What's considerate is that Sherlock refrains from pointing out that John fails to see quite a lot of things, some of them exceptionally important. The sentiment might just be evident on his face, in the look in his eyes, but he doesn't say it, and that has to count for something. Then again, maybe what he does say isn't that much better.
“Well, it saves time. Cuts out the middleman. Keeps me having to deal with the violent crimes lot at the Yard...” What's not to like? Besides, it's new, and there's more value in that than Sherlock could possibly hope to express.
Pale, curious eyes sweep over John's form as they do at every return, reading the time spent apart, partaking of it vicariously and then discarding it more often than not when it fails to produce anything new enough. It's all new, of course, in some ways. Situationally, insofar as none of it's happened before. All new, and possibly all worth remembering - jury's still out - but Sherlock's mental file on John Watson is already more extensive than he should probably permit it to be. The jury's still out on that too.
So now? Shift at the surgery, obvious by the clothes he's chosen to wear. Not a bad one, the limp isn't back, his shoulders aren't slumped, face isn't lined in that pinched and exasperated way which meant a bad or wearying day. Not too many children with criminally idiotic parents, not too many parents with criminally idiotic children, not a single case of genital warts. That means just the usual, colds and flu and other minor complaints for which no doctor worth his salt would actually bother to prescribe anything; boring. Incurably boring.
Good for Sherlock, though. Boring made whatever he had on look better by comparison.
“Have to take it down to Bart's for analysis, of course; nothing else doing, could be convinced to stop by at that Chinese place with the cashew chicken if you're on form, might get to shoot something if I'm on form, pair of nitrile gloves with your name on it either way, so: date, yes or no?”
"Well, when you put it like that, how can I refuse."
John sighs a little, exasperated as always but bordering on weirdly fond. Explaining the term date properly will have to wait. Again. Besides, that Chinese place is very good and, well, the possibility of shooting things always perked John up after a mundane day.
He wanders over to the hand in question. While he abhors fingers in the refrigerator and feet in the tub, this is different. And he'll argue that point verily. This is ... Well. Just different. He stoops down to look at it.
"Well. It's certainly a clean cut all the way through, isn't it? I suppose you've already figured out the exact make of tool used to sever it?"
Sherlock is, of course, well aware of the fact that John's given definition of the abstract noun 'date' and his actual internal definition of the term vary rather wildly, but Sherlock has nonetheless adopted the former. Largely he's done so because it suits him, but of equal import is the fact that when he does imply a definition which runs contrary to John's own, it means that Faces will be Made. Good faces. Weary faces, but not the sort which mean that John is actually disappointed (unbearable), but rather amused and fond and a bit put out (wonderful).
Really, he doesn't know how the man expects him to resist when every time, every time there are the eyebrows, just the faintest inclination, pleading. Sherlock likes that, likes when John asks him for things. It means he's capable of producing something worth having, even if it's just mercy, and what's having is, generally speaking, worth sharing with someone who can appreciate it. Which, generally, is only John. As is to be expected, if Sherlock is entirely honest. The (qualitatively, not always morally) good doctor Watson is an exception to so many of his rules.
"Tools," Sherlock replies, peering back down into the box and extending one long finger to indicate the cut end. "Knife first, quite sharp, likely a curved blade. You can see nicks on the radius there from where he--" most likely he, could be mistaken, male until proven female, simply more convenient "--sliced through the flesh. Bones've been severed by a Gigli saw most likely, not quite neat enough for an oscillating blade. All rather low-tech. Neat, though. Whoever did this is used to working with dead things."
Or, well, organic things, anyway. Organisms. Nobody ever said something had to be dead before one flayed it, after all.
Sherlock's eyes flick back to John expectantly. He's smiling ever so faintly, self-satisfied, proud of himself as he often is when the noise goes and a case comes and he's back to being brilliant. Back to being valuable, since it's only when he's being brilliant that he can be what John needs him to be, what nobody else can be for him: blindingly clever, more than a little bit dangerous, and just the right amount of mad.
"Hmm," John hums, a quiet agreement of yes, yes, I see. In his times as a surgeon, he never had to do much really in the way of cutting through bones, but in his times in the army he once nearly had to himself cut off a man's hand to stop infection.
Fortunately it hadn't come to that, but a part of him feels like, if it had, he'd have done a much better job than this.
"Do you think, then, possibly a professional? Or merely a hobbyist?"
John really does enjoy hearing Sherlock deduce things. Even after all this, it's still fascinating and wonderful, and John seems to sort of understand it better than most people. Seems. He's never honestly been sure as far as Sherlock is concerned. But he knows all the right questions to ask by now, knows when to be bold and make his own assumptions and knows when to shut up and just do things. This is an Ask Questions moment. He's sure of it.
It must be an Ask Questions moment when each further one has Sherlock visibly more and more pleased with himself, looking up at John as though he might just start rubbing up against his legs like a vastly oversized cat.
"The job he did with the bone isn't very good," he admits, "but the skinning is exquisite work. A hobbyist maybe, quite a dedicated hobbyist, but I'd say more likely a professional. Taxidermist, maybe a furrier; the knife has cut into the muscle just faintly here and here, quite sharp, curved edge. A skinner's blade wielded by someone who knows how to use it. Hunting enthusiast? No. Maybe?"
Possible. Unlikely but can't be discounted. Sherlock waves the thought away with the sharp gesture of one large hand. "Not important, not exactly, best see if we can't get any prints off the box. Won't be getting any off the hand, obviously, no fingerprints left, have to try to sort out whose it is some other way."
Which will mean lots of database searching, no doubt, but that's what Molly Hooper is for. Sherlock shuts the flaps of the box with more force than is likely necessary and launches himself from the sofa, the fact of John's arrival catching up with him properly and tipping his internal balance back in the direction of mania. New case, John's here, will come along, nothing holding them back now so it's best, absolutely best, that they just go.
"Taxidermist, I think, almost definitely," he amends over his shoulder as he pads along the hallway to his room to change out of his pyjamas, a feat he can accomplish with astonishing speed when there's something interesting out there waiting. When he returns, straightening his jacket, he's grinning, wolfish and genuinely delighted.
"Come along, John! I should hate to keep our mysterious benefactor waiting."
"I'd hate to meet the man who does do a good job with the bone," he mutters to himself.
In the few moments it takes Sherlock to dress, John's managed to shrug on his jacket again. The corner of his lips quirk up in a smile that never ceases to be amazed at the man he calls his flatmate.
"And just when do we get to partake in cashew chicken?"
"Once you've convinced me that we should," Sherlock responds archly as he loops his scarf about his neck and reaches for his coat.
"I told you, play your cards right, but we've hardly even begun yet," he adds as they slip out the door and Sherlock slips on his gloves. He hails the taxi. He always hails the taxi. They don't come for John, small and nondescript, jumpers which imply he's poorer than he actually (generally) is, but Sherlock, Sherlock with his expensive coat and his tailored shirts and his height, oh, they come slobbering to him, grovelling to him. It's disgustingly easy.
Sometimes in his madder moods Sherlock thinks, generously, that of course they come to him, why shouldn't they? Why wouldn't anyone want to brush up against him and the things he knows and the things he sees and does and tastes on days like this, times like this with the sun on its way down and the monsters on the cusp of waking up? Why wouldn't they want to see the city as he sees the city, see its people stretch out into timelines instead of snapshots, make thousands of little deductions which shape one moment into many. There's so much, and isn't he so very charitable, the way he lets them have a little taste? Lets them partake of conversations low and excited from the back seat, a madman and his doctor out to do remarkable things. Great things.
It is, it is charitable, it is kind, who wouldn't want that?
Nearly everybody, the more jaded side of Sherlock knows. Most don't care, most of the rest don't dare, and of the leftovers hardly any are worth the time. For Sherlock there's one, there's one in all the world and sometimes he's under the distinct and somewhat worrying impression that he loves John desperately for that. What an awful distraction that would be. What an awful weakness.
Then again, maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe he can and can't all at once, maybe he can play the spectrum and they'll still work, still fit nicely in the places they've made for themselves, circles of intimacy and distance and a status quo that is, against all odds, entirely comfortable. John would still make him tea and stitch him up when he needs it and shout about stray experiments and Sherlock would still be brilliant and razor-keen and his mind would still be strange and beautiful. Perhaps yes, perhaps it would all be good.
But what's the point in dwelling on that when there's a case on? When Sherlock can pile the both of them in the back of a taxi with a box on his lap and a hand in the box and the driver none the wiser, oh how he'd shout, probably call the police, quite funny; not going to happen though, not this time. Not--
"St. Bart's," Sherlock commands, interrupting his own thoughts. Hush. Hush. Back to the work. The work makes sense, won't drag him 'round in circles. Good. Better.
"You'll let me order the soup dumplings this time," he commands John, distracted enough that he fails to note he's admitting to having given in already. "Your pronunciation's atrocious; last time you asked for a bowl of sleep."
The cab thing always sort of ruffles John's feathers. It's beyond annoying to try and hail one when he's on his own, and there used to be a time in his life when everything was just much easier. No, he's learned to either run everywhere or just let Sherlock do everything.
He snorts as he settles into the back of the cab. St. Bart's. Funny how much of his life is spent there, really. First school, now this.
"I wasn't called Three Continents Watson for my pronunciation skills," John mutters, slightly bristled but mostly amused. He glances over at Sherlock. "Unlike you, I need food to keep me going. And you never let me finish a meal, you know. Miracle I haven't wasted away to nothing like you."
Sherlock huffs, the sound both indignant and amused. "No, they called you that for the remarkable pull you have with women who'll want nothing to do with you anymore within a month's time, I expect."
He doesn't mean it to sound as awful as it does. Doesn't, in fact, quite notice that it sounds as awful as it does, as in his mind it only highlights the distinction between himself and John's girlfriends, a distinction of which he's rather proud. Sherlock stays. They come and go and he stays, which is as it should be. He is, after all, John's friend, or something like it.
On such matters Sherlock is quite practical. His observations of such relationships has lead him to the conclusion that most people are behaving out of accordance with the agreed-upon definition of the term, and he isn't keen upon doing the same. The fact is that people have lovers, and lovers come and go, sometimes comfortably and sometimes not. Then people have husbands and wives and those, often as not, go too, the statistics on divorce make that quite plain. So after that, obviously, last and best of all, people have friends, or a friend as the case may be (or occasionally none at all which is also alright if not quite as good), and friends stay.
Not always, of course. Some do go. People do drift apart. But the point of it is to stay, and they do, even when lovers and spouses come and go, so obviously, logically, one ought to treasure them most. That only makes sense, and Sherlock, Sherlock is still here. It must mean something.
"Also, you've had breakfast and lunch today," he adds almost petulantly, "a sandwich, I can tell; you really don't need more than that, do you? I might just be the only thing standing between you and a belly, you know; perhaps you should be thanking me."
John's lips set themselves in a thin line. Leave it to Sherlock to take a small joke and make it completely offensive. He turns to look out the window, a trip they've taken many times, every building and corner the exact same as the day before. Even some of the people are the same.
"No, I expect not."
Because who, apart from Sherlock really, wants anything to do with John for any extended length of time. He's come to quietly accept this fact in life, and he supposes that he'd rather be wanted by one person rather than by none. Though back in his youth, he had never really been wanting for company, and he'd never once expected to lose that sense of popularity. Oh, people like him, and he's charming and full of tact and knows how to behave.
Apparently, as most of his short-lived girlfriends are quick to point out, he'd supposedly be much happier with Sherlock.
Absurd.
"Right. Because normal people don't eat several meals a day."
Leave it to Sherlock to completely miss the fact that he's been offensive until he looks away from the window and reads it in the lines of John's shoulders and the set of his jaw. Oh, disappointment, Sherlock hates the disappointment, it's so much worse than the anger. The anger is horrible too but at least it's fascinating rather than just wearying. Someday, maybe, Sherlock will try pushing it, will try to see just how angry John can get before he snaps and, and...
Well, that probably shouldn't be so intriguing. Delete it. Smash it down to nothing.
"Do they?" he asks, annoyed, though mostly at himself. "I hardly see what that's got to do with the situation. It isn't as though you're normal, is it? There's no call to be disgusting, no, you're not even close and you shouldn't say such things. I can't even imagine how awful that would be. You, I mean, normal. Horrible."
He wrinkles his nose and looks back out the window, jaw set rather like John's now. It isn't as though he meant to be offensive, and he's probably sorry for it in some small part of himself he's currently ignoring, so there's really no call to be so insulting. If John were normal he'd be like the boring lot out the windows, like the man there who doesn't even know his wife is cheating on him, not only stupid but blind, far blinder than John Watson has ever been and far, far less interesting.
That woman there's got three kids and two jobs and she's never shot a man through a window at twelve metres or chased after Sherlock chasing after a murderer over rooftops. All of them bland, every last person he can see out the window, and for all they're colourful they're still just like the white noise hollowness of boredom. And John isn't, and that's obvious. Normal, never.
"Normal, Sherlock, in the sense that the human body has basic needs to function both properly and healthily, and by some bizarre twist of fate you've managed to completely cheat every genetic code there is and live off of tea and the occasional biscuit."
He runs his tongue over his lips. This is how they function. One moment everything's fine, the next they're snarking, and then they end up giggling like school girls over something they only find funny.
Like an old married couple. John's not sure who the wife is, and he has a sinking feeling it's him.
At the hospital, John clambers out quickly, intent on leaving Sherlock to pay for once. It's his way of being vindictive and putting water under the bridge.
"Lab first," Sherlock responds easily once he's paid (not half the bother John seems to think it is) and clambered out of the taxi with the box held carefully out in front of him, "definitely. I want first crack, and then Molly can do whatever it is morgue techs do with flayed, severed, crushed hands."
Autopsy them and put them to rest? Chuck them in the biohazard bin? Frankly he's no idea and he finds he doesn't much care, though likely he should. Might come up someday; who knew?
"And then we'll feed you up." Like girlfriends. How awful, horrible association, delete it. "Since you're so convinced you need it."
His sniff suggests that he finds the idea dubious, though really, John is being entirely unfair. Sherlock doesn't eat when he's on cases, true, but he does other times. Well, alright, sometimes, but when he actually is hungry he's ravenous, because he doesn't seem to be capable of doing anything halfway, except perhaps the dishes.
Sherlock has become such a common fixture in the labs that his entrance and subsequent beeline to the one he's designated for himself is hardly worth noting. Nobody stops him, nobody says a word, and that's precisely how he likes it. No distractions.
The first order of business isn't actually the hand, it's the box. Postmarked at the office so no hope of a swab from a stamp, but that's alright. The tape he strips away carefully to determine the brand and check for fingerprints, dusting it and spreading it out on a backlit table. There's not much, most of it useless and smeared, but he takes what he can anyway. Next is the box itself, cardboard, not likely to hold a print but Sherlock carefully removes the hand to a specimen tray and searches it inside and out for fibres, meticulous in his manipulations, almost loving in the slide of his gloved hand. This is Sherlock in his element, after all.
The hand itself comes last, well-examined as it already is, and here Sherlock finally, finally raises his eyes to John again. "The bones were broken after the hand was flayed and severed; why? Why would someone do that?"
He's already a list of possible reasons, of course, some fairly sound though all are speculatory, but he wants to hear which John favours all the same.
While Sherlock makes his way purposely toward everything, John pauses to nod and say hello to everyone. It's what he does. He makes up for what Sherlock lacks. While Sherlock does whatever it is he does, John stands nearby. He pokes at other things in the lab, leans against counters, watches. Watching Sherlock work is like a lesson in patience and thoroughness. He looks at things that nobody would even think of looking at. Before long, John finds himself hovering over Sherlock's shoulder and watching.
"Hmm? Oh."
John shrugs. Secretly, he's always very pleased to be ask his opinion. It's what proved his value back in those crucial first real hours of getting to know each other, and he feels that if he lost that value, Sherlock would have nothing to do with him. Of course, sometimes Sherlock does it just to have a good laugh, John thinks, but that doesn't stop him from trying to impress.
"Well. My first reaction would be clearly to throw you off the trail. But that seems like a bit of an amateur mistake, doesn't it, since clearly the sender knows you wouldn't miss that. So perhaps he's just having a go at you. Keeping you on your toes, delaying you by precious minutes."
For the span of a few seconds Sherlock is still save for his eyes, bright, strange eyes that look far too deeply, read far too intently. He knows that being fixed with his gaze sometimes makes people uncomfortable, a situation to which even John isn't immune, but he doesn't care nearly enough to stop himself looking. John has the relative misfortune to be the object of Sherlock's scrutiny more often than anyone else, at that. He's essential. Utterly essential, and therefore so is reading him down to the last tiny detail.
The most surprising part of all that, for Sherlock, is that it's also a genuine pleasure.
"Perhaps," he says finally, turning back to the severed appendage. "Or it could be this isn't about me." His eyes flick warningly up to John. Miracle, that. Yes, yes. The obvious dig.
"It could be about this fellow," he says, pointing at the hand. "This, the hand, it wasn't just cut off and sent to me. It wasn't enough that whoever this was had to die; their corpse also had to be ruined. It was ruined, look at it. Meticulously, carefully, but brutally too. Obviously intentionally."
He falls silent, frowning down at the hand with his hands folded, fingertips tapping lightly against his chin, but after a few seconds his hands part again and his eyebrows rise in a conceding expression. "Or maybe that's supposed to throw me off the trail. Difficult to say. Dinner? Drop this in the morgue, post office tomorrow, see if they've got security footage of whoever mailed this package."
John frowns. Not about Sherlock? Why else would there be a bloody severed hand in the mail?
"Is it meant to be a gift, then, not a calling card?"
Endless possibilities make John's head hurt. He's a doctor by trade. Things are lined up very nicely and when all the symptoms are in check, there is only one possibility. The world of Grey Areas has never come up. Someone is sick, or they aren't.
"Dinner."
Because saying he doesn't want to eat anymore will just cause problems, and dinner dates are part of the essential thinking process.
"You can tell me how to properly order dumplings."
“Well, it saves time. Cuts out the middleman. Keeps me having to deal with the violent crimes lot at the Yard...” What's not to like? Besides, it's new, and there's more value in that than Sherlock could possibly hope to express.
Pale, curious eyes sweep over John's form as they do at every return, reading the time spent apart, partaking of it vicariously and then discarding it more often than not when it fails to produce anything new enough. It's all new, of course, in some ways. Situationally, insofar as none of it's happened before. All new, and possibly all worth remembering - jury's still out - but Sherlock's mental file on John Watson is already more extensive than he should probably permit it to be. The jury's still out on that too.
So now? Shift at the surgery, obvious by the clothes he's chosen to wear. Not a bad one, the limp isn't back, his shoulders aren't slumped, face isn't lined in that pinched and exasperated way which meant a bad or wearying day. Not too many children with criminally idiotic parents, not too many parents with criminally idiotic children, not a single case of genital warts. That means just the usual, colds and flu and other minor complaints for which no doctor worth his salt would actually bother to prescribe anything; boring. Incurably boring.
Good for Sherlock, though. Boring made whatever he had on look better by comparison.
“Have to take it down to Bart's for analysis, of course; nothing else doing, could be convinced to stop by at that Chinese place with the cashew chicken if you're on form, might get to shoot something if I'm on form, pair of nitrile gloves with your name on it either way, so: date, yes or no?”
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John sighs a little, exasperated as always but bordering on weirdly fond. Explaining the term date properly will have to wait. Again. Besides, that Chinese place is very good and, well, the possibility of shooting things always perked John up after a mundane day.
He wanders over to the hand in question. While he abhors fingers in the refrigerator and feet in the tub, this is different. And he'll argue that point verily. This is ... Well. Just different. He stoops down to look at it.
"Well. It's certainly a clean cut all the way through, isn't it? I suppose you've already figured out the exact make of tool used to sever it?"
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Really, he doesn't know how the man expects him to resist when every time, every time there are the eyebrows, just the faintest inclination, pleading. Sherlock likes that, likes when John asks him for things. It means he's capable of producing something worth having, even if it's just mercy, and what's having is, generally speaking, worth sharing with someone who can appreciate it. Which, generally, is only John. As is to be expected, if Sherlock is entirely honest. The (qualitatively, not always morally) good doctor Watson is an exception to so many of his rules.
"Tools," Sherlock replies, peering back down into the box and extending one long finger to indicate the cut end. "Knife first, quite sharp, likely a curved blade. You can see nicks on the radius there from where he--" most likely he, could be mistaken, male until proven female, simply more convenient "--sliced through the flesh. Bones've been severed by a Gigli saw most likely, not quite neat enough for an oscillating blade. All rather low-tech. Neat, though. Whoever did this is used to working with dead things."
Or, well, organic things, anyway. Organisms. Nobody ever said something had to be dead before one flayed it, after all.
Sherlock's eyes flick back to John expectantly. He's smiling ever so faintly, self-satisfied, proud of himself as he often is when the noise goes and a case comes and he's back to being brilliant. Back to being valuable, since it's only when he's being brilliant that he can be what John needs him to be, what nobody else can be for him: blindingly clever, more than a little bit dangerous, and just the right amount of mad.
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Fortunately it hadn't come to that, but a part of him feels like, if it had, he'd have done a much better job than this.
"Do you think, then, possibly a professional? Or merely a hobbyist?"
John really does enjoy hearing Sherlock deduce things. Even after all this, it's still fascinating and wonderful, and John seems to sort of understand it better than most people. Seems. He's never honestly been sure as far as Sherlock is concerned. But he knows all the right questions to ask by now, knows when to be bold and make his own assumptions and knows when to shut up and just do things. This is an Ask Questions moment. He's sure of it.
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"The job he did with the bone isn't very good," he admits, "but the skinning is exquisite work. A hobbyist maybe, quite a dedicated hobbyist, but I'd say more likely a professional. Taxidermist, maybe a furrier; the knife has cut into the muscle just faintly here and here, quite sharp, curved edge. A skinner's blade wielded by someone who knows how to use it. Hunting enthusiast? No. Maybe?"
Possible. Unlikely but can't be discounted. Sherlock waves the thought away with the sharp gesture of one large hand. "Not important, not exactly, best see if we can't get any prints off the box. Won't be getting any off the hand, obviously, no fingerprints left, have to try to sort out whose it is some other way."
Which will mean lots of database searching, no doubt, but that's what Molly Hooper is for. Sherlock shuts the flaps of the box with more force than is likely necessary and launches himself from the sofa, the fact of John's arrival catching up with him properly and tipping his internal balance back in the direction of mania. New case, John's here, will come along, nothing holding them back now so it's best, absolutely best, that they just go.
"Taxidermist, I think, almost definitely," he amends over his shoulder as he pads along the hallway to his room to change out of his pyjamas, a feat he can accomplish with astonishing speed when there's something interesting out there waiting. When he returns, straightening his jacket, he's grinning, wolfish and genuinely delighted.
"Come along, John! I should hate to keep our mysterious benefactor waiting."
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In the few moments it takes Sherlock to dress, John's managed to shrug on his jacket again. The corner of his lips quirk up in a smile that never ceases to be amazed at the man he calls his flatmate.
"And just when do we get to partake in cashew chicken?"
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"I told you, play your cards right, but we've hardly even begun yet," he adds as they slip out the door and Sherlock slips on his gloves. He hails the taxi. He always hails the taxi. They don't come for John, small and nondescript, jumpers which imply he's poorer than he actually (generally) is, but Sherlock, Sherlock with his expensive coat and his tailored shirts and his height, oh, they come slobbering to him, grovelling to him. It's disgustingly easy.
Sometimes in his madder moods Sherlock thinks, generously, that of course they come to him, why shouldn't they? Why wouldn't anyone want to brush up against him and the things he knows and the things he sees and does and tastes on days like this, times like this with the sun on its way down and the monsters on the cusp of waking up? Why wouldn't they want to see the city as he sees the city, see its people stretch out into timelines instead of snapshots, make thousands of little deductions which shape one moment into many. There's so much, and isn't he so very charitable, the way he lets them have a little taste? Lets them partake of conversations low and excited from the back seat, a madman and his doctor out to do remarkable things. Great things.
It is, it is charitable, it is kind, who wouldn't want that?
Nearly everybody, the more jaded side of Sherlock knows. Most don't care, most of the rest don't dare, and of the leftovers hardly any are worth the time. For Sherlock there's one, there's one in all the world and sometimes he's under the distinct and somewhat worrying impression that he loves John desperately for that. What an awful distraction that would be. What an awful weakness.
Then again, maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe he can and can't all at once, maybe he can play the spectrum and they'll still work, still fit nicely in the places they've made for themselves, circles of intimacy and distance and a status quo that is, against all odds, entirely comfortable. John would still make him tea and stitch him up when he needs it and shout about stray experiments and Sherlock would still be brilliant and razor-keen and his mind would still be strange and beautiful. Perhaps yes, perhaps it would all be good.
But what's the point in dwelling on that when there's a case on? When Sherlock can pile the both of them in the back of a taxi with a box on his lap and a hand in the box and the driver none the wiser, oh how he'd shout, probably call the police, quite funny; not going to happen though, not this time. Not--
"St. Bart's," Sherlock commands, interrupting his own thoughts. Hush. Hush. Back to the work. The work makes sense, won't drag him 'round in circles. Good. Better.
"You'll let me order the soup dumplings this time," he commands John, distracted enough that he fails to note he's admitting to having given in already. "Your pronunciation's atrocious; last time you asked for a bowl of sleep."
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He snorts as he settles into the back of the cab. St. Bart's. Funny how much of his life is spent there, really. First school, now this.
"I wasn't called Three Continents Watson for my pronunciation skills," John mutters, slightly bristled but mostly amused. He glances over at Sherlock. "Unlike you, I need food to keep me going. And you never let me finish a meal, you know. Miracle I haven't wasted away to nothing like you."
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He doesn't mean it to sound as awful as it does. Doesn't, in fact, quite notice that it sounds as awful as it does, as in his mind it only highlights the distinction between himself and John's girlfriends, a distinction of which he's rather proud. Sherlock stays. They come and go and he stays, which is as it should be. He is, after all, John's friend, or something like it.
On such matters Sherlock is quite practical. His observations of such relationships has lead him to the conclusion that most people are behaving out of accordance with the agreed-upon definition of the term, and he isn't keen upon doing the same. The fact is that people have lovers, and lovers come and go, sometimes comfortably and sometimes not. Then people have husbands and wives and those, often as not, go too, the statistics on divorce make that quite plain. So after that, obviously, last and best of all, people have friends, or a friend as the case may be (or occasionally none at all which is also alright if not quite as good), and friends stay.
Not always, of course. Some do go. People do drift apart. But the point of it is to stay, and they do, even when lovers and spouses come and go, so obviously, logically, one ought to treasure them most. That only makes sense, and Sherlock, Sherlock is still here. It must mean something.
"Also, you've had breakfast and lunch today," he adds almost petulantly, "a sandwich, I can tell; you really don't need more than that, do you? I might just be the only thing standing between you and a belly, you know; perhaps you should be thanking me."
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"No, I expect not."
Because who, apart from Sherlock really, wants anything to do with John for any extended length of time. He's come to quietly accept this fact in life, and he supposes that he'd rather be wanted by one person rather than by none. Though back in his youth, he had never really been wanting for company, and he'd never once expected to lose that sense of popularity. Oh, people like him, and he's charming and full of tact and knows how to behave.
Apparently, as most of his short-lived girlfriends are quick to point out, he'd supposedly be much happier with Sherlock.
Absurd.
"Right. Because normal people don't eat several meals a day."
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Well, that probably shouldn't be so intriguing. Delete it. Smash it down to nothing.
"Do they?" he asks, annoyed, though mostly at himself. "I hardly see what that's got to do with the situation. It isn't as though you're normal, is it? There's no call to be disgusting, no, you're not even close and you shouldn't say such things. I can't even imagine how awful that would be. You, I mean, normal. Horrible."
He wrinkles his nose and looks back out the window, jaw set rather like John's now. It isn't as though he meant to be offensive, and he's probably sorry for it in some small part of himself he's currently ignoring, so there's really no call to be so insulting. If John were normal he'd be like the boring lot out the windows, like the man there who doesn't even know his wife is cheating on him, not only stupid but blind, far blinder than John Watson has ever been and far, far less interesting.
That woman there's got three kids and two jobs and she's never shot a man through a window at twelve metres or chased after Sherlock chasing after a murderer over rooftops. All of them bland, every last person he can see out the window, and for all they're colourful they're still just like the white noise hollowness of boredom. And John isn't, and that's obvious. Normal, never.
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He runs his tongue over his lips. This is how they function. One moment everything's fine, the next they're snarking, and then they end up giggling like school girls over something they only find funny.
Like an old married couple. John's not sure who the wife is, and he has a sinking feeling it's him.
At the hospital, John clambers out quickly, intent on leaving Sherlock to pay for once. It's his way of being vindictive and putting water under the bridge.
"To the morgue or the labs first?"
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Autopsy them and put them to rest? Chuck them in the biohazard bin? Frankly he's no idea and he finds he doesn't much care, though likely he should. Might come up someday; who knew?
"And then we'll feed you up." Like girlfriends. How awful, horrible association, delete it. "Since you're so convinced you need it."
His sniff suggests that he finds the idea dubious, though really, John is being entirely unfair. Sherlock doesn't eat when he's on cases, true, but he does other times. Well, alright, sometimes, but when he actually is hungry he's ravenous, because he doesn't seem to be capable of doing anything halfway, except perhaps the dishes.
Sherlock has become such a common fixture in the labs that his entrance and subsequent beeline to the one he's designated for himself is hardly worth noting. Nobody stops him, nobody says a word, and that's precisely how he likes it. No distractions.
The first order of business isn't actually the hand, it's the box. Postmarked at the office so no hope of a swab from a stamp, but that's alright. The tape he strips away carefully to determine the brand and check for fingerprints, dusting it and spreading it out on a backlit table. There's not much, most of it useless and smeared, but he takes what he can anyway. Next is the box itself, cardboard, not likely to hold a print but Sherlock carefully removes the hand to a specimen tray and searches it inside and out for fibres, meticulous in his manipulations, almost loving in the slide of his gloved hand. This is Sherlock in his element, after all.
The hand itself comes last, well-examined as it already is, and here Sherlock finally, finally raises his eyes to John again. "The bones were broken after the hand was flayed and severed; why? Why would someone do that?"
He's already a list of possible reasons, of course, some fairly sound though all are speculatory, but he wants to hear which John favours all the same.
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"Hmm? Oh."
John shrugs. Secretly, he's always very pleased to be ask his opinion. It's what proved his value back in those crucial first real hours of getting to know each other, and he feels that if he lost that value, Sherlock would have nothing to do with him. Of course, sometimes Sherlock does it just to have a good laugh, John thinks, but that doesn't stop him from trying to impress.
"Well. My first reaction would be clearly to throw you off the trail. But that seems like a bit of an amateur mistake, doesn't it, since clearly the sender knows you wouldn't miss that. So perhaps he's just having a go at you. Keeping you on your toes, delaying you by precious minutes."
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The most surprising part of all that, for Sherlock, is that it's also a genuine pleasure.
"Perhaps," he says finally, turning back to the severed appendage. "Or it could be this isn't about me." His eyes flick warningly up to John. Miracle, that. Yes, yes. The obvious dig.
"It could be about this fellow," he says, pointing at the hand. "This, the hand, it wasn't just cut off and sent to me. It wasn't enough that whoever this was had to die; their corpse also had to be ruined. It was ruined, look at it. Meticulously, carefully, but brutally too. Obviously intentionally."
He falls silent, frowning down at the hand with his hands folded, fingertips tapping lightly against his chin, but after a few seconds his hands part again and his eyebrows rise in a conceding expression. "Or maybe that's supposed to throw me off the trail. Difficult to say. Dinner? Drop this in the morgue, post office tomorrow, see if they've got security footage of whoever mailed this package."
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"Is it meant to be a gift, then, not a calling card?"
Endless possibilities make John's head hurt. He's a doctor by trade. Things are lined up very nicely and when all the symptoms are in check, there is only one possibility. The world of Grey Areas has never come up. Someone is sick, or they aren't.
"Dinner."
Because saying he doesn't want to eat anymore will just cause problems, and dinner dates are part of the essential thinking process.
"You can tell me how to properly order dumplings."
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