A/N: Well, I guess this is how a collection starts. Around Halloween I looked over my shoulder to a skeleton on display (with a curvy spine and a thug's hat; I think he's got the plastic version of scurvy, poor thing, and won't go far as a thug) and that was it. I'm sure this is how it starts for all the real writers out there...

Still the same self-indulgent principle of the last collection: different genres in no particular order, varying lengths as suits my pen, unscheduled updates and the promise I'm giving it all my best (I always do).

As always: I'm still not British (I've learnt English as a foreign language), a writer (no training, no beta proofing and no idea what I'm doing) or making any profit from these (although I do have fun, but unfortunately that doesn't pay the bills). -csf

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There's something incredibly homely about Baker Street. It could be the memory embedded in those mismatched wallpapers of the first feeling of safety a returned soldier has had in a long while. I'll always associate these walls with getting to know Sherlock, the genius detective with a grandiose personality and high speed mind, sometimes even high speed speech when he deduces at a crime scene. When I first arrived, having been used to a military strictness for so long, I was allured by the curious nature of all the cluttered knickknacks that lay about in the living room. How a man with a pride of his neat methodical reasoning could have set himself up the bachelor pad of an unruly artist. When the offer came to share the flat, I realised that I didn't really feel bothered about the messy decor. It felt right, suited for my friend's unconventional lifestyle. And as for my input into a shared flat, having been deployed for so long in war areas where what you have to your name is either practical in nature (ammunition, armour, med kit) or fits inside a pocket with all your souvenirs from home, I realised I had very little to contribute to the flat. So perhaps it was for the best that Sherlock had already had his way with making the space his home. Perhaps I could fit into what was already there; and I found that I fit so seamlessly that it was with almost painful relief.

It felt that as I rented the flat at 221B Baker Street I got myself a home as well. Sherlock's home, the one he opened up to me generously. A home I made my own as well with no hesitation.

We never had a discussion about using his stuff. Sherlock treated some of his possessions with more care – like his skull – than others – like the coffee table he often stepped on instead of going around – and others were sacred to him by principle and I knew it without a word – such as his violin. Sherlock certainly contributed to my ease as he never had any qualms about using my stuff, without permission. Sometimes I wondered if I had to take his violin for ransom so he'd leave my laptop alone.

But then again, it was just the principle of the thing. Sherlock can be so loud, so absorbing in his grandiose personality that I sometimes felt I needed to set limits to his invasion of my life.

I really wouldn't do that to Sherlock's violin. The man simply adores the object, and fluently conveys depths of emotions as he plays it through the night. Sometimes it can be so healing as I wake up with a bad dream to be soothed by those warm string reverberations across the flat.

In truth, when I agreed to share a flat with the genius I never foresaw that I would feel so strongly about this place. Call it a home. The sort of home I had quite forgotten how it felt to have, having been an itinerant soldier with little family ties. Somehow, slowly, it seeped into me. This place where I came to sleep, often exhausted after a good criminals chasing alongside Sherlock. This place where I sensed the ingrained smell of tea, in an often repeated routine that grounded me as I adjusted to this new life in London. Sometimes also the smell of deflagrated gunpowder, if Sherlock got hold of my gun in a tantrum against the wall. The scent of old woods and dusty corners, the lingering ashy smell from the burnt logs in the fireplace, or Sherlock's many scientific experiment concoctions brewing in the kitchen.

The many stimulus of those foreign objects, collected by a well travelled man himself, sure to tell silent tales of the time before Sherlock and I met, before we crisscrossed London like silent avengers of crime (sometimes fighting the urge to giggle at the most inappropriate times).

The walls that separated and guarded me from the evils of the world outside, that in my post-war heightened paranoia I had let haunt me out of any peace of mind, became defence walls while I recovered from my trauma.

Sherlock was an integrant part of the Baker Street package, of home, refuge and place of truth. He was both safety and excitement, danger and purpose, logic and chaos.

Often there was chaos in the logic.

I remember one day coming home with my hands full of grocery bags to find another of Sherlock's oddities. There was a skeleton propped in my armchair, as if lazily lounging about. And Sherlock was sat in his own chair, lazily fingering a loaded gun. He glanced at me as I came in, spasmodically smiled at me and proceeded to fire all the bullets in the gun's chamber towards the skeleton.

The noise was horrible at close range, and the reverberation of the gunpowder explosions shook me to the core. I covered my ears with my hands, belatedly. As the shots kept repeating in a rhythmic trance I found myself flinching over and over again, cowering lower and lower.

People know I'm a soldier. Perhaps they would expect me to face the gunshots with extra ease. What they don't understand is that an army doctor knows better than anyone what each one of those detonations can do to a human body.

Or a skeleton, as the case may be.

Sherlock kept his eyes stuck on me, throughout the exercise, with the studied air of idleness of a true artist. For a moment I wondered if he was studying me or the case that had led him to such creative extremes.

Knowing Sherlock there are high chances he was multitasking.

The confined space still echoed the last reverberations from the gunpowder and the acrid smell filled the room faster than my spinning mind, or my rushed heartbeats that urged me to take cover with the pressing wisdom of experience. But this was Sherlock, and Sherlock was safety and London and the end of the sandy landscapes of war, so I stoically pushed the last inputs of flashbacks that my memory supplied the panic rising inside me, in order to focus on my friend's odd behaviour.

'Did you just sit there, waiting for me to come back with the shopping to empty my gun?' I asked in a bout of anger. Only Sherlock gets me spinning out of control this fast.

He was already reloading the warm gun with fresh bullets when he lazily brought his grey-green eyes my way, with a mysterious catlike expression, and idly drawled out his complain of the world beyond our refuge: 'Boring.'

'What is?' I asked with a dumbstruck head shake, before I realised I took his bait. I was supposed to be angry at him.

'There's no trusting of the criminal classes these days. They are crude and reserve no mystery to the dedicated investigator.'

'Shame on them!' I muttered, sarcastically. Not sure Sherlock registers sarcasm, though, as he kept that reverie induced expression. With a scowl I was already leaning into the shooting range of the gun in his hands – of course it's my Browning – to check the damage to my armchair. Well, when I say "my" armchair...

Sherlock stopped fiddling with the loaded gun at last, putting it aside and then reseated himself in the edge of his chair in a fit of sudden hyperactivity.

'John, you're a doctor', he started, keen eyes studying me now.

'What gave me away?' I mocked gently.

'John, we received some post. A case came in by letter. An old-fashioned postal letter. Does anyone even write letters on paper anymore? Anyway it's barely a Two, maybe a Three. It's hardly worth my time, but the criminal classes seem to be on strike out there or enjoying an undeserved secret national holiday for criminals, so I'm forced to take what I can get. You seem to have taken a liking to being my blogger, why don't you blog about this one?'

I blinked, facing his nonchalance.

'It's a Two point Five case', I gave him the average score. 'I thought I wasn't to blog cases under Seven, in the least.'

'Perhaps the criminal classes need proper incentive. They need to be faced with what I have to deal with and take responsibility...' he answered, managing to keep a straight face. For a moment I was taken aback. But no, of course he wouldn't be wishing for a crime surge in London.

I rubbed my face and took a deeper, fortifying breath.

'Sherlock, there's a skeleton in my armchair', I started over.

'There's an empty chair by the desk', he volunteered with a head nudge.

'No, I mean: what's he doing here?'

'John, there's been a skull in the mantle for months now and you haven't questioned that', he carelessly points out my double standards. I could tell it just wouldn't do for his organised, rational mind.

I sighed again. I seemed to be getting nowhere. So I took the said chair, by the table, facing Sherlock and the skeleton. Again taking the bait.

Feeling oddly engaged by the detective's madness.

And I vaguely wondered about the strange twists and turns in my life.

I sighed in defeat, not audibly, I don't believe, but my microexpressions of defeat and exhaustion must have resonated in some level with the detective because he jumped of his chair with a resolute decision impressed in his every fibre.

'I need an assistant on a more permanent basis, John. You should expect to find yourself in duty at any given time or place. Even at home. You are a soldier. I'm sure there was no real downtime in battle, so it'll come as no surprise.'

I straightened myself somewhat, looking his way, intrigued.

'You need me? What for?' I further pointed to the skeleton. 'I'm sure you know I can't bring him back to life.'

Sherlock rolled his eyes, short-tempered. 'I'll need you, not always as a doctor.'

'Unless you pretend to declare war on an alien skeletal race, you don't need a soldier either.'

He nods, appreciatively, as if he was saving that option for later.

'And', I add, 'you can blog yourself about your cases, Sherlock. You often use my laptop as it is, in case you've broken your own.'

'Nonsense', he denies my suggestion at once. With a hint of hurt annoyance he urges back: 'Just drop it, John. The public likes your unstructured narratives, your useless embellishments, they read those ailments to the modern language as genuineness.'

'You're jealous?' I ask with a frown, reminded of his own 243 types of ashes blog post. Sherlock ignored my question altogether. I took that as a Yes.

And bit down a proud smile that fought its way out from deep inside me.

'Sherlock, why do we have a skeleton in my armchair at Baker Street?' I asked once more, patiently. And just to humour my mad friend I reached out on the table to grab a notepad and a pencil.

He gave me a fleeting look of cautious exam, before pretending he wasn't paying attention.

'The skull was being unreasonably silent', he ended up muttering.

I smiled softly. 'The skeleton didn't get much more talkative either, did he?' I asked in mock understanding.

'John, I wish you'd be reasonable, we have a case to solve', he snapped at me.

I lowered my pencil somewhat, noticing his words. He meant the two of us. He asked me to keep a record of his case, but now he acted like we're both solving it.

I like that.

I looked over to the skeleton, intact despite the bullets discharge his way, they all went through his ribcage without damage to the bone, burying themselves in the red tapestry fabric of the armchair.

Pericardial hemorrhage inevitable, internal bleeding would be the messy cause of death.

Me, helping Sherlock solve a case?

Sheltered by those walls of 221B I could imagine myself solving crimes with Sherlock on a more regular basis. Being more than a doctor or a handy trigger happy backup. Perhaps we could teach each other our skills.

Sherlock offered me the chance to study and understand his methods by taking in this Two point Five case. Baby steps, as he was prepared to guide me along the process that took him years to learn, self-taught, by trial and error. I felt privileged and relished this confidence so exquisitely volunteered.

I looked over at Sherlock, who was patiently waiting to read the decision imprinted in my features.

I could do this. Be as much of a part of Sherlock's life as 221B has become of my life.

Sherlock had volunteered his home to this lost soldier in need of grounding. Now he was giving me a reason to stay.

I'll name it "the case of the rattling skeleton". It's got an old-school flair to it.

Decision established, I got up from my chair, with a small grunt. 'Fine, that's fine, Sherlock. I think tea is in order', I volunteered, keeping myself controlled. Sherlock smirked, in face of his unflappable flatmate. Often he reads my thoughts and decisions, sparing me the awkward process of verbalizing them. Of course I would stay. Of course I would be his assistant, and learn the trade. Of course I would be happy in this unpredictable corner of London.

Before anything else I add, cautiously: 'My armchair had more broken springs in it than whole ones, anyway. Just make sure to get the bullets out of the cushion padding, Sherlock, they're bound to be bloody uncomfortable.'

He nodded, not bothering to disguise the warm smile that spread in his features.

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