him not having anything but his drink while he himself ate a full meal.
Sherlock curiously glanced down at the sound of something sliding across the table, and he arched a brow as he noticed John had pushed his garlic bread towards him and was staring out the window as he dug into his pasta. He didn’t really understand the reason for the obvious offer when he’d already told him he didn’t eat during a case… Then again, he had checked him over at the flat when he saw he was wearing three nicotine patches even though Sherlock had assured him he was fine then as well, so he supposed it made sense for him to want to offer to share some of his meal now as well since it was clear he hadn’t liked learning about his eating habits during a case.
Honestly, if it were anyone else Sherlock would be extremely annoyed that they weren’t listening to him and treating him as if he didn’t know his own limits. Lord knows he and Mycroft have had more than one of their worse fights over Sherlock’s seeming lack of care for himself and Mycroft feeling the need to treat him like a toddler that didn’t know any better. But he couldn’t find even a hint of annoyance for John, and for a moment he wondered why that was until he realized the man was showing concern but he wasn’t trying to force him to do anything differently.
He’d checked him over at the flat to make sure he wasn’t poisoning himself with his patches but hadn’t tried to get him to remove any of them after he’d determined he was fine, and now he’d made it clear he didn’t agree with him not eating during a case but he wasn’t trying to force him to eat or trying to tell him all the reasons why he thought he should. Instead he was giving a clear offering to share a small bit of his food, possibly–correctly–thinking if Sherlock did bother to eat something while working it wouldn’t be much and would be something light that his body could digest quickly, and leaving it up to him to decide if he wanted to accept the offer or not without giving him any pointed looks or making any comments about it.
“So I just had a thought.”
Sherlock blinked, pulled from his thoughts at the sudden sound of John’s voice and taking his eyes off of the plate of bread to let them flick back up to the doctor’s face. “Hmm?”
“Do you think the killer could be that guy that wanted me to spy on you? I mean, it would make sense to want to keep tabs on you if you’re working a case that involves him, wouldn’t it? So he knows if you’re close to figuring him out or not.”
“No, it’s definitely not him. He wouldn’t bother to get his hands dirty like that–he has people to do that for him.”
John arched a brow at that. “Who is that guy then? How are you so sure he’s not a suspect here? I mean, he seemed pretty adamant about not wanting to catch your attention.”
“I believe he informed you he’s my arch enemy,” Sherlock reminded him as he took a sip of his drink, debating with himself for a moment before he decided the allure of the fresh garlic bread was too much and ripped off a small corner piece from one of the slices.
“Right, but people don’t have arch enemies in real life. There are no arch enemies in real life, that doesn’t happen,” John said simply.
“Doesn’t it? Sounds a bit dull. What do real people have then? In their real lives?”
“Friends, family, people they know, people they like, people they don’t like…” John trailed off as he glanced down at the candle flickering on the table between them. “Girlfriends, boyfriends.”
“Yes, well, as I was saying, dull.”
John was quiet for a moment before his curiosity got the better of him the longer he stared at that candle. It just reminded him how Mrs. Hudson seemed to be thinking the same thing about him and Sherlock as Angelo had been. “So…you don’t have a girlfriend then?”
Sherlock snorted. “A girlfriend? No. Not really my area,” he said idly as he ripped off a bit more bread and popped it into his mouth while scanning the streets outside once more.
John paused as he took a moment to process Sherlock’s response. With how he just said that, on top of both Mrs. Hudson and Angelo’s assumptions…
“Oh… Right… Do you have a boyfriend?”
Sherlock’s attention snapped to John at the sudden question, not used to hearing that one from most people and searching his face for a moment to try and figure out what was with this sudden line of questioning.
“Which is fine,” John quickly added when he noticed the rather tense look Sherlock was giving him now.
“I know it’s fine,” Sherlock said a little defensively, not really able to help it since he’d met more than a few people in his life that had a problem with it. And, yes, he knew John’s sister was a lesbian, but he’d found that sometimes men tended to be perfectly fine with lesbians but reacted very differently when it came to gay men.
“So you’ve got a boyfriend then?” John guessed based on that reaction.
Sherlock relaxed a bit as he couldn’t detect anything in his face or tone other than genuine curiosity and open friendliness. “No.”
John couldn’t help but offer a smile as he let his eyes move a little more freely over the other man now that he knew he wasn’t likely to get a fist to the face if he was caught checking him out. “Right. Ok… Unattached, like me. Fine, good,” he muttered a little nervously, feeling his face heat up a bit.
Good lord, he knew he’d been out of the dating pool for a while, and since he’s been back home he hasn’t exactly been in a good place mentally to want to even attempt to just flirt with someone, but he hadn’t thought he was that rusty. He’d meant to say something smooth that let Sherlock know he was also available and wasn’t just interested in women, and maybe let himself flirt a little without going too far with it since he wasn’t exactly looking for a relationship at the moment. He wasn’t opposed to one, especially since he’d had more than enough one-night stands during his time in the military to be sick of them and left wanting something more, but he just still wasn’t in a good enough place to actively try and start something with anyone.
Sherlock’s eyes immediately zeroed in on all the obvious signs of attraction–the slight flush on John’s cheeks, the nervous smile, the slight dilation to his eyes that were looking him over. And if that hadn’t been enough, there was his nervously fumbled words that were clearly meant to convey his availability and show he was interested by pointing out that they were both unattached.
He couldn’t deny he felt a pleasant flutter in his stomach to know someone as handsome as John found him attractive, especially when most people who seemed to be attracted to him upon first meeting him tended to get over that attraction rather quickly after speaking with him for an extended amount of time, but he didn’t do sentiment. Feelings were messy and distracting, and he stayed too busy for distractions. And romantic relationships were all about feelings–he’d learned that in his early days at university when he’d attempted to let a few people in that he thought liked him and made him question for the first time in his life that he might not actually be happy being alone. In the end he’d learned that all sentiment was good for was letting others hurt you, it was better to close yourself off from people than open up to them, and that he was better off alone.
“…John, I think you should know that I consider myself married to my work,” he finally said after a moment. “And while I’m flattered by your interest, I’m really not looking for any kind of–”
“Oh, no!” John quickly cut in. “No, I wasn’t asking you out or anything, I was just saying it’s all fine,” he said truthfully, a little disappointed at being shut down so quickly before he’d even managed to pull himself together enough to actually flirt a bit, but it was probably a good thing really. They were still getting a feel for each other here to determine whether or not they could work as flatmates, so it probably wasn’t the best idea to bring any kind of romantic undertones to their interactions just yet. Besides, he could always try again later if he did move in with Sherlock and it ever felt like things could be moving in that direction at some point.
Sherlock canted his head in confusion, wondering if he’d actually just misread John for a moment since he’d cut in rather quickly to say he wasn’t interested…until it registered that he wasn’t saying he wasn’t interested, just that he wasn’t trying to ask him out. And, again, he found it rather refreshing that John had thrown him off with his reaction when he was used to conversations like this going a different way with someone either pleading with him to give them a chance, telling him it could work even if he thought he was married to his work, or that he didn’t know he wasn’t interested in having a relationship if he didn’t give it a try. Yet here John was letting him know he was interested and available and that it was fine if Sherlock wasn’t.
“Thank you,” he found himself saying softly, not sure why he was thanking him but feeling like it needed to be said nonetheless.
John nodded before he cleared his throat. “But, seriously though, an arch enemy? What’s that supposed to even mean?”
Sherlock smiled at the change of subject and gave John an almost fond look. “Nothing in real life, apparently,” he teased.
When he returned his attention back out the window he felt the smile slipping from his face as his eyes zeroed in at the cab that was still parked at the curb in front of 22 Northumberland; it already had a passenger in the backseat and had now been parked for two minutes.
“What is it?” John asked when he noticed the look on Sherlock’s face.
“Look across the street. Taxi. Stopped. Nobody getting in, nobody getting out… Why a taxi?” Sherlock mumbled thoughtfully, perking up a bit as he could feel something trying to click in his brain as he saw the passenger in the back looking around and seemingly searching the street. “Oh, that’s clever,” he found himself saying without thinking just to furrow his brows and narrow his eyes at the cab in confusion. “Is it clever? Why is it clever?”
“So that’s him,” John noted as his gaze focused on the passenger.
“Don’t stare.”
“You’re staring.”
“Well we can’t both stare.”
John blinked as Sherlock suddenly got up and rushed from the restaurant, and he quickly abandoned his food and grabbed his jacket to pull it back on as he hurried to follow the detective. When he caught up to Sherlock he noticed the passenger in the back of the cab turn his head and seemingly lock eyes with Sherlock before he suddenly turned back around to face the driver and the cab began to take off.
His eyes widened as Sherlock suddenly took off running after it, his heart catching in his throat for a moment as a car suddenly slammed on its brakes and the detective merely jumped up and slid across the hood without missing a beat, and John cursed as he took off running down the street after him until they both got to an intersection and watched the cab take a left turn.
“I got the cab number,” he assured him, figuring it might help.
“Good for you,” Sherlock said idly as he closed his eyes and brought up a mental map of the area they were in and began plotting out a route they could take to intercept the cab. “Left turn, one way, roadworks, traffic lights, bus lane, pedestrian crossing, left turn only, traffic lights…”
John curiously looked to the detective as he tried to make sense of his seemingly random mumbling, just to arch a brow as his eyes suddenly snapped open and he took off running straight down the street towards an apartment building without a word. He quickly chased after the detective once again, mumbling a quick, “Sorry!” to a man when Sherlock grabbed him and tossed him out of the doorway where he’d been smoking.
His heart pounded in his chest, adrenaline rushing through him as he kept on Sherlock’s heels as they made their way up the stairwell and came out onto the rooftop. They made their way partway down an emergency fire escape on the side of the building before Sherlock suddenly jumped over the railing and onto the roof of the smaller building next door, and John didn’t even think about it before he hopped over the railing after him and pushed himself to run faster to keep up with the other man. Of course, when Sherlock jumped to another building the length of the gap had John skittering to a stop and hesitating at the edge.
“Come on, John, we’re losing him!” Sherlock called back when he didn’t hear him jump after him.
John backed up a bit and took a deep breath to steel himself before he raced forward once more, this time letting himself jump rather than hesitating and managing to catch back up to Sherlock before he could lose him.
They eventually came to another fire escape along one of the buildings and raced down it and down through the alley it dropped them off in, the both of them jumping over a homeless man asleep in the entrance of the alleyway and popping out onto the sidewalk right as the cab they were after drove past them.
“This way!” Sherlock instructed as he cut across the road and through another alley, eventually coming out the other side to another crowded sidewalk and impatiently pushing past people when they didn’t immediately move out of the way, hearing John breathlessly apologizing behind him even as the shorter man continued to chase after him.
After weaving around several more streets Sherlock finally came out into a road and right in front of the cab they were chasing, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out a badge as the car screeched to a halt.
“Police!” Sherlock called out to the cabbie before he made his way around to the back and pulled the door open to see the passenger in the back looking at him with wide-eyed curiosity.
John panted as he came to a stop behind Sherlock, curiously looking to him when he heard him letting out an aggravated noise.
“No,” Sherlock noted in irritation as he looked the passenger over. “Teeth, tan, what? Californian? LA, Santa Monica, just arrived.”
“How can you possibly know that?” John asked breathlessly.
Sherlock angrily motioned towards the suitcase with an LAX tag on it in the seat next to the passenger as he tried to take a deep breath to even out his erratic breathing. “The luggage,” he said simply. “And first trip to London probably, going by the destination and the route the driver here has taken him.”
“Sorry, are you guys the police?” the passenger asked in confusion.
“Yeah,” Sherlock agreed as he held the badge up to show him for a moment. “Everything alright?”
The passenger offered a confused smile. “Yeah.”
Sherlock nodded. “Welcome to London,” he said breathlessly before shaking his head and turning to head down the street away from the cab.
“Uh, any problems, just let us know,” John offered before he closed the door for the man and made his way over to Sherlock where he was leaning against the traffic barrier at the side of the road.
“So…that was just a cab that happened to slow down,” he noted.
“Basically.”
“Not the murderer.”
“Not the murderer, no,” Sherlock confirmed.
John hummed. “Wrong country. Good alibi.”
“As they go.”
John curiously glanced to Sherlock’s hand when the detective started tapping something against his leg as he appeared to be in thought, and he reached out to grab ahold of the badge he’d been flashing. “So where did you get this? This looks like a real badge,” he noted as he flipped it open, blinking at the name. “Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade?” he read.
“Yeah. I pickpocket him when he’s annoying,” Sherlock explained. “You can keep that one, I’ve got loads at the flat.”
John couldn’t help it, the ridiculousness of the situation finally hitting him, he laughed.
“What?”
“Nothing, just…” he snorted, “Welcome to London.”
Sherlock found himself chuckling, John’s laugh rather infectious and helping to lift his sour mood. Of course, his laughter died as his eyes flicked over towards where the cab was still parked and he noticed an actual police officer was at the window and now talking to the passenger, who was pointing in his and John’s direction, and he turned his attention back to the doctor. “You got your breath back?”
John, having noticed where Sherlock had just been looking, nodded. “Ready when you are.”
With that, the two of them vaulted over the traffic barrier and took off running once more.
They were both breathless when they made it back to Baker Street, John unable to help laughing again once they were safely back inside the building and leaning against the wall in front of the stairwell to catch their breath.
“That was ridiculous. That was the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever done.”
“And you invaded Afghanistan,” Sherlock joked.
John let out another laugh. “That wasn’t just me,” he pointed out. “Anyway, why aren’t we back at the restaurant? Shouldn’t we still be keeping an eye out since that guy wasn’t our murderer?”
Sherlock waved him off. “I messaged Angelo and told him to keep an eye out. It was a long shot anyway.”
“So what are we doing here?”
“Passing the time. Tea?”
“Sure.”
Before they could start making their way upstairs, the doorbell rang behind them and Sherlock gave John an amused look. “That would be for you.”
John arched a brow at that, though at this point he decided he probably shouldn’t question the other man. So he turned to answer the door only to furrow his brows in confusion to find Angelo standing there with a smile on his face. “What are you doing here?”
“Sherlock texted me. He said you forgot this and asked me to bring it back,” Angelo said in amusement.
John was utterly thunderstruck as he stared down at the cane being held out to him, and he looked down to his right leg in shock.
There hadn’t been a single day since he’d recovered enough from being shot to move around that his leg hadn’t hurt or been able to support his weight… Not one… No matter what he tried, nothing had ever helped–not even reminding himself the pain wasn’t real and that it was all in his head. Yet, somehow, he’d not only forgotten to grab his cane when he left the restaurant, he’d just been running several blocks and jumping across buildings without a single thought to his leg whatsoever.
“Thanks,” he finally muttered as he took the cane, still in shock as Angelo said his farewell and left.
“Oh, Sherlock! There you are.”
John turned around to see Mrs. Hudson making her way down the stairs towards Sherlock with a worried look on her face, and he put his leg out of his mind as he made his way back inside and over to both of them.
“What’s wrong?” Sherlock asked with a frown.
“I’m not sure. The police are here, upstairs. They just came in and went straight on up and started looking about. Have you done something, Sherlock?”
Sherlock pressed his lips as he moved past the woman and made his way up to his flat, opening the door to find a bunch of police officers searching the place like Mrs. Hudson said and Lestrade sitting in one of the armchairs in front of the fireplace and examining the pink suitcase. “What are you doing?” he asked angrily.
Greg looked up to see Sherlock glaring at him with Dr. Watson standing behind him looking confused. “Well I knew you’d find the case, I’m not stupid.”
“You can’t just break into my flat!”
“You can’t withhold evidence,” Greg countered. “And I didn’t break into your flat.”
“Well what do you call this then?!”
Greg shrugged as he gave the younger man a flippant look. “A drug bust.”
Sherlock tensed, fists clenching at his sides as a wave of anger crashed over him.
John couldn’t help it, he laughed. “Oh, come on, seriously? This guy? A junkie?” he said incredulously. “Have you met him?”
Sherlock winced and looked off to the side when he noticed Lestrade arching a brow at John, and he felt his stomach twisting at how confidently the doctor was trying to come to his defense… And he hated the inspector for taking this choice from him, for not allowing him to decide if he wanted to let John know about this part of his past or not when it was no longer relevant seeing as he was clean and he didn’t like thinking about those days.
“…John,” he tried softly, voice strained.
“Pretty sure you could search this flat all day and you wouldn’t find anything you could even remotely call recreational,” John continued.
Sherlock clenched his jaw as he heard a few officers scoff and laugh. “John, you probably want to shut up now…”
John frowned at that just to give Sherlock a confused look. “Yeah, but come on…” he trailed off as the detective gave him a sharp look. “No… You?”
Sherlock bristled just to snap, “Shut up!” before he turned his angry gaze to a smirking Lestrade, knowing the bastard was only doing this because he hadn’t immediately jumped to let the police know he’d found the case. “I’m not your sniffer dog!”
“No, Phil’s my sniffer dog,” Greg said as he nodded to where the man was currently searching a spot near the kitchen archway.
Sherlock immediately spun around to find Anderson smirking at him while giving a cheeky little wave. “Anderson?! What the hell are you doing here on a drug bust?”
“Oh, I volunteered,” Philip said smugly.
Greg motioned around the room towards all the officers still searching. “They all did. They’re not strictly speaking on the drugs squad, but they’re all very keen,” he informed him just to look to Sally as she popped her head out of the kitchen while holding up a jar with a disgusted look on her face.
“Are these human eyes?!” the woman asked in disbelief.
“Put those back!” Sherlock snapped, his nerves fraying at the edges from being blindsided like this with such a blatant reminder of his past mistakes and knowing all these people were here, having volunteered, because they were all clearly hoping to find something.
“They were in the microwave!”
“It’s an experiment!”
“Keep looking, guys,” Greg cut in to keep Sally from getting off track before Sherlock turned to glare at him once more, and he offered, “Or you could start helping me properly and I’ll stand them down.”
“This is childish.”
“Yes, well, I’m dealing with a child,” Greg retorted. “This is our case, Sherlock. I always let you in on cases when I need you. I give you everything you need and let you have access to most, if not everything, of what we have, but you can’t keep going off on your own without keeping me updated. Are we clear?”
“Oh, what, so you set up a pretend drug bust to bully me?” Sherlock asked icily.
“Stops being pretend if they find anything,” Greg warned.
“I’m clean, and you know it,” Sherlock said through gritted teeth.
“Is your flat? All of it?”
“Fuck you! I don’t even smoke anymore!”
Greg looked down as Sherlock angrily pulled up his sleeve to show a hint of a nicotine patch, and he frowned as he felt a twinge of guilt at the look he caught on his face before his expression went blank. “Alright… I’m sorry, ok? It was a dick move to do this, but it was a dick move on your part not to tell me what all you’ve figured out since you left the crime scene. So how about we both stop being dicks and work together, yeah?”
Sherlock took a deep breath and slowly let it out to calm himself, and he gave a reluctant nod.
“Everyone, stand down!” Greg called out, giving everyone a sharp look when he heard a few protests before they fell silent and everyone stopped rifling through everything. Once everyone had stopped he turned his attention back to Sherlock. “We found Rachel.”
“Who is she?”
“Jennifer Wilson’s only daughter.”
Sherlock furrowed his brows in confusion at that. “Her daughter… Why would she write her daughter’s name? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Never mind that,” Philip cut in as he gave his boss a look. “We found the case!” he pointed out before he glanced to the freak. “According to someone, the murderer has the case. And here it is, in the hands of our favorite psychopath.”
Sherlock shot him a glare. “I’m not a psychopath, Anderson, I’m a high-functioning sociopath–do your research,” he said simply before he turned back to Lestrade. “You need to bring Rachel in, you need to question her. I need to question her.”
“She’s dead,” Greg informed him.
Sherlock perked up. “Excellent! How? When? Is there a connection? There has to be!”
“I doubt it, since she’s been dead for fourteen years. Technically she was never alive. Rachel was Jennifer Wilson’s stillborn daughter fourteen years ago.”
Sherlock frowned as he processed that. “No, that… That’s not right. That doesn’t make any sense. Why would she do that then?”
Philip scoffed. “Why would she think of her daughter in her last moments? Yeah, sociopath, seeing it now.”
Sherlock rolled his eyes just to give Anderson a pointed look. “She didn’t think about her daughter, she scratched her name into the floor with her fingernails. She was dying, it took effort, it would’ve hurt. No, she was trying to tell us something.”
“You said the victims all took the poison themselves,” John finally cut in. “Somehow the killer makes them take it. Maybe he… I don’t know, maybe he says something to them to get them to do it. Maybe he used the death of Jennifer’s daughter somehow to make her take it,” he offered thoughtfully.
Sherlock made a face at that. “But that was ages ago–why would she still be upset about it?” he asked in confusion, pausing when he noticed John wince and a few of the officers around the room glaring at him. “…Not good?”
“A bit not good, yeah,” John agreed when he realized Sherlock seemed genuinely confused and was looking to him for an answer since he was the only one in the room not glaring daggers at him–aside from Lestrade, who was just looking exasperated at this point.
Sherlock frowned as he filed that away for later to try and understand, or at the very least remember not to ask such a question again if the subject came up, and he shook his head to try and pull his thoughts together as he restlessly started pacing. “Noted. But, listen, if you were dying–if you’d been murdered–in your very last seconds, what would you say?”
John felt his mouth go dry and his fingers twitch as his mind immediately flashed back to him bleeding out in the sand under a boiling sun as shouts and gunfire sounded around him. “…Please, God, let me live,” he said softly.
Sherlock tutted. “Oh, use your imagination.”
John gave him a hard look. “I don’t have to.”
Sherlock froze as he noticed the sudden tension in John’s frame, and he realized he’d just unintentionally struck a raw nerve. And it was in that moment that it actually finally seemed to sink in that the man standing before him was an ex-soldier, and that he’d been injured badly enough to be discharged… He’d deduced that upon first meeting him, of course, but he hadn’t really processed what that meant until now.
Greg curiously looked between the two, unable to help but wonder about the story behind the doctor’s words and the look he was giving Sherlock at the moment, and more than a little stunned to see Sherlock appeared to be trying to think of how to continue with the point he was trying to make as if he didn’t want to upset the doctor even though Sherlock never cared if he upset someone or tried to be delicate when it came to sensitive topics–case in point, he just asked why a woman would still care about her dead daughter even after so many years.
“Yes, but…in a situation like this,” Sherlock said softly. “If you were clever, if you wanted your murderer to be caught and you were very clever, what would you say? Jennifer Wilson, running all those lovers, she was clever. She’s trying to tell us something.”
“Is the doorbell not working up here?” Martha asked as she made her way into the doorway of the flat. “Your taxi’s here, Sherlock.”
Sherlock frowned as he looked to Mrs. Hudson. “I didn’t order a taxi. Go away,” he said simply as he waved her off and started pacing in thought once more.
He let out a frustrated sigh as he heard multiple people mumbling around him and all trying to offer up what the name could mean and how that could be Jennifer trying to tell them something, and he clenched his fists as the noise became too much when his head was already so damn loud at the moment!
“Shut up! Everybody, shut up!” the detective finally snapped. “Don’t move, don’t speak, don’t breathe! I’m trying to think! Anderson, face the other way, you’re putting me off!”
Philip scoffed. “What? My face is?”
“Everybody quiet and still! Phil, turn your back,” Greg ordered, having worked with Sherlock enough times by now to know how he got when he was trying to puzzle something out and that he needed quiet to sort through his thoughts when he started getting manic like this.
“Oh, for god’s sake!” Philip said angrily.
“Your back, Anderson! Now!” Greg growled as Sherlock brought his hands up to his head and tightly closed his eyes as his pacing quickened.
“Come on, come on! Think!” Sherlock angrily mumbled to himself.
“What about your taxi?” Martha couldn’t help but ask.
“Mrs. Hudson!” Sherlock snapped as he whirled on her.
John frowned as Mrs. Hudson fell silent and turned to head back out of the flat and down the stairs, and he looked back to Sherlock to give him a sharp look but the man was already pacing once more.
Nobody moved a muscle as Sherlock continued his circuit from one end of the living room to the other, and it seemed everyone was collectively holding their breaths when the man suddenly stopped dead in his tracks and his face lit up with realization.
“Oh, she was clever!” Sherlock praised. “Clever, yes! Cleverer than you lot, and she’s dead! Do you see? Do you get it? She didn’t lose her phone, she never lost it! She planted it on him! When she got out of that car she knew she was going to her death–she left the phone to lead us to her killer!”
Greg shared a confused look with the rest of the room. “But how?”
“Wh–” Sherlock froze just to give the inspector a dumbfounded look. “What do you mean, how?!”
“How would her potentially planting her phone on her killer lead us to them?” Greg elaborated, frowning when Sherlock gave him that look he hated that told him the younger man believed he was speaking to an idiot.
“Rachel!” Sherlock said simply, letting out a frustrated huff when everyone just looked at him in utter confusion. “Don’t you see?! Rachel!” he tried again just to scoff and shake his head when all he got were blank stares. “My god, look at you lot. You’re all so vacant. What’s it like not being me? It must be so relaxing in those empty heads of yours,” he scathed. “Rachel is not a name.”
Greg only found himself feeling more confused by that, and he let out an irritated sigh as he brought a hand up to massage the bridge of his nose. “Then what is it?” he asked impatiently, sure he wasn’t the only one irritated at being insulted just because he couldn’t see what was apparently so obvious to Sherlock.
“John, on the luggage, there’s a label–email address,” Sherlock said simply just to make his way over to his desk and open up his laptop.
“Jenny dot pink at my phone dot org dot UK,” John read off just to curiously make his way over behind Sherlock to see him typing the information into a website login page.
“I’ve been too slow,” Sherlock grumbled, angry at himself that it took him so long to realize something so simple. “She didn’t have a laptop in her luggage, which means she did her business on her phone–so it’s a smartphone that’s email enabled. So there’s a website for her account. The username will be the email address, and, all together now, the password is…?”
“Rachel,” John said as Sherlock typed it in and hit enter just for the page to unlock.
“So we can read her emails, so what?” Philip asked flatly.
“Don’t talk out loud, Anderson, you lower the IQ of the whole street. We can do more than read her emails. It’s a smartphone, it’s got GPS. So if you lose it, you can locate it online. And she was a business woman that conducted all of her business with her phone, so she chose to use an email that pairs a phone’s GPS to its website.,” Sherlock said simply as he clicked on the Find my phone tab just for a map to pop up with a message informing him the phone would be located in under three minutes.
With that, he sat back in his chair and looked to Lestrade as he waved towards the computer. “You see? She’s leading us right to the man who killed her.”
“Unless he got rid of it,” Greg pointed out.
“We know he didn’t,” John informed him.
“Come on, hurry up,” Sherlock grumbled impatiently at the computer before he got to his feet to begin pacing once more, hating having to sit still and wait when they were so close to closing the case.
“Sherlock, dear,” Martha called as she returned to the flat with a huff. “This taxi driver is insisting he’s here for you.”
“Mrs. Hudson, isn’t it time for another one of your evening soothers?” Sherlock said offhandedly to get the woman to go away before he turned his attention back to the DI. “Get some vehicles ready, get a helicopter, we need to move fast once we get a location–that battery won’t last forever.”
“We’ll just have a map for reference, not a name!” Greg pointed out in exasperation.
“It’s a start!” Sherlock argued.
John blinked as the locator stopped processing and showed the location, and he frowned since that couldn’t be right. “Uh, Sherlock?”
“It narrows it down to a specific point. It’s the first proper lead we’ve had,” Sherlock continued.
“Sherlock,” John said more sharply to get his attention.
“What is it? Is it done locating? Where is it?” Sherlock asked impatiently as he made his way up behind John to look at the screen, frowning at what he was seeing.
“It’s here. It’s in two-two-one Baker Street,” John informed him.
Sherlock shook his head at the confirmation that he wasn’t the only one seeing that. “But it can’t be. How can it be here? How?”
“Maybe it was in the case when you brought it back and it fell out somewhere,” Greg offered.
Sherlock scoffed as he gave the man a look. “And I didn’t notice? Me? I didn’t notice?”
“Besides, we texted it and got a call back,” John added. “That’s why I said we know the killer didn’t get rid of the phone.”
Greg frowned, having to admit that was definitely puzzling, but if the tracker was saying it was here…
“Guys, spread out. We’re looking for a mobile phone somewhere here that belonged to the victim. At this point I think it’s safe to go out on a limb and assume it’ll be pink,” he informed his officers.
Sherlock froze as everyone started bustling around the flat once more, everything slowing down around him as his mind raced at the knowledge that the phone was in this building right this very second.
“Who do we trust even if we don’t know them? Who passes unnoticed wherever they go? Who hunts in the middle of a crowd?” his mind whispered just for everything to suddenly snap into place as his eyes darted over to Mrs. Hudson…and to the man standing behind her with his face down and his cap pulled low with a badge around his neck that proclaimed he was a taxi driver.
His eyes widened as he watched him pull a pink phone from his pocket and press a button before turning and heading back down the stairs, and Sherlock glanced down to his own phone when he heard it ping and he looked to see he had a message from Jennifer Wilson’s number…
Come with me
“Sherlock? You ok?” John asked with a frown when he noticed the detective appeared to be frozen.
“What?” Sherlock mumbled dazedly, trying to wrap his head around this.
“Are you ok?” John repeated.
“Yes, yes, fine…”
“Uh-huh… So how can the phone be here?”
“I don’t know…”
John furrowed his brows, unable to help but feel like something was wrong thanks to the detached responses he was getting. “Right, well, I’ll just try to call it then,” he offered.
“Good idea,” Sherlock mumbled idly as he decided to follow after the cabbie rather than alerting Lestrade. The man had walked straight into the flat, was specifically wanting him according to Mrs. Hudson, and instead of panicking when he’d seen the police here the cabbie had simply told him to come with him. Sherlock wanted answers, and he had a feeling if he didn’t follow the man he’d never get them.
John had just finished dialing the number and brought his phone up to his ear when he noticed Sherlock heading towards the door, and he furrowed his brows in confusion. “Where are you going?”
“Nowhere. Fresh air–just popping out for a moment.”
“You sure you’re alright?” John couldn’t help but ask one more time as Sherlock started disappearing down the stairs.
“I’m fine!” Sherlock called back before he hurried down and made his way out the front door, eyes narrowing at the elderly man with white hair messily sticking out of the sides of his cap and wire-rimmed glasses sliding down his nose casually leaning against his cab with a smile.
“Taxi for Sherlock Holmes,” the man said as he reached up to push his glasses back up on his nose.
“I didn’t order a taxi.”
The cabbie shrugged. “Doesn’t mean you don’t need one.”
Sherlock looked the man over for a moment, wondering how he was even here since he hadn’t called for a cab, and he’d just moved into 221 Baker Street so it wasn’t like his change of address would be public knowledge just yet… And then he glanced to the cab and saw its number.
“You’re the cabbie who stopped outside Northumberland Street. It was you we were looking for, not your passenger… You followed us back here, didn’t you? And we didn’t even notice. Why would we? Just another taxi in a sea of them…”
The old man hummed in agreement. “No one ever thinks about the cabbie. It’s like we’re invisible, just the back of a head to everyone, proper advantage for a serial killer.”
“Is this a confession?”
“Oh yeah. And I’ll tell you what else. If you go up and get the coppers now, I won’t run. I’ll sit quiet and they can take me down, I promise.”
Sherlock’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”
The cabbie smiled. “Because you’re not gonna do that.”
“And why not?”
“I didn’t kill those four people, Mr. Holmes. I spoke to them, and then they killed themselves. Go and get the coppers now and I promise you this, I will never tell you what I said.”
Unsurprisingly, it appeared he was right in thinking he wouldn’t get answers if he’d gotten Lestrade’s attention. And he very much wanted answers.
“No one else will die though. I believe they call that a result,” Sherlock said simply, trying to make it seem like he didn’t care in hopes it would make the man speak anyway even if he did get the police. After all, he had to want someone to know how he did it. Killers like him always wanted to brag about how they did it.
“And you won’t ever understand how those four people died. Which result do you care more about?” the cabbie asked with a smirk.
Sherlock pressed his lips, glancing up towards the window of his flat for a moment where he could see John with his phone pressed to his ear and it had him focusing in on a soft buzzing sound coming from the cabbie’s pocket. All he would have to do is shout and everyone would be running out here to arrest the old man… But…
He glanced back to the elder man still patiently leaning against the cab seemingly without a care. “If I wanted to understand…what would I do?”
The cabbie smiled. “Let me take you for a ride.”
“So you can kill me too?”
The old man chuckled. “I’m not gonna kill you, Mr. Holmes. I’m gonna talk to you. And then you’re gonna kill yourself,” he said matter-of-factly just to turn and get into his cab, patiently waiting as the detective seemed to think about it, and smirking when he heard the back of his cab open and the young man slipped inside.
“So what made you follow me?” Sherlock asked as the cab took off. “You clearly heard me tell your passenger I was the police, so why follow me back to Baker Street?”
“Oh, I recognized you as soon as I saw you chasing my cab. Sherlock Holmes. I was warned about you. I’ve been on your website too–brilliant stuff, loved it.”
Sherlock furrowed his brows at that. “Who would warn you about me?”
“There’s someone out there who’s noticed you.”
“Who? Who would notice me?”
“You’re too modest, Mr. Holmes.”
“I’m really not.”
“You’ve got yourself a fan.”
Sherlock frowned. “Tell me more.”
The old man let out a small huff of a laugh. “No, that’s all you’re gonna know…in this lifetime.”
John stared out the open door to the stairwell for a moment even after he no longer saw Sherlock, something in his gut tugging at him and telling him something was wrong even though the detective had said he was fine. He redialed Jennifer’s number when it rang out and made his way over to the window in the living room that looked out right onto the street in front of the building, unable to help but want to keep an eye on Sherlock since that nagging feeling wouldn’t stop.
Sherlock appeared to be chatting with a cabbie, probably letting the man know he must have gotten the wrong address for his pickup, and he certainly looked fine…but something just felt off and John couldn’t seem to shake the feeling. He didn’t try to push it away and ignore it though; his instincts had saved him more than once in his life.
He had just dialed Jennifer’s number for a third time when he suddenly saw the cabbie get in his cab a minute before Sherlock climbed in the back, and he furrowed his brows in confusion as he watched the cab pull away.
“He just got in a cab…” he muttered in disbelief just to turn to Lestrade. “Sherlock just drove off in a cab,” he informed him.
Greg frowned as Sally rolled her eyes and scoffed.
“Of course he did. I told you he does that,” Sally reminded the doctor before she gave her boss an annoyed look. “He bloody left. Again. We’re wasting our time here.”
Greg sighed as he looked to the doctor. “Are you calling him?”
“No. I’ve been calling Jennifer’s phone, and it keeps ringing out.”
“If it’s ringing it’s not here.”
“Yeah, well, it shouldn’t be here,” John pointed out before his eyes darted over to Sherlock’s laptop, alarm bells starting to ring in his head as he eyed the dot on the map that said the phone was here. “I’ll try the search again,” he decided as he hung up and made his way over to the laptop to click on the button to update the location.
“Does it matter?” Sally snapped in aggravation before she turned to Greg. “Does any of it matter?! Sherlock Holmes is a lunatic, and he’ll always let you down! He’s never going to just work with us, he’ll always run off on his own and keep us out of the loop until he thinks it’s pertinent to call us. He’s wasting your time. All our time.”
Greg wanted to defend Sherlock, he really did, but he had to admit Sally had a point. No matter how many times he tried to give the younger man a chance, he just didn’t work well with others. Even after all this time, Sherlock preferred to keep himself closed off and only ever kept them updated if he needed them to look into something he couldn’t.
He let out a defeated sigh and gave a small nod before he called out, “Alright, everyone, we’re done here! Let’s go!”
John frowned as he watched everyone stop their search and start filing out of the flat. “That’s it? You’re just going to leave?”
“There’s not really anything else we can do here, Dr. Watson. The only lead we have ends here, and the only person who could potentially tell us where to go from here just fucked off to God only knows where,” Greg said simply as he pulled his coat tighter around himself and buttoned it up in preparation of heading outside into the cold.
He let out a frustrated sigh as he shook his head. “Just… Why did he do that? Why did he have to leave?” he asked in irritation.
“You know him better than I do,” John pointed out.
Greg gave a small scoff. “I’ve known him for five years, and I really don’t.”
“So why do you put up with him then?”
“Because I’m desperate,” Greg admitted as he turned to leave, pausing for a moment and turning back to the doctor to add, “And because Sherlock Holmes is a great man. And I think one day, if we’re very very lucky, he might even be a good one.”
John watched the DI leave, not sure what to do for a moment since everyone seemed to have decided there was no point in waiting around here. Clearly they all agreed that Sherlock had this from here and they would be more use somewhere else rather than waiting for the detective to let them know he’d solved the case, so maybe he should just follow their lead and head back to his place for the night and spend his time deciding on whether or not he wanted to move into 221b with Sherlock or not considering things seemed a bit…hectic with him.
Still though… There was that annoying tugging in his gut… Something was wrong, he could feel it… Lestrade seemed to think it was better to leave Sherlock on his own, but John wasn’t so sure. Something had just seemed really off about the man before he’d left. He knew he didn’t really know him, so for all he knew that’s just how he was sometimes, but something was screaming at him that that wasn’t it.
He glanced over to the laptop when he heard it give a soft ping to see the location on the phone had just updated, and he blinked as he noticed the phone’s location was now several blocks away.
He furrowed his brows in confusion, wondering how on earth that could be, before he realized the location of the phone was in the same direction he’d seen Sherlock’s cab disappear to. He felt as though a bucket of ice water had just been thrown on him as the implication of what that meant hit him, and he felt his throat close up in a bit of panic knowing Sherlock was alone with a murderer… A murderer that somehow got all of his victims to take his poison themselves…
He quickly pulled up Jennifer’s email on his phone and logged into it as he pressed the Update location button in case the phone was still on the move, and he quickly rushed out of the flat and down the stairs.
John cursed as he burst through the front door just to find the police were already gone, and he quickly took off running down the street in the direction of the main road. It took him far too long than he was happy with to flag down a cab, but once he finally had one he hopped in the back and looked to his phone to give him instructions on where to go as he kept updating the location of the phone. While the location was updating again he called the police station and put it on speaker so he could keep an eye on the locator, shouting to the driver to take his next turn as a voice came through asking him if he needed assistance.
“Yes, I need you to put me through to Detective Inspector Lestrade!”
“Sir, the Detective Inspector isn’t here at the moment, but if you’d like I can connect you through to one of the other officers avail–”
“No! Detective Inspector Lestrade! I need to speak to him–it’s an emergency and I don’t have his number!” he informed the woman just to look to the front of the car and shout, “Left here, left!”
“I’m sorry, sir, but he’s not here. I can only connect you through to someone that’s in the building. Uhm, I can give you his number, but it will take me a moment to find it,” the woman told him.
“Ok, fine, yes, give me the number!”
John gritted his teeth as he impatiently waited, though he was relieved to at least see when the location updated again it was stopped in the same spot it was on the last check, so he was taking that as a good sign the killer had stopped. And it was looking even more likely since he was stopped at a college, a college that would be abandoned at this time of night, so he told his cabbie where they were heading and told him to step on it.
When the woman finally rattled off Lestrade’s number he had her repeat it once to be sure he got it before he hung up on her without a word and dialed the inspector.
“Detective Inspector Lestrade,” the man answered after two rings.
“Inspector, it’s John Watson! I know why Sherlock left–the killer has him!”
“What?! How do you know?!”
“There’s no time to explain! They’re at Roland-Kerr college! You need to get there, right now!”
“How the hell do you–”
“Just go!” John ordered just to end the call as his taxi pulled up to the college and right next to another cab that was already parked.
He quickly got out and fumbled with his wallet for a moment before he managed to toss the money he owed to the driver and turned to look between the two identical buildings, his heart pounding as he took off for the one on the left and hoped he picked the right one.
He raced through the dark hallways, kicking open every single door he came to and growing slowly more panicked with each room he found just as dark and empty as the hallways. This continued up onto the second floor, and then the third…and then he burst into a room halfway down the third floor corridor.
Right there stood the cabbie holding up a pill and smirking at Sherlock, who was holding a glass vial with another pill in it and staring at it… And John was staring at them…through the window…into the other building…
“No, no, no, no, no!” he chanted to himself in panic.
He’d picked the wrong building! He’d made the wrong call, and there was no way he’d be able to run back down through this building, across the way to the other one, and up three floors to get to Sherlock in time.
His eyes widened as he watched Sherlock remove the lid from the vial and pour the pill out into his hand, saw him hesitating, and for the life of him he couldn’t understand what the fuck he was doing when it didn’t look like the cabbie was threatening him in any way. He wasn’t holding a gun on him, wasn’t holding a knife up to his throat, wasn’t doing anything but standing there…talking…
John clenched his fists as he watched Sherlock hold his pill up to the light for a moment before he saw the cabbie make an annoyed face and say something that had Sherlock bringing the pill back down and pausing once more before…
John didn’t hesitate when he saw Sherlock bringing the pill up to his mouth. The detective was standing in front of the cabbie, but John had a clear view of the older man over Sherlock’s shoulder.
He never missed, even when he’d made far more difficult shots than this without a sniper rifle, John had never missed a shot in his entire life. And Sherlock wasn’t moving from his spot, so he didn’t have to worry about hitting him.
He didn’t even think about the tremor in his hand his shoulder injury left him with as he pulled his gun from the back of his pants and took aim. His hand was shockingly steady, not giving so much as a single twitch as he flipped off the safety…and pulled the trigger.
Sherlock curiously looked around when the cab came to a stop and the cabbie got out. When the old man made his way around back to open his door and hold it open while seemingly waiting for him to get out, he asked, “Where are we?”
The cabbie gave him a patient look. “You know every street in London. You know exactly where we are.”
“Roland-Kerr college. But why here?”
The cabbie shrugged. “It’s open. Doesn’t get locked up until the cleaners come and go, and they won’t be here for another hour at least. Thing about being a cabbie, you always know a quiet open spot for a murder. Honestly, I’m surprised more of us don’t branch out.”
Sherlock furrowed his brows in curiosity. “And you just walk your victims into these places? How?”
The old man smiled as he pulled a gun from his pocket and aimed it at the detective’s head.
Sherlock scoffed in indignation and looked away since he’d been expecting something more clever than this. “How dull…” he grumbled just to glance back to the cabbie when he heard him give a small chuckle.
“Don’t worry, it gets better.”
“You can’t make people take their own lives at gunpoint,” Sherlock said in annoyance. “That’s not them doing it willingly, that’s you forcing their hand.”
“Oh, I don’t. It’s much better than that,” the cabbie assured him as he put the gun back in his jacket pocket. “I just use this to get them to follow me and hear me out. Don’t need this with you though, ‘cause you’ll follow me without it,” he said confidently as he turned and began making his way towards the building on the right.
Sherlock pressed his lips as he watched the man for a moment, knowing he was using his curiosity to play him but still unable to resist wanting to know, before he got out of the car and followed after him.
They made their way through the building and up to the third floor to one of the classrooms where the cabbie flipped on the lights. “So what do you think?”
Sherlock arched a brow at the curious look the old man was giving him. “About what?”
“Using this room. You’re the one that’s gonna die here after all.”
Sherlock gave an amused huff of a laugh at that. “No I’m not.”
“That’s what they all say. Sit. Let’s talk.”
Sherlock followed the man over to one of the tables and took a seat across from him. “Bit of a risk wasn’t it? You took me away under the eyes of about half a dozen policemen, and as stupid as they are they’re not that stupid. And Mrs. Hudson will remember you.”
“You call that a risk? Nah. This is a risk.”
Sherlock’s eyes darted down to the man’s hand as he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small clear bottle with a single white pill speckled with black spots nestled inside.
“I like this bit. ‘Cause you don’t get it yet, do you? But you’re about to. I just have to do this.”
Sherlock furrowed his brows in confusion as the man reached into his other pocket to pull out another clear bottle that looked exactly the same as the other from its cap right down to the pill inside it.
“You weren’t expecting that were you? Oh, you’re gonna love this.”
“Love what?”
“Sherlock Holmes. Look at you. Here in the flesh. That website of yours, your fan told me about it.”
Sherlock’s eyes narrowed. “My fan?” he prompted, really wanting to know more about this supposed fan the man kept mentioning.
“You’re brilliant. You’re a proper genius. The Science of Deduction, now that is proper thinking. Between you and me, why can’t people think? Doesn’t it drive you mad? Why can’t people just think?”
Sherlock leaned back in his chair as he considered the cabbie for a moment. “Oh, I see. So you’re a proper genius too. Or at least you consider yourself one.”
The cabbie smiled. “Don’t look it, do I? Funny little man, driving a cab… But you’ll know better in a minute. Chances are it’ll be the last thing you ever know.”
Sherlock let out an impatient sigh just to nod towards the bottles. “Ok, two bottles. Explain.”
“There’s a good bottle and a bad bottle. Take a pill from the good bottle, you live. Take a pill from the bad bottle, you die.”
“Both bottles are, of course, identical,” Sherlock noted.
“In every way,” the cabbie agreed.
“And you know which is which.”
“Of course I know.”
“But I don’t.”
“Wouldn’t be a game if you knew. You’re the one who chooses.”
“Why should I? I’ve got nothing to go on. What’s in it for me?”
The cabbie grinned. “I haven’t told you the best bit yet. Whatever bottle you choose, I take the pill from the other one, and then together we take our medicine.”
Sherlock let out a small huff of a laugh as he shook his head.
“I won’t cheat. It’s your choice. I’ll take whichever pill you don’t. Didn’t expect that did you, Mr. Holmes?”
“This is what you did to the rest of them? You gave them a choice?” Sherlock asked skeptically.
The cabbie nodded. “And now I’m giving it to you. Take your time, get yourself together. I want your best game.”
“This isn’t a game, it’s chance.”
“I’ve played four times and I’m still alive. It’s not chance, Mr. Holmes, it’s chess. It’s a game of chess with one move and one survivor. And this? This is the move.”
Sherlock glanced down as the man grabbed one of the bottles and slid it across the table to him.
“Did I just give you the good bottle or the bad bottle? You can choose either one,” the cabbie assured him, letting the silence envelop them for a moment as the detective stared down at the bottles before he asked, “Are you ready yet, Mr. Holmes? Ready to play?”
“Play what? It’s a fifty-fifty chance,” Sherlock pointed out with a glare.
The cabbie made a face at that. “You’re not playing the numbers, you’re playing me. Did I give you the good pill or the bad pill? Is it a bluff, or a double bluff, or a triple bluff?”
“It’s still chance.”
“Four people in a row,” the cabbie reminded him. “It’s not chance.”
“It’s luck.”
“It’s genius! I know how people think. I know how people think I think. I can see it all like a map in my head. Everyone’s so stupid. Even you.”
Sherlock clenched his jaw as he gave the old man a withering look.
“Or maybe God just loves me,” the cabbie continued with a smirk.
Sherlock took a deep breath and slowly let it out as he moved to rest his elbows on the table and clasped his hands together under his chin in thought as he looked the elder man over and tried to puzzle him out. “You risked your life four times just to kill strangers… Why?”
The cabbie’s eyes narrowed as he glanced down to the bottles and back up to the detective. “Time to play,” he said impatiently.
“Oh, I am playing. This is my turn. There’s shaving foam behind your left ear, and nobody’s pointed it out to you. There’s traces of where it’s happened before, so obviously you live on your own–there’s no one to tell you. But there’s a photograph of children in your cab. The children’s mother has been cut out of it. If she’d died she’d still be there. The photograph is old but the frame is new. You think of your children but you don’t get to see them–estranged father, she took the kids. But you still love them, and it still hurts,” Sherlock deduced, smirking as the man frowned down at the table and clenched his fists.
“Ah, but there’s more. Your clothes are freshly laundered, but everything you’re wearing is at least three years old. Keeping up appearances but not planning ahead. And here you are on a kamikaze murder spree. What’s that about?” he wondered before his eyes narrowed. “Ah. Three years ago, is that when they told you?”
The cabbie pressed his lips. “Told me what?”
“That you’re a dead man walking.”
“So are you.”
“You don’t have long left. Am I right?”
The cabbie gave a bitter smile as he reached up to lightly tap the side of his head. “Aneurism, right in here. Any breath could be my last.”
“And because you’re dying you’ve just murdered four people.”
“I’ve outlived four people. That’s the most fun you can have with an aneurism.”
“No. No, there’s something else. You didn’t just kill four people because you were bitter–bitterness is a paralytic. Love is a much more vicious motivator. Somehow this is about your children.”
The cabbie gave a small smile as he offered the younger man an impressed look. “Oh, you are good aren’t you?”
“But how?” Sherlock continued.
“When I die they won’t get much, my kids… Not a lot of money in driving cabs.”
“Or serial killing.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Surprise me then.”
“I’ve got a sponsor,” the cabbie explained with a grin.
Sherlock blinked. “You have a what?”
“For every life I take, money goes to my kids. The more I kill, the better off they’ll be. You see? Nicer than you think.”
“Who would sponsor a serial killer?”
“Who’d be a fan of Sherlock Holmes?” the cabbie countered. “You’re not the only person who enjoys a good murder. There’s someone else out there, just like you. Except you’re just a man, and he’s so much more.”
Sherlock’s eyes narrowed at that. “What do you mean, more than a man? An organization? What?”
“There’s a name no one says. And I won’t say it either. Now, enough chatter. Time to choose.”
Sherlock frowned as he sat back in his chair once more and glanced down to the bottles before returning his gaze to the old man. “What if I don’t choose either? I could just walk out of here,” he pointed out.
The cabbie sighed as he pulled the gun back out of his pocket and pointed it at the detective’s face. “You take a fifty-fifty chance, or I can shoot you through the head. Funnily enough, no one’s ever gone for that option.”
Sherlock smirked as he got a better look at the gun now that they were in a well-lit room, and he idly crossed his arms. “I’ll have the gun please,” he said simply, his smirk growing as that visibly caught the man off guard.
“Are you sure?”
“Definitely. The gun.”
“You don’t wanna phone a friend?” the cabbie joked just to frown when the detective merely stared him down.
“The gun,” Sherlock repeated, unsurprised when the man pulled the trigger only for a flame to come out the end of the barrel. “I know a real gun when I see one.”
“None of the others did.”
“Clearly. Well, this has been very interesting. I look forward to the court case,” Sherlock said as he got to his feet and began making his way to the door while pulling out his phone to call Lestrade.
“Before you go, did you figure it out?” the cabbie called out, smiling as the younger man stopped in his tracks and turned to look back at him. “Which one’s the good bottle?” he clarified.
“Of course. Child’s play.”
“Which one then? Which one would you have picked? Just so I know if I could have beaten you.” The cabbie grinned at the look the younger man was giving him. “Come on. Play the game.”
Sherlock pressed his lips as he glanced at the bottles once more, his fingers twitching on the door handle before he made his way back over to the table and swiped the bottle from in front of the old man and moved over towards the window as he eyed the bottle curiously.
“Oh, interesting,” the cabbie said in amusement as he reached across the table to grab the bottle he’d slid over to Sherlock. He opened it up and poured the pill out into his hand as he got up to join the other man in front of the window. “So, what do you think? Shall we?” he asked as he held his own pill up. “Really, what do you think? Could you beat me? Are you clever enough to bet your life?” he taunted, smirking as he saw the detective’s fingers twitch around the bottle.
“I bet you get bored, don’t you? I know you do. A man like you? So clever… But what’s the point in being clever if you can’t prove it?” he continued, watching intently as the detective opened his bottle and poured his pill out into his hand.
Of course, when the detective held the pill up towards the light and started looking it over, his lips twisted in annoyance. “Oh, stop it, you can’t see poison. You’re trying to tell yourself you don’t need to do this, because as much as you act like you’ve figured it out the truth is you don’t really know which one is which. But you’re gonna do it anyway, ‘cause you’re still an addict.”
Sherlock tensed as he shot the man a sharp look.
“But this is what you’re really addicted to now, isn’t it? This is the only fix that works now that you’ve stopped shooting up and overdosing in back alleys. You’ll do anything, anything at all, not to be bored,” the cabbie continued to taunt, smirking once more as the detective started to bring the pill up to his lips. “You’re not bored now, are you?” he asked as he lifted his own pill.
Sherlock froze, eyes widening in shock as the window behind him suddenly exploded and the next thing he knew the cabbie was gasping and grabbing at a quickly darkening hole in his chest before he fell backwards onto the floor. He turned and looked through the window, but he couldn’t see anything other than the dark interior of the room opposite him in the other building across the way.
His attention was turned back to the cabbie as he heard him give a wet cough, and he made his way over and knelt down as he held up the pill he was still holding, needing to know. “Was I right? I was, wasn’t I? Did I get it right?” he asked, gritting his teeth when the bastard merely gave him a smug smile.
He angrily tossed the pill across the room as he got to his feet and paced for a moment before he returned to the man’s head and stared down at him. “Ok then, tell me this. Your sponsor. Who was it? The one who told you about me? My fan? I want a name.”
“No,” the cabbie rasped out.
Sherlock glared darkly at that. “You’re dying…but there’s still time to hurt you,” he warned. “Give me a name.”
“No,” the cabbie refused, just to scream in pain as the detective suddenly brought his foot down on his bullet wound and slowly kept applying pressure.
“A name! Now! Name them!”
“Moriarty!”
Sherlock immediately took his foot away, brows furrowing as he filed the name away in his mind.
He glanced to the window when he heard sirens, and he popped his head out to see several police cars pulling into the lot with an ambulance right behind them. As soon as he saw Lestrade get out of one of the cars he called, “Up here! Third floor, only lit room in the corridor! The murderer’s down–he’s been shot!”
He glanced back behind him when he heard the cabbie let out another wet cough, and he frowned as he heard him wheeze before the room went silent.
It wasn’t long before Lestrade was making his way into the room and leading him outside as he asked him what happened, and once the DI had his statement he was led over to the ambulance. He rolled his eyes at that since he was fine, but when Lestrade gave him a stern look he decided he was too tired to argue and merely let someone look him over. Of course, when they put a blanket over his shoulders that was definitely pushing it, so he threw it off and took a moment to think and try to figure out who could’ve shot the cabbie and why.
He felt his eye twitch in annoyance when he was pulled out of his thoughts upon feeling someone setting the blanket around his shoulders again, and he gave Lestrade an irritated look as the man returned to his side. “Why have I got this blanket? They keep putting this blanket on me.”
“Yeah, it’s for shock,” Greg explained.
“I’m not in shock,” Sherlock pointed out.
“Yeah, but some of the guys wanna take photographs.”
Sherlock rolled his eyes but decided to let it go as he gave the inspector a curious look. “So, the shooter, no sign of him?”
Greg shook his head. “Cleared off before we got here. But a guy like that,” he nodded towards the body bag behind Sherlock, “would’ve had enemies, I suppose. One of them could’ve been following him, but we’ve got nothing to go on.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”
Greg sighed as he gave Sherlock an exasperated look, really hoping this wasn’t going to immediately turn into the stubborn bastard running off on him again after barely giving him anything. “Ok, what do you got?”
“The bullet they just dug out of the wall was from a handgun. A kill shot over that distance from that kind of weapon? That’s a crack shot you’re looking for, but not just a marksman–a fighter. His hand couldn’t have shaken at all, so clearly he’s acclimated to violence. He didn’t fire until I was in immediate danger though, so he has strong moral principles as well,” Sherlock deduced as he got to his feet and looked around. “You’re looking for a man probably, with a history of military service and nerves of steel…” he trailed off as his eyes landed on John, who was standing at parade rest several feet away near one of the cruisers and looking more like the soldier he was than Sherlock had seen him yet.
When he locked eyes with the shorter man, his breath caught in realization as John casually looked off to the side.
Greg furrowed his brows as Sherlock seemed to be frozen for some reason, and he curiously looked to where the consultant was looking to see his doctor friend was there, probably waiting for him to make sure he was ok since he was the one that informed Greg where to bring his officers. Again, he found it both odd and interesting to see how the younger man seemed to be so unlike his usual self with the doctor around, and he tried not to let his amusement show as he cleared his throat to get his attention. “Sherlock?”
“Actually, do you know what? Ignore me,” Sherlock said suddenly.
Greg blinked just to give him a baffled look. “I’m sorry?”
“Ignore all of that. It’s just the, uh, the shock talking,” Sherlock offered just to turn to start making his way towards John.
“Whoa, wait, where are you going?”
“I just need to talk about rent. Yup, the rent.”
Greg shook his head, even more confused. “What? No, I’ve still got questions for you!”
“Oh, what now?! I’m in shock! Look, I’ve got a blanket,” Sherlock reminded him as he lifted a corner of said blanket up to wave it in Lestrade’s face.
“Sherlock–”
“And I just caught you a serial killer,” Sherlock cut in. “More or less,” he added when he remembered the cabbie was dead.
Greg sighed, giving Sherlock a look before he gave a slow nod. “Ok… I’ll pull you in tomorrow then. Off you go.”
He shook his head as Sherlock made a beeline for Dr. Watson, and he couldn’t help but smile before he turned and headed back to his officers.
John watched as Sherlock made his way over to him and pulled the blanket from his shoulders just to toss it through the open window of the police car next to them. “So, Sergeant Donovan’s just been explaining everything. Two pills? Dreadful business, just dreadful,” he said conversationally.
Sherlock couldn’t help but smile as he praised, “Good shot.”
John felt himself perk up a bit at the praise before he caught himself and gave a slow nod. “Yes. Yes, must’ve been. Through two windows across a lengthy gap and over your shoulder.”
“Well, you would know,” Sherlock pointed out, easily clocking the smile tugging at John’s lips.
“We’ll need to get the powder burns off of your fingers. I don’t suppose you’d serve time for this, but let’s avoid a court case,” he said softly so as not to be overheard before he asked, “Are you alright?”
“Yes, of course I’m alright,” John assured him. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You have just killed a man.”
John shrugged with his good shoulder. “Yeah, true. But he wasn’t a very nice man.”
Sherlock hummed in amusement. “No. No, he wasn’t really, was he?”
“And frankly a bloody awful cabbie,” John added, grinning as that earned a laugh from the other man.
“That’s true, he was a bad cabbie,” Sherlock agreed as he turned and the two of them began making their way away from the scene. “You should’ve seen the route he took us to get here,” he joked.
John found himself giggling with Sherlock like a couple of schoolboys as he moved to nudge him with his elbow. “Stop it. We can’t giggle–it’s a crime scene.”
“You’re the one who shot him, don’t blame me,” Sherlock pointed out, still giggling.
“Shh, keep your voice down,” John choked out through his laughs, trying to pull himself together when Sergeant Donovan walked past them and gave them both an odd look. “Sorry, it’s just, um, nerves. Sorry.”
Once he finally had himself back under control, he gave Sherlock a curious look. “…You were going to take that pill, weren’t you?”
Sherlock forced a scoff. “Of course I wasn’t. I was just biding my time. Knew you’d turn up.”
John gave him an unimpressed look at the obvious lie. “No you didn’t. That’s how you get your kicks, isn’t it? Risking your life to prove you’re clever.”
Sherlock felt himself tense a bit at that, really not wanting to hear another person–especially not John–remind him today that he used to be an addict. “Why would I do that?”
“Because you’re an idiot,” John said simply, watching as Sherlock gave him a bit of an affronted look before the two of them dissolved into giggles once more.
“Dinner?” Sherlock asked curiously once he’d managed to stop laughing.
“Yes. Didn’t get to finish at Angelo’s, and after all that running around I’m starving.”
“There’s a good Chinese place at the end of Baker Street. I haven’t tried it yet, but if you like Chinese you’ll like it.”
“Oh? What makes you so sure of that if you haven’t tried the place yet?” John asked curiously just to glance over to their left when he noticed a black limo out of the corner of his eye, tensing when he saw the mystery man he’d had a chat with earlier stepping out of it.
“You can always tell a good Chinese restaurant by examining the bottom third of the door handle–”
“Sherlock,” John cut in, nodding towards the posh man by the limo when the detective looked at him. “That’s him. That’s the man I was talking to you about earlier,” he warned.
Sherlock pressed his lips as he looked to where John was indicating just to see the prick giving him that scolding look he detested. “Oh joy…” he mumbled sarcastically as he made his way over, knowing he might as well since he knew someone would stop him anyway if he didn’t.
“So, another case cracked. How very noble of you. Though that’s never really ever your motivation is it?”
Sherlock glared at the condescending tone. “What are you doing here?”
“As ever, I’m concerned about you.”
“Yes, I’ve been hearing about your concern.”
The older man tutted. “Always so aggressive. Does it never occur to you that you and I belong on the same side?”
“Oddly enough, no.”
“We have more in common than you like to believe. This petty feud between us is simply childish. People will suffer. And you know how it always upset Mummy.”
John blinked just to look to Sherlock as the detective scoffed.
“I upset her? Me? It wasn’t me who upset her, Mycroft!” Sherlock reminded him.
“Whoa, ok, wait,” John cut in just to give the two a confused look. “Mummy? Who is Mummy?”
“Our mother. This is my brother Mycroft,” Sherlock informed him before he turned his attention back to said brother and gave him a look filled with disdain. “Are you putting on weight?”
Mycroft’s eyes narrowed at the jab. “Losing it, actually.”
“He’s your brother?” John asked in shock, still not able to process that–because what kind of brother offered to pay someone to spy on you for them?!
“Of course he’s my brother.”
“He’s not…”
Sherlock arched a brow as John trailed off. “Not what?”
“I don’t know… Some kind of…criminal mastermind? He was certainly acting like one when I met him earlier.”
Sherlock snorted. “Close enough.”
Mycroft scoffed as he rolled his eyes. “Oh for goodness sake! I occupy a minor post in the British government.”
“He is the British government,” Sherlock corrected. “When he’s not too busy being the British secret service, and the CIA on a freelance basis. Anyway, we’ll be going now. Good evening, Mycroft. Try not to start a war before I get home, you know what it does to the traffic.”
John watched as Sherlock turned and strode away, and he curiously looked to Mycroft. “So when you told me you’re concerned about him, you actually are concerned about him?”
“Of course, yes,” Mycroft agreed.
“So it actually is a childish feud.”
“Indeed. He’s always been so resentful. You can imagine the Christmas dinners.”
“Right… Anyway, I’d better, um–”
“Hurry up, John!” Sherlock called back to him.
John pointed in the detective’s direction. “That. Goodnight,” he offered before he turned and quickly caught up to Sherlock.
“So. What was that about being able to tell a good Chinese restaurant from it’s door handle?” he prompted to distract Sherlock when he noticed the frustrated look on his face, smiling when the taller man immediately seemed to perk up and happily resumed explaining.