"You don't suppose Lestrade would be mad at us for taking this case into our hands without notifying him?" John asked, walking fast to keep up with his tall friend's lengthy stride.

"Nah, he probably took one look at the case file and set it aside," he replied, waving said case file.

"Why do you say that?"

"It's not his division."

It was a warm saturday morning, and the streets were crowded with people. Not a lot of them recognized Sherlock and John, though, as they rarely recognized John without seeing Sherlock first, and they rarely recognized Sherlock without the hat, let alone what he was currently wearing.

Despite the hour, or the fact they were out in public, Sherlock was dressed in pajama pants and a ragtag bathrobe. In place of his usual blue scarf was a tie.

The tie was John's fault, he supposed. When Sherlock had insisted that he was ready to leave for the case, John had suggested that he dress in something a little more formal for his client. Sherlock had gone to his bedroom and returned seconds later with the tie. He hadn't even bothered to tie it, just left it draped around his neck.

John stopped, looking at a poster on a nearby building. "Hey Sherlock, look. It's a poster for that movie I was talking about."

Sherlock glanced at the poster. "Ugh, dull. You can predict half the plotline from the title."

A bit downcast by his reaction, John continued to follow his companion.

"Hey, that isn't your usual bathrobe," John noticed.

"Yeah, the other one got a bit messy during my experiment with human organs. You told me that I shouldn't wear bloody clothes into public?" He put on his one thinking face, the one that looked half like he was squinting into the distance, half like he had just eaten something sour. "You said it… unnerves them or something?"

Suddenly pajamas and a bathrobe seemed like a perfectly fine thing to wear to a client's house.

"Ah, here it is," John said, gesturing to the house beside them.

The lawn was surrounded by a black iron fence. The garden was full of flowers and other kinds of healthy plants. The house itself was quite a few stories, made of brick and stone with quite a few windows.

Sherlock opened the gate and stepped inside before waiting just a moment for John to get through. They strode up to the house together, and John rang the doorbell.

The door swung open, and a man stepped outside to meet them. He was tall and thin with red hair, dull green eyes, and skin tinted a very slight yellow-grey color. He paused for a moment to look over Sherlock's untraditional choice of clothes before introducing himself. "You must be the detectives my tenant hired. I'm Charlie, her landlord." He extended his hand in Sherlock's direction.

Sherlock didn't take Charlie's hand. Instead, he circled the man, his eyes rapidly scanning back and forth as they did when he was thinking about a particularly intriguing case. He made a few circles around a now confused Charlie, drinking in every detail.

Sherlock never looked at any particular person this thoroughly, John thought. It usually took an entire case to get Sherlock this interested.

An unwelcome sense of unease flooded John's veins. Sherlock didn't pay nearly this much attention to him when they had first met. He hadn't even looked at him properly; he had just given him a glance and then gone back to his microscope. Why was Sherlock paying so much attention to this guy?

John crossed his arms over his chest. He didn't know why this unsettled him so much, but he didn't like it.

Sherlock completed the circle and came back to face Charlie. Then, as if just realizing the proper thing to do, took Charlie's still extended hand and shook it.

"Her flat is on the second floor," Charlie stated. His expression was no longer confused, but held a warm, amused curiosity.

"Ah, yes. The case. Right."

John blanched. Sherlock had rated this case a nine that morning, and something about this man was so interesting, that even for a second, he had forgotten about it?

As Sherlock walked in, Charlie extended his hand towards John. John pretended not to notice it and walked inside.

The detective and his partner travelled up a few flights of stairs before coming to the woman's flat, the sound of a stereo playing classical music becoming louder with each flight. Completely ignoring the fact that he was supposed to knock, Sherlock threw the door open and stepped inside.

The middle-aged woman who greeted them smelled strongly of lavender; too strongly for John's taste. She had overdone whatever perfume she had put on. She extended her hand towards John, her wrist covered in bracelets of all sorts. John extended his own hand, then, realizing that it was the wrong one, extended his opposite hand. "Pleased to meet you, I'm Emily."

"Pleased to meet you," John echoed, "I'm sorry to hear about your husband."

"It will hurt less once I can see to punishing whoever hurt him," she replied, shaking Sherlock's hand. "I'm hoping that you two can help with that." She turned the stereo off.

"Explain how you found him," Sherlock ordered.

"I heard ...something upstairs when I had just come into the building," Emily explained. "I came up to check on him, and his head was bashed open on the corner of the coffee table. But he wasn't in a natural position, like he just fell there. I'm sure someone murdered him."

Sherlock looked around the room. It was sort of medium, kind of like the living room in at their flat. Windows adorned one side, a half-empty bottle of lavender perfume sitting on one of the windowsills. A loveseat was sat against the wall opposite the door. The coffee table was in the middle, completely covered in a high, unorganised pile of complicated pieces of sheet music. The stereo sat on the opposite side of the room of the widows. Beside the stereo were two instrument stands, one holding a violin, the other one empty. Sherlock seemed to take special interest to the violin.

"So you and your husband were musicians together?" Sherlock asked.

"Yes, we played those," Emily answered, gesturing to the stands.

"What was the other instrument?"

"A flute," Emily replied. "It's not here right now, it's being cleaned at the instrument shop down the street."

"I see. Did you and your husband teach each other how to play each other's instruments?"

Emily sighed, getting a distant expression in her eye. "No. That's one of the things I'll regret not asking him- oh, and he played so beautifully and passionately, too."

Sherlock looked at the bracelets on Emily's right wrist. "That's quite lovely. May I see it?"

"Er- they hold quite a lot of sentimental value. I don't really like to take them off."

"Ah." Sherlock went over to the coffee table and took a big whiff of it, much to Emily's confusion. "Did he usually take a specific side of the loveseat? He asked.

"He always sat on the left."

Sherlock walked over to the loveseat and sniffed it all over. When he was done, he stood up straight and announced, "That's all we can do for now. We'll be off, and will get back to you soon."

"Already?" Emily asked, furrowing her brows.

"With Sherlock, a minute is all he needs," John replied. Seeing her skeptical expression, he added, "Don't worry, ma'am. Despite his nature being quite… odd, Sherlock is the best detective in all of England." he then turned and followed Sherlock down the stairs.

Charlie stopped them at the bottom of the stairs, a tray of tea and biscuits in his arms. "Going so soon? I was hoping you would join me for tea."

John continued for the door, expecting Sherlock to refuse in his usual politeness lacking manner, only to stop when he heard him say, "Tea and biscuits would be quite lovely, thank you!"

John turned around and was about to insist that they had other things to do. The look on Sherlock's face stopped him cold.

Sherlock was grinning, not the creepy "I know what's going on" grin John had seen so many times, but a pleasant grin a person might even describe as warm. As much as this didn't sit well with him, John couldn't bring himself to intervene. Sherlock seemed… happy.

Charlie invited them into his living room, where he and Sherlock drank tea and Sherlock helped himself to quite a few biscuits. John didn't eat anything. He wasn't hungry. Sherlock engaged in small talk with Charlie for at least an hour, keeping a welcome demeanour despite how much he normally despised surface chitchat.

There was only one biscuit left on the tray when Sherlock decided that it was time to go. "This was enjoyable, but we ought to be going. We have a client to solve a mystery for."

John mentally celebrated at this, but his relief was short-lived.

"If I wanted to contact you," Sherlock started.

"Ah, yes." Charlie pulled out a piece of paper and scribbled his number on it before handing it to Sherlock.

Instead of placing the paper in his pocket like he did with most, John watched as he pulled out his phone, entered the number, made a new contact for Charlie, turned his settings on so that if Charlie sent him a call it would ring even if it was on silent, and saved it.

"And if you ever needed me for anything; if you ever wanted to talk," he continued.

John watched in silence as Charlie handed Sherlock his phone and Sherlock entered his own number before returning the phone. He glared at Charlie from by the door as Sherlock gave him a proper goodbye, not just a wave.

When Sherlock finally turned to leave, John exited ahead of him, avoiding looking at his friend.

Sherlock didn't seem to notice, because he marched on, saying that he needed to make another stop before they returned to Baker Street.

John couldn't help but think to himself that it might as well have been to buy candy and flowers for his new "friend" Charlie.

John's jaw dropped when he saw the florist's sign come into view.

Sherlock, however, passed the florist and went into the next store: the instrument shop.

Even after registering this fact, John still stood, stunned on the street. He mentally scolded himself. He was being ridiculous. Sherlock would never do that to him. He then shook his head. If he was so sure that Sherlock would never do that, then why had he been utterly convinced, if only for a moment, that that was exactly what Sherlock was about to do?

He shook his head, trying to clear the thought, and followed his friend into the instrument shop.

When he got in, Sherlock was already examining a flute, which John could only assume belonged to the musician couple. Sherlock sniffed the flute, then handed it back to the person behind the counter. He turned and walked towards John, gesturing for them to leave.

"Back to Baker street, then?" John asked, walking across the sidewalk.

"Yep," he said, popping the p, and already hailing a cab.

Sherlock got into the cab that slowed down beside them. John followed, much more unsettled than he had been that morning.