I know, I've dropped the ball with my TP fanfictions! Don't worry, I'm still a part of the fandom, I just have been rather dramatically consumed by my love for BBC Sherlock. I'm trying to avoid going rabid with the amount of fanfiction I produce, but I couldn't resist this little character study/porn with plot! :D

A Study in Triplicate

The front door slammed shut with an impressive bang, rattling the window frames of 221B Baker Street and causing a precariously-perched volume to slip onto the floor with a soft puff of dust. Someone really ought to Hoover the rug, Sherlock thought idly – and by "someone," he meant Dr. John Watson. However, considering the amount of force said doctor was using to climb the seventeen steps to their flat – and considering the reasons for said force, which Sherlock had deduced even as John had departed the flat half an hour earlier – he decided it was safe to assume (not guess, he never guessed) that John would not be doing any housecleaning any time soon. Sherlock sighed, a gentle rise and fall of his ribcage from where he lay neat as a corpse on the living room couch, and resigned himself to a continuation of dust for the foreseeable future.

No sooner had he coaxed a satisfactory state of acceptance from his current lethargic indifference than the door to their flat opened – rather civilly, Sherlock thought – and clicked shut again. He didn't even bother to open his eyes or lower the hands pressed prayer-like beneath his chin as he inquired, "Have a good time?"

There was an ominous quiet, broken only by the faint hiss of air being draw into tight nostrils and held for four heartbeats. Sherlock counted them in the silence, feeling the blood push nicotine through his veins, and waited.

"I think you know exactly how it bloody well went." The words were fairly restrained, on the outside. But Sherlock could hear the faint shake in the way the curse fell from John's lips, feel the creaking of the floorboards underneath carpet and rug and sofa as the doctor shifted his weight in agitation.

"You should sit down if your leg is bothering you." It was a perfectly innocuous suggestion, showing both concern and practicality in one short sentence. Sherlock was actually rather pleased with himself for mentioning it. Perhaps it would serve to calm his flatmate's stretched nerves in the interim between the strained silence and the inevitably explosive argument. Sherlock toyed briefly with attempting to guess how long John would hold out before the shouting began, and dismissed it. The time was far too short to be accurately measured without some kind of micro-unit stopwatch.

"Why did you do this, Sherlock?" Right on time. "You bloody well knew what was happening, and you let me walk out and put my foot right into it. My whole sodding leg, in fact, which you can shut up about by the way, since your concern is clearly false." A short pause filled with the gritty sound of teeth forcing themselves together. "Just… what the hell, Sherlock."

It wasn't a question, but Sherlock deigned to open his eyes anyway. He only just refrained from blinking in surprise. The barely-contained fury in John's voice hadn't prepared him for the look of betrayal sunk deeply into the lines of his face. He looked almost… lost: as if Sherlock had turned on him without warning mid-case and asked him to leave and never come back. Suddenly reluctant to speak, Sherlock swallowed the first bitter dregs of anxiety and opened his mouth.

"No. Actually, no, don't speak. How could that slip your mind? Or was it just manipulative on your part?" John was quieter now, but the thin vein of calm running through his voice had melted away, leaving a tightly-wound iron coil of anger in its place. "God, Sherlock. When you said you considered yourself married to your work, I didn't think you meant it literally." John tugged his fingers through his short-cropped hair and turned away. "I'm going upstairs. Don't bother trying to talk to me for at least twelve hours."

The snick of the door slipping shut behind him was terribly anticlimactic, and Sherlock felt his body sag back into the cushions of the couch without asking for permission. Alone in the suddenly empty room – it hadn't seemed quite this empty five minutes ago – Sherlock looked up at the ceiling and muttered, "Lestrade and I are not married. We're shagging. There's a clear distinction there, John, if you'd care to examine it further."

But John wasn't there. John was upstairs, banging around in the half-bath they'd recently outfitted with a cramped shower, and couldn't hear a word Sherlock had said. Somehow, Sherlock didn't think it would make much difference if he had.