Holes in the wall.

Or: How the Doctor brought back Sherlock about three months too late and John is none too pleased.

Words: 1,5k

Possible a prologue to a series or a multichapter.

Most likely just a oneshot though.

If there was one thing John Watson was certain of about his flatmate and reluctant friend, it was that he was a complete and utter ass. Really, there was no other word for it. Especially not when the aforementioned idiotic bloody wanker suddenly showed up alive and well in his living room three months after John had buried his sorry ass.

To say that the retired army doctor was surprised to see him was a bit of an understatement. After a few minutes of awkward staring at his apparently not so deceased friend and bane of his existence – during which said bane was inspecting the wall for some reason or other- he finally managed to produce sound:

"…Sherlock?"

Silence. Then: "You've covered up the holes."

"I- what?"

"The holes in the wall," Sherlock repeated. "You had them covered up. I don't like it."

It was in that instant that something small in John just snapped.

"Honestly?", he cried, before carrying on in a softer tone: "You've been dead for three months and all you want to talk about when you come back is some asinine complaint about the wall?"

"Well, I wasn't actually-," Sherlock started to say, but John continued to talk right through him, his voice steadily getting louder with each word that passed his lips.

"Never mind that you've been dead for three months! How the hell did you come back from that? They had to scrape you from the bloody pavement, Sherlock! I checked your pulse myself; you were dead and already starting to cool a bit. How do you explain that?"

Sherlock, for his part, had been inspecting the rest of the flat with a calculating look in his eyes.

"There is, in fact, a completely rational and simple explanation for my apparent demise, John," he started to say, " and we'll get to that later. First, however, I'd really like to discuss that wall some more, becau-"

Before John knew it, his fist had collided with his undead flatmate's nose.

"You ass," he breathed as he shook his hand out a bit while Sherlock was still reeling from the shock of being hit by John again.

"Yowza!", a new voice entered the fray. John spun around, ready to strike again, only to come face to face with a rather peculiar looking man wearing tweed and a bowtie.

"That looked like it hurt. Are you alright there, Sherlock?"

John turned to see Sherlock raise a sarcastic eyebrow at the strange man. He was pinching his nose with an annoyed look on his face.

"Spiffing," he bit out.

"Fantastic!," the man replied, either not noticing or completely ignoring the sarcasm in Sherlock's voice. "While you're busy stopping your nose from bleeding out, do you suppose you could point me to something to eat? I'm feeling rather peckish. I'm partial to fish fingers if you happen to have them. Ooh, and perhaps some custard."

To John's surprise, Sherlock actually went into the kitchen to fetch what the man had asked for.

"Excuse me?," the confused army veteran bursts out, "but who exactly are you?"

'And can you teach me how to do that?', he added in his mind, privately entertaining the thought of the arrogant genius actually doing what he was asked for once.

"I'm the Doctor," the man replied, straightening his bowtie with a small, smug smile before suddenly grabbing John by his shoulders and pressing awkward kisses to both of his cheeks. John, a bit caught off guard by the man's forwardness, muttered a 'charmed' before his brain caught up with him.

"Doctor Who?", he asked.

"Just 'the Doctor'," Sherlock replied, walking back into the living room with a plate of steaming fish fingers and custard. "It's infuriating, I know, but you won't be able to get anything else out of him."

John sighed. "And what does the Doctor have to do with your apparent resurrection?"

"Don't ask stupid questions, John," the genius said, glancing at the Doctor, who was happily munching away at his fish fingers, "You have to be dead to be resurrected. Since I never dies, no resurrection ever took place."

"We scraped you of off the pavement."

"No, you scraped something of off the pavement."

Sinking into an armchair, John decided to just give up and let Sherlock explain.

"And what, exactly, did we scrape off the pavement then, if not you?"

"A Teselecta," Sherlock said matter-of-factly and John resigned himself to a lifetime of feeling clueless next to his roommate.

"A what now?"

"A Teselecta," the Doctor cut in, seemingly having finished his piping hot fish fingers in record time. John reckoned the custard must have cooled them down some. "Basically, a Teselecta is a shape shifting robot, designed to become an exact replica of whichever person –alien or otherwise- it wishes to replace. It's controlled by a miniaturised sort of universal police squadron that governs the universe."

"Robots," John faintly said after a beat or two, "and aliens. Really?"

"Really, really," the Doctor grinned. John glared over at Sherlock, who was an absolute prick for even thinking John would believe that tripe.

"How did you manage to get a hold of a Teselecta then?," he asked his flatmate, who was busy feeling up the wall for some unknown reason. The Doctor followed the genius' every move with his eyes.

"I called the Doctor," Sherlock answered distractedly, " and called in a favour."

"You owed him a favour?" John asked the Doctor. "That's never good. Whatever for?"

The Doctor stood up to join Sherlock in apparently feeling up to wall, seeming to know instinctively where the bullet holes that Sherlock had once put in it when he was bored had been. He answered: "He helped me out with some Slitheen once. Downing Street. Bit of a mess, that one was."

"So in return," the other doctor said, not even bothering to think about the unfamiliar word the strange man had just uttered as he had already decided the man was a few scones short of a tea party – this fact was further proven as the Doctor suddenly pulled out a glowing screwdriver and started pointing it at the wall. John stood up to join them.

"So in return," he repeated, "you made sure he didn't die when it looked like he did?"

"Pretty much," the weird man in the bowtie replied, dragging out the first world and moving his screwdriver ( and seriously, did he get that thing with a Happy Meal or something? John was sure this man was certifiably insane) in some weird zigzag manner in front of the wall.

"Why did you wait three months to return him home then?", John inquired.

"It was supposed to be three hours," the Doctor shrugged, not taking his eyes off his screwdriver. "I botched my landing a bit. Again. Should really look into that."

"I'm not sure whether to thank you from dropping him off so late, or hit you as well," John confessed.

Sherlock snorted. "Oh John, if only you knew the exciting times we've got ahead of us. It's going to be such fun."

John raised his eyebrow at Sherlock's childish behaviour, in a manner eerily reminiscent of said childlike genius.

"I suppose I could get some good zombie jokes out of this."

The Doctor paused in his insane investigation for a second to throw a grin at John over his shoulder.

"We're going to be the best of mates, you and I," he declared, before going back to stare at the wall. Meanwhile, Sherlock had pulled out a tape ruler out of seemingly nowhere for some unknown reason.

Finally John- questioning his own sanity for even entertaining the idea of going along with this madness- couldn't take it any longer.

"Seriously, though. What's so important about that wall?"

Sherlock looked up from where he was evidently measuring nothing whatsoever.

"I'm so glad you asked, John," he replied, with a maniacal glint in his eyes. "Are you ready to go on an adventure?"

John looked between the two men at the wall. The Doctor had turned to look at him as well, screwdriver still held high in his hand.

"…I suppose," he answered hesitatingly.

"Excellent," Sherlock replied. "Since I already packed you a bag. We leave in an hour."

The Doctor grinned at the dumbfounded look on the army veteran's face.

"Geronimo."