Invalid Doctor

Invalid Deductions

There are a few different methods for staying sane in a warzone.

Escapism was popular. Some of his fellow soldiers read high fantasy novels, or watched every movie they could. Others had letters full of daydreams about 'when I get home.' A few indulged in chemical vices, sometimes to unsafe extremes, but usually within both the law and reasonable parameters. There was even that one fresh recruit who (due to an idiot putting gray water where it didn't belong, a very loud portable speaker attached to a solar-powered screen, and an excitable Irishman who many thought ought to stop playing video games and take up voice acting) managed to introduce an overfull medical tent of groggy men to the concept of "Let's Play" videos. He made most of them cry some days later when they reached the emotional highpoint of the Undertale series they had all gotten hooked on. It let them all ignore how miserable dysentery was to deal with for a few hours. Escape is healthy in moderation, and as long as it wasn't solely found in the bottom of a bottle.

Captain John Hamish Watson, MBBS, MRCS, most recently attached to the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers on a mission to set up a new field hospital in freshly re-claimed Afghani territory, didn't go in for escapism much. Sure, he liked a good movie, who didn't? He was also a bit of a slag, escaping into nights of passion where he showed off his army-toned body, but mostly he fell into the realist set. One of those who spent all their free time training, talking shop, or in leisure activities that were either horribly cliche or honed work-related skills. Drinking, fucking, and training their way through the ever-growing piles of stress was the manly way to go about military service for generations, after all.

Captain Watson spent hours at the range when on a proper base, hanging out with the snipers when they were sizing each other up and trading techniques with the other soldiers who spend far more time on the front lines than any member of the RAMC ever should. In the beginning, he hadn't minded being the man who came in last for their pissing contests. It saved someone else's ego and was a fair bit of fun. A doctor's pay grade meant buying a round at the end for his loss didn't hurt too much. Later, he placed bets and won a fair chunk of money surprising the 'real soldiers' with how good a 'squishy non-combatant' could shoot. When stationed closer to the actual action, he had a steady stream of books to read. Thanks to a network of libraries in America somewhere determined to 'support the troops' by regularly sending mixed boxes of books to coalition forces, the available reading list was rather diverse. The fiction books are always snatched up quickly, but that is fine. Watson finds the random assortment of non-fiction books he picks up are easier to read without getting distracted by the weird way Americans use spelling and punctuation than anything less cerebral. Getting pulled out of a narrative to ponder basic grammar wasn't a good time, but he could ignore it if he was already puzzling out some obscure bit of philosophy or history. He spends his leave time in Continuing Professional Development whenever he is back on his native soil, and not just in classes that will get him to his surgery fellowship. The classes and conferences weren't all work, not the way he saw them, anyway: there was always some group he could hook onto that took a trip to a cozy pub or a nice restaurant afterward, and the Captain was a personable sort. He'd made quite a few friendly and professional acquaintances over the years. That this method of staying busy at home kept Harriet from being drunk when she called or visited as much as she normally would have been is a double benefit. Even during those months where she is at her worst, she still has enough self-awareness not to embarrass the both of them in a place full of his fellow medical professionals - a good indicator she hadn't hit rock bottom as much as a statement on the power of a room full of well-pressed suits. He's lost track of how many times she's promised to stop drinking. He stopped believing her sometime after their father drank himself to death.

The men who detach from their surroundings don't last long. Those who put blinders on, who seem to ignore it all: those are the ones Captain Watson worries about, the ones who trigger the parts of his training aimed at spotting developing mental illnesses. Some of the medics coming in fresh from training often look to the 'workaholic' types like John, but there is a healthy and an unhealthy way to go about that sort of single-minded dedication. He'd seen enough of it, lived enough of it, that he could spot the difference. The older set agreed with him that this new-age rejection of machismo might work in some cases, but didn't apply as much to the sort of person who volunteered for military service. There was never a lack of work in the military, so it was the perfect place for a workaholic. They thrived like flowers in the sun. No, it was those who detached that got out quickly, either through some form of discharge or in a box. Detachment, as a coping mechanism, was the true danger.

Living in a bedsit in London, John can feel himself detaching. He is meant to be recovering from a gunshot wound to the shoulder, the rushed surgery that affected the nerves there, the osteomyelitis that got into his thigh, and an immune system so run-down by the lot that he'd caught the flu and two colds since he'd returned to London from the Middle East despite years of regular vaccinations and fairly sterile living arrangements for most of his recovery. Recovery is meant to include improvement and he certainly hasn't gotten much of that. The world around him is becoming blurrier in steady increments. He knows it is a bit not good. He knows that the time it took them to haul him off the battlefield contained some unmeasured period where his brain wasn't quite getting enough blood, and that was when the fog and the infection first got in. His left hand and sometimes his forearm tremble on bad days from the nerve damage, and his right leg steadfastly refuses to function reliably despite there not being anything obviously wrong with it mechanically speaking. That was a bit not good as well. He didn't blame Bill at all, he'd even had a coffee with the nurse he'd served alongside and thanked the man for saving his life. Bill had gotten married since, which was good for him. Getting on with life, having things happen to him was good. John wasn't getting any of that, either. The therapist meant to help him adjust to civilian life after signing up for an Army Medical Corps cadet program at age 16 with plans to stay there until he was ready for retirement is decidedly not helping. All of her suggestions sound like they are straight out of whatever trendy, new-age, metro-sexual theory those young idiots he didn't get on with were spouting. He isn't sure how many mentally sound soldiers she's ever met, but he doubts they would crowd up his small room if they all came visiting. Trust issues, she writes down one day. No, John thinks as he reads her notes upside-down, I just don't trust you.

John supposes there are a lot of ways to stay sane while outside a warzone, but he's spent so little of his life there he simply doesn't know what they are or how to go about learning them. God knows he didn't have decent role models for a healthy civilian life before he dove head-first into the military lifestyle. Six months into his new civilian life, three months after the Army officially gave up on him recovering enough to be useful, one month after his last overnight stay in a hospital bed, he is on one of his therapist-prescribed recreational walks - a task he completes with the air of a man ripping off a particularly stubborn plaster from a particularly delicate bit of skin. Mike Stanford recognizes him as he passes a bench outside Bart's. John has the same reaction he has had whenever anyone who used to know Captain Watson spots him with his cane. He hates his weakness, and hates them for seeing it on display, and pushes all that unpleasantness down because he has always been professional and polite unless there was great cause to be otherwise. Changing that, too, would just be another defeat. Swallowing it all down, the world goes a little fuzzier, a little grayer, and he is barely aware of what he is talking about.

John is so detached from the nearly-automatic polite small talk that he might as well be drugged. He hardly sees his surroundings as Mike leads him inside Bart's and into one of the lab rooms to meet some other lost soul who can't afford to rent a flat in London on his own. There's a skinny man there; the details take time to fully register. Tight suit jacket and expensive jeans - dressed a bit posh for lab work but not ridiculously so - just a little upper class and not some office worker dabbling or running errands then. Striking features, sharp cheekbones under pale skin topped with black-brown curly hair well past the length John would ever let his own reach that made him look about twelve... and somehow, he knows entirely too much about John's life for someone who has supposedly never met him. John has the impression the younger man is eager to escape their company even as he seems to take it as a given that John will agree to rent a flat with him, which seems contradictory since he'd presumably need to enjoy John's company to want to share living space. In fact the taller man is so eager to rush off he nearly forgets to mention his name or the address of the flat he's had his eye on before dashing out the door, leaving John with a wink he isn't sure how to interpret and a feeling not dissimilar from the morning after he'd shared a bottle of bathtub whiskey with his college dorm mates. He never did figure out how he'd gotten that far from his preferred Urban habitat. After the fast-talking man leaves, Mike explains that Sherlock Holmes can do that to anybody, but Mike doesn't know how. It's just something Holmes can do, and Mike seems to find it mildly amusing. As they are parting ways Mike seems more like he's shown John something amusing to distract him than something actually helpful.

It is only after he has gotten back to the horrible little room he's been put away in that his mind completely catches up to the events of the day. He fires up his laptop and plugs the man's name into a search engine. It is distinctive enough that John figures there aren't likely to be many hits, and he is right. The top result is a website titled The Science of Deduction and John is shocked at the late hour when he finally stops reading to use the latrine. There is something about a drugged-out son of a lesser blue-blood family getting in a bit of trouble a few years back in the search results as well, but that is a William Sherlock Scott Holmes and so John dismisses it. As a common man with the uncommon middle name Hamish, John knows how some odd old family names can get passed around out of tradition even well after any high-society connection has been watered down to nothing. William could be Sherlock's cousin, and this Sherlock didn't seem the type to blunt his senses with drugs. Not with the way he flaunted his brainpower and observational skill on his website.

Using small but telling details to deduce the specifics of people's lives was both an interesting idea, and an incredibly impressive talent to have if Holmes could do it as fast as it seemed he did when he first met John. He'd heard of cold reading before, in the context of fortune tellers and magicians claiming to be psychic, but never thought of how it could be used for any practical purposes. It also seemed a bit implausible that anyone could take in that many details at once, but he'd have ample time to get the man to explain himself tomorrow. John spent the morning thinking on and off about what sort of career the man had. The text he sent using John's phone, 'If brother had green ladder, arrest brother. - SH,' implied some involvement in law enforcement. Holmes certainly seemed to think that, given whatever he knew about John from his deductions, Stanford's silent recommendation was enough of a reason to rent a flat together. Except that Stanford had led John to Holmes like he was showing off some curiosity to lighten John's mood rather than a solid option, and John was at a severe disadvantage in the matter of knowing who his potential flatmate was.

Perhaps it was assumed to be a very temporary arraignment? Something while they were both between things, restarting their professional lives after a bit of upset? Unfortunately, John was a left-handed junior surgeon whose dominant hand failed him regularly due to very real nerve damage and whose misbehaving right leg had days when even the cane was barely enough to keep him standing. The argument over it being psychosomatic or brain damage was moot so long as it kept failing him. Steady well-paying work was going to be hard to come by and keep up under the circumstances. Never mind trying to squeeze his way into one of the highly competitive positions where he could finish his training as a trauma surgeon and get that fellowship he'd wanted. No nepotism, money, or high-powered connections to grease the way for him, which is why he'd signed up for the armed forces in the first place. Aside from a bit of brown-nosing that could have gotten him more suitable orders and seen him promoted above Captain before now, the RAMC's program was almost completely merit- and training-based. He'd lost all the valuable connections he'd made when he was discharged. Ignoring for a moment that his left hand wasn't fit to stitch up a rag-doll, he didn't have any chance of finishing up his training without a long and highly political detour to get his foot in. Of course, he'd originally started accepting the occasional detours his career had taken as a way to please some of the top brass, so in a way the brown-nosing he did do ended up delaying his surgeon's training instead of speeding it along, though the challenging assignments looked great on his record. The lack of a pay rise hadn't seemed terribly important as he was able to comfortably stash away a rather large percentage of his pay into long-term investments as it was. At the time, he'd been enjoying the excitement of the posts too much to complain. Now, knowing that if he hadn't been shot the last orders he'd been given would have seen him certified and promoted to Major in less than six months made the whole situation that much harder to bear.

Even if he ignored his surgeon's training and managed to get a position as a GP, people didn't like taking health advice from sick doctors. John wasn't about to hang his Army Cross up on the wall as a tacit explanation. Some people would consider it an invitation to talk about it, and John wasn't keen on that at all. Perhaps once Holmes moved on it would be the start of a series of flat-mates for John, but that was a young man's game wasn't it? He didn't relish the idea of sharing space with a string of university students or managing a sub-lease when an empty bedroom for too long would mean a hasty relocation. A more stable situation would be better, something that would hold for a few years at least so that all John's long-term savings would open up. Stupid investment fees, stupid financial advice having him stuff all his money in long-term accounts, stupid occasionally-thieving sister forcing him to guard his checkbook by keeping the balance on his primary spending account as low as was feasible. Sure, today was a good day, unlike yesterday when he'd been hobbling around at a snail's pace. He could probably do without the cane for a bit if he really tried today. That was the way of mobility issues even when they weren't 'all in your head,' but it was hardly enough of a sure thing to leave the cane behind.

221B Baker Street turned out to be a well-kept brick building with a little sandwich shop on the street level. Holmes arrived in a taxi wearing his expensive coat over a suit just as John was walking up in his worn jacket, jumper and jeans. There had been an advert up for the place at some point saying it came fully furnished, but the website had it listed as taken and there was no figure published for the requested rent. An upside-down real estate sign in the window above the sandwich shop told John that the flat wasn't properly on the market at the moment. Holmes stepped out of a cab wearing a rather nice suit just as John was coming down the block from the nearest Tube station. They exchanged greetings, each awkwardly glad to see the other in the way of perfect strangers who expect to be stood up. Holmes insisted on being called Sherlock as they rung the bell, explaining briefly that he'd secured a discounted rate by ensuring the landlady's husband was convicted overseas of murder. Right then.

The flat itself was on the first floor of the building. The main area was quite nice, and John said as much. The one-wall eat-in kitchen and spacious, irregularly shaped sitting room were separated by glass-backed shelving that made the place feel bright and open even stuffed as full of odds and ends as it was. The other walls were covered in slightly dated, but rather pleasant, patterned wallpaper with a very attractive fireplace on the wall opposite the entrance. A pair of armchairs, side tables, and a coffee table were nestled in front of the fireplace beneath a layer of boxed papers in various states of disarray. A couch hid around a corner from the entrance with a small TV and writing desk between the two seating areas in the odd shaped room, also covered in a thin layer of odds and ends that would need to be cleared away. The furniture was a mis-matched jumble that spanned several decades of popular style, but similar colors made them work well together. Bohemian, John thought the proper term was, or maybe eclectic; a bit lived-in and that was quite attractive after the sterile matchboxes he'd been living in. It was when Sherlock admitted that the many boxes of stuff crowding up the place and the copious amount of chemistry supplies on the dining table were his own possessions - that he'd moved in already - that finally brought the younger man's odd eagerness to have John move in with him to John's full attention. There was something off about how Sherlock reacted to the possibility of John not wanting to move in due to the clutter. It wasn't Sherlock's hurried attempt to tidy up (particularly given how comically ineffectual it was) as much as the stunned moment just before and the slightly frantic and mechanical way the man went about trying to fix it.

That germinating idea was quickly pushed aside by the landlady, Mrs. Hudson, making assumptions about how many bedrooms they would need. That was certainly an alternate solution to the mystery of why Sherlock seemed so keen on John moving in, but despite having had plenty of success in that area over the years he rather doubted Sherlock found him terribly appealing. He hadn't been dressed to impress when they met at Bart's, a depressed mood colored with embarrassment was the opposite of sexy, and neither of them had done anything that was identifiable as flirting. John had enjoyed a lot of female company in the bedroom, something that was well-known about him among his old buddies in and around London, so if Sherlock had somehow gotten a bit of gossip about his potential flatmate beforehand it wouldn't have led him in that direction. Not that he was bigoted, not at all. It was just that anyone who was a bit (or a lot) bent in the Army tended to keep their mouths shut about it and never mind how tolerant the official stance on such things was. It had been half a decade for John, and anyway, he was fairly certain there wasn't anyone currently on this continent that knew how open-minded John was on that front let alone any telling detail still lingering about his person all these years later. So, that theory was properly out.

"Sherlock, the mess you've made!" Mrs. Hudson moaned when she caught sight of the currently unusable kitchen, distracting her from her ruminations on John and Sherlock's relationship status. The older woman snatched up a bin and stalked into the cluttered room to try and make sense of the jumble covering the worktops and table. John mused that the bin was probably the worst tool to take up in the battle between the Kitchen and Chemistry Lab that was underway in that room, as everything John could identify was expensive glassware and related equipment.

John took another look around while the mess was being sorted through. Despite the outer door to the street specifying 221B, the foyer below was clearly shared between the flats A, B, and C. This flat used what was clearly an original main stairway, the bottom stair only a few steps from the outer door. Accessing the bath was a study in squeezing modern utilities into and carving apartments out of a building that wasn't originally designed for either. A solid door next to a window on the back of the building led into the tiled bathroom from a short hallway outside the main door of the flat. A second, frosted glass door led to the first floor bedroom from there. The stair did a ninety degree turn every half-story, so it wasn't exactly wide open to the foyer, but the upstairs resident would still be crossing the semi-shared space of the open stairwell to get to it. A quick trip downstairs to assess how much traffic would be in the stairwell showed John the door to 221A, a door into the back garden, and a door in the very back of the foyer labeled 221C. Mrs. Hudson lived in 221A, which she told them on the way up was tucked around the sandwich shop on the ground floor. So, the door to C either lead up to the third floor via an old servant's stair or down to a basement, meaning they wouldn't be sharing the stairwell with the top floor neighbors after all. Still, he'd have to invest in a less worn-out dressing gown or risk occasionally scandalizing the rest of the building. He carried on through the bath into the first floor bedroom which also attached to the oddly shaped sitting room on the main level near the couch. It was done up in plain paint the same pea-green color that accented the bath with decent enough furniture currently buried under another load of semi-unpacked boxes and open garment bags. It was on the smaller side for a primary bedroom even when John considered that the clutter likely made it feel smaller, though it had a generously-sized closet. A closet that already had more clothes hanging in it than John owned. Sherlock was either a clotheshorse or a pack rat, possibly both. All told, the layout of the first floor was essentially an uneven horseshoe with the stairwell in the middle and a few extra nooks and corners in every room as leftovers from the place being carved up and modernized. Not terrible for a London flat.

Unfortunately, the second bedroom being up another flight of stairs was a bit of an issue that would need ironing out since Sherlock seemed intent on taking this one. The high ceilings in the Victorian-era building were a great contrast to the closed-in little box John had been living out of since his release from hospital, but seventeen steps per floor was asking a lot of his leg on a bad day. John climbed up to the other bedroom to know what sort of argument he'd have to construct. The stairs terminated at a landing with only one door, though from the way the landing was shaped there used to be another door at some point in history that had been blocked off. The upstairs bedroom was painted a soothing blue, had its own toilet attached (the location of which explained why the landing looked like it did,) and was a fair bit larger than the downstairs bedroom. A bit spacious for the heart of the city in general, even. It had slightly mismatched furniture likely collected over several decades just like the rest of the flat: a standard bed, two nightstands: one modern glass and steel and one weathered oak, an Austin Powers inspired dressing table, and a large more modern-looking storage cabinet that might have come from Ikea. It also sported a rather solid old wooden desk against one wall that the other bedroom didn't have. Its closet was diminutive by comparison, and John had a strong feeling the extensive collection of clothes downstairs had more to do with Sherlock's preference for the smaller room than anything else. John honestly would have preferred this room if it wasn't for his leg, as it had a nice view of the back garden and the privacy of his own toilet and sink was a serious bonus.

He came back down to see Sherlock still trying to somehow make all his assorted belongings fit into one side of the room and failing miserably. John dropped a pillow sporting the union jack onto the shorter of the two chairs before going to sit in it. If Sherlock was as observant and clever as he seemed to think he was in his website's essays, he'd probably take that as a hint that John wouldn't mind if he took up more than exactly half the space so long as John's fewer possessions had a place and their shared space was still functional. If not, John would just have to say it outright, but first they'd each have to finish sorting out who the other was and which bedroom they'd be taking, among other fine points. No point in needlessly giving up a potential bargaining chip, after all.

"Oh, I, um, looked you up on the Internet last night," John said to Sherlock as he settled into the chair. It was as good a topic as any to start with. Early on in his career a positively ancient doctor had passed down some hard-earned wisdom to John: There is no one who gets lied to more often than an army doctor, and no one more prone to hide weakness than a pumped-up macho soldier with a problem less severe than a severed limb. The advice had proved true. Prior to getting his trauma specialization and unless John's patients were carried in, very few of them admitted to having an issue without a bit of coaching. Even then people often left out details or assumed that half their symptoms were unrelated, a problem John had been dealing with since his very first day on the job during medical school. Spotting the important cues and getting people to talk was a big part of the job. John was good at that, before, and it was frustrating as hell to have lost so much of that thanks to some amoral fuck-wipes shooting a rocket propelled grenade at a red cross convoy. Sherlock's behavior had cleared away some of the fog that had taken up residence in John's brain, his ability to read people waking up a little out of necessity in the face of the man's oddness.

"Anything interesting?" Sherlock asked, shoving his hands into his pockets in what John registers as a pose. What sort of pose eludes him for a moment, though he is used to knowing these things straight off.

"Found your website. The Science of Deduction," John answers carefully, a brief pause giving himself as much time to think as was polite. Tense, Sherlock was tense, perhaps because people who look him up often find the mess William got into and ask uncomfortable questions?

"What did you think?" Tense with nerves, or perhaps eager to impress? The man was a bit public school, with a lot of expensive belongings, but looking to cut costs with a flat-share. There were plenty of spare sons of such-and-such blue-blooded line in the army, used to a certain standard of living before being weaned - or kicked - off the family bankroll. John was familiar with the breed. A bit of a show-off, then? John could work with that. John nudges his way past the posed stance Sherlock hid behind by scoffing quietly at Sherlock's question with calculated precision. Nervous, clearly, and very concerned about John's reaction going by the way the man's expressive face crumbles at the dismissal.

"You said you could identify a software designer by his tie and – what was it? – a retired plumber by his left hand," John says incredulously.

"Yes; and I can read your military career by your face and your leg, and your brother's drinking habits by your mobile phone," Sherlock fires back.

"The state of the place already," John hears Mrs. Hudson muttering as she came back out of the kitchen, categorizing things as best she can.

"How?" John prompts, as that was what he'd been after with the first question.

"You read the article," Sherlock dismisses the question and goes back to rummaging through his stacks of boxes. Well, the brunette went from from showing off to clamming up fast enough John might have to treat Sherlock for whiplash. The corner of the room the skinny man had been tidying looks more of a mess now than it had been when they walked in, though the clutter might be slightly more condensed in its disorganized heap. John estimates the chances that Sherlock grew up in a house with a maid are rather high. Now that is the sort of deduction he can follow, as for the article explaining how Sherlock did what he did...

"The article was absurd," John declares.

"But I know about his drinking habits. I even know that he left his wife," Sherlock's answer is petulant, almost whining. He acts a bit childish in general, actually, John thinks.

"What about these suicides then, Sherlock? Thought that'd be right up your street. Been a third one now," Mrs. Hudson interrupts, walking over with a newspaper in hand.

"Yes, actually. Very much up my street," is the slightly grumpy reply, though something catches his eye out the window and the taller man trails off, distracted.

"Can I just ask: what is your street?" John says, hoping to get at least one straight answer out of him.

"There's been a fourth, and something is different this time," Sherlock says to himself. Someone hurries up the stair - did they even knock? - and Sherlock speaks before they come through the open door. "Where this time?"

"Brixton, Lauriston Gardens. Will you come?" John hears a man answer from the landing outside the door.

"Who's on forensics?" Sherlock asks.

"It's Anderson," the man replies, stepping into John's field of view. A bit older, graying, and dressed respectably enough. He doesn't even glance John's way.

"Anderson won't work with me."

"He won't be your assistant."

"But I need an assistant."

"Will you come?" The entire exchange is fast, almost rote, but John does catch that Sherlock has done something off-script judging by the other man's face.

"Not in a police car. I'll be right behind," Sherlock agrees, his face painted with the same mild expression he'd had since spotting what must have been a police car with flashing lights out of the window.

"Thank you." The man looks around and finally spots John and Mrs. Hudson. With a polite nod he turns and leaves the room. Biting his lip to hold back a delighted smile, Sherlock waits until the man is properly gone before raising his fists triumphantly and leaping into the air like his favorite team just won the regional and he'd had a sizable bet on the match.

"Oh! Brilliant! Thought it was going to be a dull evening," Sherlock exclaims as he puts on his coat, turning briefly to John. "Honestly, can't beat a really imaginative serial killer when there's nothing on the telly." Leaping across the room while he puts his scarf on, traversing the coffee table in the process, he goes to dig something out from a box. "Mrs. Hudson, I may be out late. Might need some food."

"I'm your landlady, dear, not your housekeeper," she says gently.

"Something cold will do," he says absently as he inspects a small pouch of instruments before tucking them into one of his pockets. "John, make yourself at home. Er, have a cup of tea. Don't wait up."

"Look at him, dashing about! My husband was just the same," Mrs. Hudson giggles at Sherlock as he bounds out of the room, full of energy. "But you're more the sitting-down type, I can tell." John just sighs and sinks into the chair. He can almost feel the haze coming back over him now that he doesn't have anything to focus directly on. It's ridiculous, he never needed to be... to be entertained like this before. It had been frustrating him for months, making him feel like a child. There had always been something coming up, always something to do or anticipate either in his regular duties or through one of the favors he did for the brass. Or even just going out with the boys on the hunt for some attractive company. "I'll make you that cuppa. You rest your leg."

"Damn my leg!" The words burst out of him involuntarily. An old woman fussing over him when he absolutely doesn't need it is just a bit too much for a moment, but his manners come back in the next second. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. It's just that sometimes this bloody thing..." John finishes his sentence by smacking his bad leg with his cane.

"I understand, dear; I've got a hip," Mrs. Hudson forgives him gently and goes back into the kitchen.

"A cup of tea would be lovely, thank you," he corrects himself automatically, grabbing the copy of the Times off the side table that she'd set down. He hears Mrs. Hudson turn abruptly and move back toward the door heading downstairs, wisely giving up on preparing tea amid the riot of Sherlock's chemistry equipment and letting John finish regaining his composure.

"Just this once, dear. I'm not your housekeeper," he registers her words, even says another something in reply that comes from his hazy stock of polite statements, but his attention is caught by a picture of the man that just came to fetch Sherlock on the front page. The headline and caption mention the recent set of serial suicides Mrs. Hudson was talking about. John thinks that someone had mentioned them to him last week sometime, or he'd overheard someone talking about it. Perhaps when he'd stopped into a coffee shop to rest his leg while out walking? Well, the man who fetched Sherlock is Detective Lestrade, and in charge of the investigation. John is just starting to read the article when he hears something behind him.

"You're a doctor." John looks over to the doorway expectantly. With the way the man assumes things, like how it is perfectly obvious that he will get the bedroom with the shorter climb and that John would agree to move in to this flat with him before john had even seen it, he doubts the man is prone to stating the bleeding obvious without significant cause. "In fact, you're an army doctor."

"Yes," John confirmed, standing up and setting the paper aside.

"Any good?"

"Very good," John assured, hoping this was going where he thought it was going. Hoping the absurd website wasn't a load of horse shit. Hoping that Sherlock had looked him up as well and could fill in the blanks of what John's military career was actually like. Hoping that someone who could assess and handle people the way John could would be helpful to have around. Hoping more than anything that he could keep the fog out of his head long enough to be useful again.

"Seen a lot of injuries, then; violent deaths." Asking a doctor if he's going to vomit over seeing a battered corpse, really? John thinks, but keeps his answer simple.

"Well, yes."

"Bit of trouble too, I bet," Sherlock prods, and he's either stalling or intentionally being as dramatic and drawn out as possible.

"Of course, yes. Enough for a lifetime. Far too much," John says quietly, giving the proper answer his therapist would approve of, but with rather the wrong inflection.

"Want to see some more?" He finally gets to the point.

"God, yes!" John gasps out like a prayer. Sherlock spins on his heel and John is already following him at a decent speed out the door and into a waiting cab.

#

Taxi to a Death

In the taxi John finally gets a proper explanation for how Sherlock knew so much about him without being told anything. It's not the most straightforward way of thinking, and John is certain that those little details could mean other things.

"There you go, you see – you were right," Sherlock says at the end of his explanation.

"I was right? Right about what?" John asks, winding the conversation back and picking through the details again, feeling a bit slow and not minding it for the first time in months.

"The police don't consult amateurs," Sherlock brags as he looks out of the side window. After a moment's thought John sees that the real magic is in how Sherlock put the details together. The tan lines likely don't mean anything so specific without John's comment to Mike, his haircut, or his limp. The clues on the phone need the context of John looking for a flatshare in order to inform Sherlock about John's relationship to Harry. Sure, Sherlock gets Harry's gender wrong, but Sherlock has no context for that, no indication of the truth one way or the other so he goes with society's default assumption. It is all interlocking, and it is the complexity of that interconnected reasoning that blows John away. To have that many little details in focus at the same time, and to put it all together so quickly, is astounding.

"That was ... amazing," John says when he's finished processing Sherlock's explanation. Sherlock looks back at him suddenly, looking at John in interest.

"Do you think so?" he asks despite himself.

"Of course it was! It was extraordinary! It was quite extraordinary!" The praise clearly startled Sherlock, and he seems to preen under the attention once he is sure it is genuine.

"That's not what people usually say," the man confirms unnecessarily.

"What do they usually say?" John asks the obvious question.

"'Piss off'!" Sherlock scoffs, and they share a bit of a laugh. Well, it could be a little invasive, John supposes, and if Sherlock felt like it he could probably air people's dirty laundry quite easily.

Sherlock demonstrates exactly that ability when the plainclothes sergeant Donovan and the forensics lead Anderson greet him with open hostility. John assumes there is a lot more evidence than scuffed knees and deodorant, possibly related to a history of behavior Sherlock has seen over his acquaintance with the pair, to support the accusation that they are having an affair. The delivery was a bit hostile, but so was Anderson calling Sherlock's ability magic tricks and Donovan calling him a freak without any provocation. That they didn't even look at John more than half a second then asked Sherlock to explain his presence as if John was a leashed dog, and then didn't even try to talk to John to get their answers after Sherlock's flippant dismissal, was more than a little demeaning. The two were certainly making a foul first impression.

John slips out of his jacket and into the coverall and gloves Sherlock hands him, vague memories of forensic procedures gleaned from pop culture and a couple true-crime novels reminding John that contaminating a crime scene is a big deal. Suiting up wasn't wholly unfamiliar, he had to be sterile during surgery after all, and he deftly slipped into two pairs of gloves without contaminating the outside. The police procedure going on around him was unfamiliar: The few times he'd had to deal with RMPs he'd been removing an injured soldier from a scene as quickly as possible, usually avoiding alcohol-scented vomit as much as he could along the way. They head up the stairs of the disused building to the murder scene. There are a few signs of renovation visible from the stairway, but the building clearly hasn't been properly inhabited for some weeks. Lestrade fills them in on what is known: footprints from a man about five foot seven. Name Jennifer Wilson based on her credit cards. Found by some kids not long after she died. Scratched a word into the floor with her fingernails.

"Well, she's from out of town, clearly. Planned to spend a single night in London before returning home. So far, so obvious," Sherlock declares almost as soon as they are in the room.

"Obvious?" Lestrade questions. If they work together often, shouldn't the Detective Inspector sound less incredulous?

"She's German. 'Rache': it's German for 'revenge.' She could be trying to tell us something..." John turns to see Anderson leaning on the door-frame, one hand posed in pretentious thoughtfulness on his chin with his fingers touching his mouth. John's mind fills with a montage of every textbook, warning sign, lecture, and shouted chastisement from a superior he's ever encountered on how to properly utilize sterile gloves. John wouldn't touch his mouth with the same glove that had touched a dead body out of caution for his own health at the very least.

"Thank you so much for your input," Sherlock quips sarcastically, closing the door in Anderson's face, then turns back to John and Lestrade as if the weaselly man never existed. "Yes, obvious. Back of the right leg." Sherlock explains, not that that explains much. Sherlock takes a slow walk around the perimeter of the room, then starts poking at his phone. John looks carefully, but whatever Sherlock noticed wasn't obvious to him. He takes a critical look at the woman's legs, but can't make any conclusions from what he sees other than 'shapely' and 'very well groomed.'

"Doctor Watson, what do you think?" Sherlock asks just after John has concluded that he can't figure it out.

"What do I think?" John parrots, having nothing to say that wouldn't sound like he was borderline necrophilic or extremely petty over Anderson's reaction.

"You're the medical man."

"We have a whole team right outside," the Detective reminds them.

"They won't work with me," Sherlock retorts irritably, which is fair enough given what John's seen. John focuses back on the body, trying and failing to dredge up a bit of something useful. There was one conference on forensics and autopsy a decade back he'd attended with a very cute red-head, but he'd spent most of it studying the red-head. He is certain he hasn't encountered this much bright pink at once in his entire career.

"Doctor Watson," Sherlock's voice breaks through the haze and catches his focus again.

"Oh, do as he says. Help yourself," Lestrade bites off before stepping back and leaning out the door to tell the forensics team to wait their turn.

"Well?" Sherlock prompts.

"What am I doing here?" John says softly as he clumsily lowers himself to one knee, still holding tight to the cane so that it doesn't bump into anything and disturb evidence.

"Helping me make a point."

"I'm supposed to be helping you pay the rent."

"Yes, well, this is more fun." Sherlock smiles down at him, which is a bit out of place at a murder scene.

"Fun? There's a woman lying dead," John says with a twitch of his right hand on his cane. He still hasn't gotten used to only having one free hand thanks to the stupid thing, and come to think of it he shouldn't transfer anything to or from the handle and will have to do his examination one-handed even after getting down on the floor. Sherlock's eyes dart to the movement before settling back on John's face. He sounds a little disappointed when he replies.

"Perfectly sound analysis, but I was hoping you'd go deeper." Lestrade steps back into the room and John finally brings his other knee down so he can at least pretend he knows what he's doing.

"More pink than I've ever seen on one person," John mumbles out his initial impression. He checks for the scent of alcohol and looks her over for symptoms as much as he is able, pulling out a pen and notepad out without thinking to make note of the visible symptoms out of habit, scratching near illegibly with his right hand on the notepad pressed to his thigh as he has a thousand times before. His specialty is living bodies, but he isn't completely ignorant of what to look for, generally. After a moment he straightens up and gives his assessment as a 'medical man' as Sherlock asked him to. "Yeah ... Asphyxiation, probably. Passed out, choked on her own vomit. Can't smell any alcohol on her. It could have been a seizure; possibly drugs."

"It was poison," Sherlock corrected.

"How do you know?"

"Because they were all poisoned."

"By who?" John asks, a half-second before realizing that is the point of their investigation.

"By themselves," Sherlock says instead of the scathing criticism John was expecting.

"We've identified the drug..." Lestrade spoke up.

"Doesn't matter; it was poison," Sherlock dismisses with a wave of his hand. "Same pattern each time." Sherlock picks up the woman's hand and looks at it while he is talking. He sniffs at her face, palm, and nails, much as John had, but then gently shifts her clothing more than John had. "Each one of them disappears from their normal lives: from the theater, from the office, from the pub." John has to move out of the way as Sherlock comes around to the other side of the body, continuing to gently examine the body. He checks her pockets and prods at her coat here and there, even turning her collar up for a moment. "Then, turn up a few hours later somewhere they've no reason to be, dead." Sherlock's voice has slowly lost volume as he explained, ending up soft and sad before shaking himself and starting to speak at normal volume again. "No marks of violence on the body, no suggestion of compulsion. Each of them has taken the same poison – and, as far as we can tell, taken it voluntarily."

"Sherlock – two minutes, I said. I need anything you've got," the detective prompts.

"Victim is in her late thirties. Professional person, going by her clothes; I'm guessing something in the media, going by the frankly alarming shade of pink. Traveled from Cardiff today, intending to stay in London for one night. It's obvious from the size of her suitcase," Sherlock speaks quickly, the words firing out of his mouth like a machine gun blast as he jumps to his feet. John struggles his own way up off the floor.

"Suitcase?" Lestrade mutters. John looks around and can't find the mentioned item.

"Suitcase, yes. She's been married at least ten years, but not happily. She's had a string of lovers but none of them knew she was married," Sherlock continued.

"Oh, for God's sake, if you're just making this up..." Lestrade sighs.

"Her wedding ring – look at it. It's too tight. She was thinner when she first wore it; that says married for a while. Also, there's grime in the gem setting. The rest of her jewelry's recently been cleaned; that tells you everything you need to know about the state of her marriage," Sherlock answers, stabbing an irritated finger toward the woman's left hand. John shakes his head with an admiring smile. The taller man drops back down to his knees and shows off the details. Amid how impressed he is, John almost misses that Sherlock is glancing at him while speaking instead of addressing the detective inspector. "Inside of the ring is shinier than the outside – that means it's regularly removed. The only polishing it gets is when she works it off her finger, but it can't be easy, so she must have a reason. Can't be for work; her nails are too long. Doesn't work with her hands, so what or rather who does she remove her ring for? Clearly not one lover; she'd never sustain the fiction of being single over time, so more likely a string of them. Simple."

"Brilliant," the word pops out of John, surprising Sherlock as much as himself. "Sorry."

"Cardiff?" Lestrade prompts, ending the awkward moment.

"Obvious, isn't it?"

"It's not obvious to me," John mutters.

"Dear God. What's it like inside your funny little brains? It must be so boring," Sherlock complains, then launches into another explanation while poking his phone. "Her coat: slightly damp. She's been in heavy rain in the last few hours. No rain anywhere in London until the last few minutes. Under her coat collar is damp, too. She's turned it up against the wind. She's got an umbrella in her left-hand pocket but it's dry and unused: not just wind, strong wind – too strong to use her umbrella. We know from her suitcase that she was intending to stay overnight, so she must have come a decent distance but she can't have traveled more than two or three hours because her coat still hasn't dried. So, where has there been heavy rain and strong wind within the radius of that travel time? Cardiff." As he finishes speaking, Sherlock turns his phone to face Lestrade. John can't see it from here, but looking up the weather is such a simple thing that for a moment he can't see why they hadn't done so themselves.

"Fantastic," John chuckles to himself, looking over the ridiculous notes he'd made.

"Do you know you do that out loud?" Sherlock asked, which popped John's head up from looking at the notebook.

"Sorry. I'll shut up."

"No, it's... it's fine," Sherlock answers as he stuffs his phone back in his pocket.

"There was no suitcase," Lestrade said, slightly smug.

"I'm sorry?" Sherlock prompted, turning back to see the smug look on the detective's face.

"You keep saying 'suitcase'. There wasn't one," Lestrade explained.

"Oh. I was assuming you'd taken it away," Sherlock replied, looking around the room reflexively to confirm.

"She had a handbag. Why'd you say she had a case?" Lestrade asked.

"Because she did. Her handbag – was there a mobile phone in it?" Sherlock replied with a question of his own.

"No."

"That's odd. That's very odd," Sherlock muttered, starting to move a bit in a way that was more fidgeting than proper pacing. Lestrade was clearly still confused, but the bullet-speed of Sherlock's train of thought was a bit to catch up to.

"Why?" Lestrade asked.

"Never mind. We need to find her case and Rachael," Sherlock insisted.

"She was writing Rachael?" Lestrade asked, clearly confused.

"No, she was leaving an angry note in German! Of course she was writing Rachael, there is no other word it could be," Sherlock shouted back. "Why did she wait until she was dying to write it?"

"How do you know she had a case?" John interrupted with his own question, as that seemed to be a better question to get the two men on the same page than the things they were actually saying to each other. Sherlock pointed down at the back of the woman's right leg, letting loose another rapid-fire explanation.

"Back of the right leg: tiny splash marks on the heel and calf, not present on the left. She was dragging a wheeled suitcase behind her with her right hand. Don't get that splash pattern any other way. Smallish case, judging by the spread. A case that size, woman this clothes conscious: could only be an overnight bag, so we know she was staying the night."

"Maybe she checked into a hotel, left her case there," John thought out loud, though that sounded off as soon as he said it because...

"She never made it to a hotel. Look at her hair! Color-coordinates her lipstick and her shoes. A woman like that would never leave the hotel with her hair still looking that ..." Sherlock babbles out the same thing John's slower mind was just processing before suddenly stopping and going wide-eyed. "Oh. Oh!" Sherlock's face lights up and he scampers out of the room, tugging at the blue cover-alls as he goes. John instinctively follows, which is a developing habit he's going to have to assess later.

"Sherlock?" John calls down the stairs.

"What? What is it? What, what, what?" Lestrade excitedly talks over John, leaning over the banister next to him as Sherlock twirls his way down the stairway, stripping off his gloves.

"Serial killers – always hard. Have to wait for them to make a mistake." John follows his curly head from above as he spirals down the stairs.

"Well, we can't just wait!" Lestrade shouts.

"Oh, we're done waiting! When she was found, she couldn't have been here long, is that right?" Sherlock stops descending and leans into the center of the stairwell to look up at them.

"No, not long at all – um, less than an hour," the D.I. confirms.

"Less than an hour," Sherlock echoes, before suddenly launching into rambling motion again, "An hour! News blackout - can you do that? Don't say that you've found her; nothing for a day."

"Why?" Lestrade asks, still leaning on the banister at the top of the stair.

"Look at her, really look! Houston, we have a mistake," Sherlock crows happily. The lanky man rushes off, freeing himself from the blue coveralls just as he reaches the ground floor and out of sight, absently calling to them over his shoulder: "Back in a moment!"

#

Adventuring and Dinner

Lestrade shouts after Sherlock and then huffs at his forensics team. John distractedly steps aside as Anderson comes onto the landing from where he'd been loitering in a hallway nearby. The man is clearly irritated at having his work delayed and hurries his subordinates along with short snappy comments. John isn't paying much attention, his mind churning slowly through the details trying to figure out what he was missing.

"We're after a psychopath," Lestrade explains to the irritated man.

"So, we're bringing in another psychopath to help?" is Anderson's snappy reply.

"If that's what it takes," the detective tells his subordinate with a little shrug.

"Pink... Media..." John mutters to himself, looking back through his notes as the forensics team gets to work looking for trace evidence. The talent for shorthand he'd developed in medical school served him well, he'd hardly been thinking about it as he scribbled out the details with his off hand without sullying his sterile working hand. "Oh, Anderson, you need to change his left glove, if you haven't already."

"What?" Anderson said, whirling back toward the landing.

"You touched your face and mouth when you were going on about the note being in German. Contamination, and all that," John said absently, only half paying attention.

"That's rich coming from you," Anderson answered with a vague gesture that might or might not be pointing at John's gloved hand holding his ratty notebook or the cane propped next to the railing he was leaning on.

"I'm left-handed, never touched the body with my right hand, did I Detective Lestrade?"

"Well... no," Lestrade said slowly, as if just realizing that he hadn't needed to prompt John at all. "It was very professional. Anderson, change your gloves."

"I realized what I did and changed them while your pet freak was sniffing around, not that he noticed," Anderson huffed, though John saw him tugging at his glove as he turned away from them and hurried back to his team.

"Sorry, you're ...?" Lestrade asks John.

"Captain Watson," John supplies absently, some important thought about the dead woman struggling to come together. Glancing back at his notes, his eyes fixed on Lestrade's unanswered question about the missing phone.

"Well, you're gonna have to go, Captain Watson, I've bent the rules enough tonight. Though... Where are you assigned that you ran into Sherlock?"

"Nowhere, invalided," John said, tucking his notes away to give his cane a waggle. "Rightfully, since I feel like someone's soaked my brain in molasses."

"Sherlock can have that effect on people," Lestrade chuckled conspiratorially. "Never mind trying to keep up with him on a normal day, let alone while on the mend."

"So can severe blood loss. He didn't mention my fitness when he was running down my life's story earlier, so I have to wonder if he was just being polite..." John began.

"Sherlock Holmes and polite don't belong in the same sentence," Anderson chimed in from where he was blatantly eavesdropping while supervising his team just inside the doorway.

"...or if he just couldn't deduce possible brain damage without some more obvious clue."

"Right, let me get you sorted," Lestrade said. His demeanor shifted from mildly annoyed and distracted to the pinched sort of pity that John hated most. He'd hoped that the Detective would have been more professional than that. "I'll have a talk with him later about professional courtesy. It's never worked before, but repeating it..."

"Do you know her occupation?" John interrupted before he could get distracted again. "You had her name, Jennifer Wilson, but do you actually know if she is in the media or not?"

"I haven't heard back since we called in her ID," Lestrade said as he ushered John down the stairs. "It can take a couple hours even for a priority case, New Scotland Yard or not."

"It's just that if she is, and a coat bright enough to be seen from space isn't necessarily good evidence, but if she is, then she should have something to record things on her. I had one fellow, some assistant to an intern or what have you that wasn't even a proper reporter yet, who tried to interview me about my job after he'd nearly had his finger severed in an argument about a woman." John had more trouble with his leg going down the stairs since he was focused more on wrangling his train of thought than where his cane was landing. Someone in a rush to get upstairs bumped into him hard and pitched him into the wobbly banister. Lestrade gave the other officer the evil eye on John's behalf, and the woman trailing after offered an apologetic nod to the short man.

"I don't follow," Lestrade said when they started walking again.

"Well, he could have waited for me to staunch the blood flow before he started playing twenty questions, but getting the story was more important to him. It wasn't just the one idiot, either. I've never met anyone in the business who wasn't a little rabid when offered a story, even if they were just the daytime telly sort. It's all a bit of a reach without something solid, but that would be a good way to get a woman dressed as posh as that into a place like this, wouldn't it? The lure of a scoop. She didn't have a phone on her, which I can't exactly cast stones over. She might have dropped it along the way or maybe she's a bit old fashioned about her work," John supposed, pointing vaguely at the notepad he kept in his pocket at all times. "A notebook or tape recorder? Whatever she had, if she knew she was coming up here for something not quite above board she might have dropped it on the way. Bit of a breadcrumb."

"If she wanted to leave some message it would be better to keep it on her," Lestrade countered as he watched John strip off the cover-alls, though he sounded thoughtful. "Rachel is our breadcrumb."

"People do their best thinking before they realize they are about to die," John said with conviction. "While they are still fighting it. After, it's all emotion and knee-jerk reaction. Sherlock thinks there is something missing that should be there and so do I, but for different reasons."

"Fair enough, and it might give us a better idea of how she ended up here if we can find it," Lestrade replies amiably. "It is odd for a professional woman like that not to have a phone. What precinct did you work for?"

"Pardon?"

"Before you were invalided, where were you...?"

"Afghanistan," John cuts the detective off when the misunderstanding registers, "Army, not police. Signed up when I was sixteen as a cadet. Don't really know what I'm doing with myself yet, now that that's gone."

"Oh." Lestrade goes quiet after that. Sergeant Donovan is still outside, now leaning against a patrol car chatting with the officer inside. John can see the fresh-faced man smiling at her gamely. Well, every division had a bicycle - ready and waiting to take a ride around the block. Once upon a time John resembled that remark, though he never let it distract him while on duty like this.

"He's gone," she calls over to the pair of them when the officer in the car jolts at the sight of the DI and redirects her attention.

"Who, Sherlock Holmes?" John asks.

"Yeah, he just took off. He does that," the woman says with a bit of malice.

"Is he coming back?" Lestrade asks.

"Didn't look like it."

"Right," John huffs and looks around. "Where am I?"

"Brixton," Lestrade supplies as he holds up the crime scene tape for John. "I'm guessing you came here with Sherlock from Baker Street?"

"Yeah, I was there when you came by to fetch him, looking to rent a room from Mrs. Hudson. Flat-share, actually, as the upstairs is just a bed and bog. Mike set us up, might have to phone him and ask what the blazes..." John says absently as he looks up at the sky tiredly, hoping to discern which way was north despite being recently accustomed to the brighter and differently positioned stars of a rural setting and distant latitude. No luck with the patchy cloud cover obscuring most of the sky. What he did see brought his thoughts to a halt. There, among the chimney pots on the roof across the street, was Sherlock Holmes. Tall frame lit by the full moon and the shine of a thousand city lights, he cuts an imposing figure as he stalks along one roof-line and then turns abruptly to dash to the other side of the building to look down along the other side.

"Myc set you up?" Lestrade echoes, and Donovan says something quietly in the detective's ear just beyond John's hearing. John ignores their mumbling and speaks over them.

"I thought you said Sherlock left."

"He did," Donovan huffs.

"Who's that, then?" John says and points. He turns back to the caustic woman. "You know, I get that you and Anderson think you don't need his help and don't like him, and maybe you have good reason for not liking him, but greeting a colleague by calling him a freak and shitting on the person standing next to him just because they are in the blast radius of your hate isn't terribly professional. Fair's fair and all, but you didn't notice just shy of two meters of personified flamboyance shimmying up the side of a building instead of leaving. Maybe stop flirting with your co-workers and pay attention to the perimeter you are meant to be keeping, yeah?" As John is speaking Sherlock darts out of view.

"What the hell is he doing up there?" Lestrade says at the same time Donovan bursts out indignantly.

"Who do you think you are?"

"Drop it, Sergeant, he has a point," Lestrade huffs at her.

"I'll just bother the man whose fault it is I'm stranded here," John begins to say as he pulls out the sleek smart phone he barely knows how to use, "though maybe that means I should be calling Mike." Remembering that Sherlock said he preferred to text John set about the laborious process of typing on the tiny screen using only the unreliable thumb on his formerly dominant hand, his right hand holding tight to his cane to give his leg as much of a rest as he could in case he was about to have a long walk. Best not to lose leverage in negotiating what he wanted needlessly, and he really did need to force himself to use his left hand more or the very real and not at all in his head nerve damage wouldn't heal properly.

"Good god, it hurts just looking at you using that," Donovan scoffed.

"Loss of fine motor skills due to complications from a botched bullet removal," John explained. The abrasive woman deserved a bit of her own attitude handed back to her. "Want to have a go at my cane, too?"

"Lay off the veteran, Donovan, you have a job to do," Lestrade prompts. John stands just on the other side of the crime scene tape and types as best he can on the slick screen. He felt fiercely jealous of the little keyboard he'd spotted on Sherlock's more utilitarian looking phone the entire time the other man was fiddling with it in the car. Why these i-Apple things were so popular and expensive when they were so badly designed was beyond his understanding. His laptop was just as bad. At least he'd used Microsoft computers some while in the Army. He'd bought the silver Mac when he was still spending money as if he expected to heal up and ship out soon and needed a computer of his own to keep up with email correspondence while in hospital. They sold him some cock and bull about Apples being simpler to learn, having the phone and computer match being important for some technical reason, and that it would make both easier to use if they matched. Fucking dishonest salespeople, he should have just gotten the Thinkpad. At least then he'd be able to call up some of his old Army buddies for help getting it set up instead of standing around waiting for a ridiculously twee 'Genius' for half a day while still in a wheelchair.

At length, and refusing to abbreviate things absurdly as he knew was common, John sent Sherlock a text reading: As much as I'd like to do this, I can't. You're too high for me. But you were my ride?

I'm perfectly sober. - SH Is the speedy reply, followed by, Who suggested I was high? and, while John was still typing his reply, Surely you are skilled enough as a doctor to know the difference between natural excitement and a chemically induced state.

High off th3 ground, John clarified. Well, that confirmed that the "William" business is a touchy issue. Joke about my height. And cane, but mostly height, he added.

Yes, because I'm on a roof. Sherlock's next text chimed just as John sent the second line. John could easily imagine the awkward posture and faint blush from Sherlock's earlier tidying spree returning.

Meet you somewhere when you've finished impersonating a gargoyle?

Baker Street. Sherlock's answer was a little slower to arrive this time.

No. John sent the single word before elaborating. Too far a walk for me even if I wouldn't get lost trying. Don't know Brixton, other than how long the ride was.

GPS on your phone not working? Get a cab. Tube station nearby, if you must. Not sure how long this will take. Shouldn't be long. The rapid-fire sentences came individually after another lengthy pause. John had started typing after the second one.

Instead: I follow on the ground, if not long, and call 999 if you slip and go silent? He hadn't had his prescribed walk today. At least it wouldn't be the same boring route.

By all means, follow if you can. John poked and grumbled at his phone until it surrendered a map to him.

I think they make these things intentionally hard to use. Have a map on the phone now. Still at crime scene, how far ahead are you? John limped off at a fair clip in the direction he last saw Sherlock.

John followed Sherlock's periodic directions, catching sight of the man frequently as he swanned over the rooftops like the chimney sweeps from Mary Poppins. The zig-zag circular path Sherlock had taken over the rooftops and through alleyways was hard for John to follow on the ground, and the man was moving swiftly whenever John caught sight of him, but the time Sherlock took between moving from one alley to another had let John keep pace so long as he didn't stop moving. The only problem was the misty rain that started coming down on the soldier's hair as the clouds rolled in. The breezy weather wasn't quite a proper storm, but the winter wet was still a great deal colder than John's tropics-adjusted body cared for. The exercise kept him warm, but only just enough not to duck in somewhere to warm up. Several chirps of his phone signaled that Sherlock had 'found it, I knew I would' and navigated John to the detective's exact location. The last in the series of excited and impatient messages was some sort of special link thing for the map that essentially let John walk his dot toward another dot that was Sherlock until the two collided head-on. The manic brunette was holding a small pink case when he poked his head out of an alley several blocks away from their starting location.

"A pink suitcase!" John exclaimed when he closed the distance enough that he didn't have to shout. A slight waver in his voice betrayed how close to chattering his teeth were.

"The height of fashion for the woman who matches everything she wears," Sherlock quipped. "The killer must have driven her to Lauriston Gardens, but forgot that her suitcase was in the car. Wouldn't have taken him long to realize, not more than five minutes. Then the killer - serial killer so male is most likely - has to dispose of this bright pink case somewhere, but couldn't be seen with it. Quite a notable sight, a man with something like this, and in that neighborhood? Twitching curtains all around. Little old ladies, I love little old ladies. Better than CCTV, but no one saw anything odd. Lestrade would have been all over it if they had. He had to find an alley big enough for a car so he could dump this as soon as possible."

"Brilliant, you called Lestrade?" John asked. Sherlock pushed the handle of the case at John's free hand.

"Without checking on the lead?" Sherlock asked, raising his arm to hail a taxi as soon as he was relieved of his burden. "I'm not his sniffer dog, John. I do far more than just locate and point out unnoticed evidence." The taller man directed the driver to Baker street and manhandled the pink case into the back with them. He looked John over as the taxi pulled into traffic, his face suddenly pinching with curiosity. "You are cold."

"It's January, and I'm used to lower latitudes. Not that Afghanistan is hot all the time. Peaks of 45C in the summer, of course, but it can be downright frigid at times with the Himalayas right next door. Add to that, I'd been in Africa and the South Pacific a good long while before that," John explained with a shrug. "It's been years since I've been back in London for winter. A nice thick jumper is usually enough, but then this misty rain. I'll be fine once I dry off."

"The fireplace should warm up the parlor quickly," Sherlock said.

A/N: NOT BRIT PICKED - Generally I believe that the simplified phonetic spellings of the American English I was taught in school are better, but I do appreciate that my cousins across the pond don't have to worry about their spell check not catching assess misspelled as asses because if they meant to insult, they'd call us arses instead. Yes, I spent a semester of college in Scotland poking my roots, but it was a hands-on art course and I didn't actually have to write much of anything. I also possess a rather imperfect brain with mild dyslexic tendencies. If there is anything grammatically wrong or some Americanism that slipped in that is particularly glaring to you, please do leave a comment. That's what the box is for.

I pick and choose scenes and details from The Study In Pink and the Un-aired Pilot at my own discretion in the first part. Also, I don't care for the John Watson Moffat created, particularly in Series 3 and 4. When I think about Watson across recent interpretations, I feel that Jude Law was given a better script to work from for all that I think Martin Freeman did amazing work with what he was given. He starts off great: both in A Study in Pink as it was aired and the Pilot, developing in the Blind Banker, and right through The Great Game; however, the longer the series goes the more off the rails the characterization of the main characters gets. It's that trap in modern media where the stakes must always be raised higher and higher as things go along clashing with previous character development until we end up watching a mash-up of Saw and The Ring starring Sherlock's secret sister. Also, he is often stuck acting a bit stupid so that we, the audience, can have a detailed explanation we need to catch up to things that happened off screen and that isn't handeled as well as it could be in my humble opinion.