Part II: Sherlock meets John Chapter 1a/?velvet_maceNovember 11 2010, 20:00:17 UTC
It began Sherlock's landlord informed him, politely but firmly, that he had 30 days to vacate. He hadn't bothered to list a reason, so Sherlock went ahead and did it for him: noise past midnight, smells that seeped into the hallways, permanent damage to the counters, and, of course, the altercation with the woman in the flat just beneath.
The man's response was, "I suggest you start flat hunting soon."
Sherlock considered glamouring the idea out of him, but then shrugged. To make it stick he would need to turn the dolt into a largely useless thrall. It wasn't worth it. Sherlock was a vampire with standards. Instead, he began making arrangements.
That afternoon Mycroft paid a call. Sherlock reluctantly let him in. As usual his brother was dressed impeccably and showed no signs of having been anywhere near the natural world. He'd barely touched the soles of his immaculate shoes to the oil stained pavement outside. Sherlock almost missed the days when Mycroft trolled places like Bart's maternity ward for food. Domestic bliss had turned Mycroft positively dull.
No wait, cancel that: Mycroft had an air of insufferable smugness about him. Sherlock felt a prickle of suspicion.
"It's too bad," Mycroft said in his usual mild way, gazing about the breezy open loft. "This place had charm. I'll miss it."
Sherlock didn't ask how he knew about the eviction. Giving himself a mental kick for being obtuse, he revised his list of reasons for why it happened down to one. He should have smelled Mycroft's influence. So what is the game this time, brother? he thought.
Out loud he said: "Is that all? You've come to pay last respects to my flat?"
"Actually, I've come to ask you to move back in."
Sherlock did a doubletake. "Have Lestrade's daughters decided to skip their dreary prepubescent years and go straight to independent living? Or did you finally convince your stubborn mate to let you put them in a boarding school."
"Don't be ridiculous," said Mycroft. "I had a tough enough time convincing Greg to let them go to proper private schools. No, I wasn't suggesting you go back to your old rooms, my daughters still require them. What I meant is that the next flat over has become vacant. You can move in there."
"I see, close enough for after-dinner chats? Or close enough for you to meddle with my experiments."
"You can't keep on destroying flats," said Mycroft, tutting. "And the potential for self-injury is not insubstantial. Especially given your poor diet. Not to mention Lestrade feels you are getting a bit out of control with your use of cadavers. It's all become rather unsanitary and disrespectful of the dead."
"Lestrade's always had a weakness for sentiment, but he doesn't argue with the results. My experiments have caught him criminal after criminal."
Mycroft's eyes drifted downward, almost demurely, as he conceded the point. "Nonetheless you need a place to live, and I have one."
Re: Part II: Chapter 1b/?velvet_maceNovember 11 2010, 20:02:36 UTC
"As happens," said Sherlock with a bright smile. "I already have a flat lined up. Lovely lady, client of mine, has recently come into a set of apartments on Baker Street - which is far more convenient to me than your St. James Street one."
"That was quick."
"I've had four hours - ample enough time. And you'll find that she's one of mine, so don't think you can glamour an eviction out of her."
Mycroft suddenly found his nails fascinating. "Ah, very well, you've caught me. Shall we lay our cards on the table? I want you back, Sherlock. This experiment in independent living has to end."
His eyes came up and caught Sherlock's. A moment later Sherlock could feel his brother's will latch onto his own, attempting to bully his thoughts and emotions into alignment.
Attempting to glamour me like a human, Sherlock thought, caught between shock and disgust. How trite. He wrenched away from the connection. "I'm not strung out, those methods won't work on me anymore."
Mycroft relaxed. "You can't blame me for trying."
"And why are you trying?" Sherlock asked. "Have you grown bored with Lestrade? Is his blood no longer rapturous enough to make up for his imbecilic prattle? Is that what you need me for -- to give you some mental stimulation? I should think your efforts to control international politics would keep you busy enough. Or is that getting too old, too little of a challenge for you?"
"Nothing of the sort," Mycroft leveled a flash of anger. "And I won't have you insulting my spouse, Sherlock. I do this purely out of concern for you. You are my brother, and while I appreciate you're sobriety, you are still hopelessly out of control. Someone needs to balance you, Sherlock. Since you have no mate, that has to be me."
"I'm not a child. Nor your responsibility." He sat down on his sofa. "Dear God, you'd think that three centuries would be enough time for you to accept that I've no need to be swaddled."
"I really don't want to do this to you," said Mycroft. "But you force my hand. I've put a hold on your bank accounts. You are cut off. I won't fund your spiral towards distruction anymore."
Sherlock hissed. "Don't pretend this is about my self-destructiveness, Mycroft. You were perfectly content to fund that for years while I did nothing more than flop uselessly around your apartment. This is about your possessiveness. This is about you waking up one day to realize that something you felt entitled to has escaped your grasp. Well, I will not play that game anymore. You don't own me."
"You are right, I don't own you." He smiled just a bit tightly. "Do enjoy your independence, Sherlock. Remember, my arms are always open, should you care to return to reason."
With that he left, trailing behind him an aura of confidence that made Sherlock want to kill something.
Re: Part II: Sherlock meets John Chapter 1b/?velvet_maceNovember 11 2010, 20:06:31 UTC
Sherlock considered his options. He had built up, over the last five years, a respectable number of thralls. He cursed himself a little each time he did so, vowing that he wouldn't turn into Mycroft and use them as lackeys, but truthfully, thralls were so useful that way.
The bulk of his thralls were various homeless people, who served as his eyes and ears on the street. The blood bond of thralldom made it easy to contact them and summon them to him, even at distances. The rest of his thralls were former clients. People who already were bound to him through a debt of gratitude. People who had goods or services he found useful.
Mrs. Hudson had been different. She'd had (at the time he'd made her) nothing really to offer. Her vitality was low, as was normal for a human nearing the end of her natural life. Sherlock fed only rarely on her, and when he did, her blood held almost no nourishment. She had neither street contacts, nor influence, nor any particular skill he could put to use on investigating.
And yet, she was the one thrall he had no compunction at all in making. He'd taken her for one reason only: He liked her.
He liked her the way he liked very few people and for reasons he'd never been able to fully put his finger on. She was simply very pleasant to have around. Sherlock found himself often after a case coming by her flat and sitting at her table while she gave him cups of tea that he didn't drink and plates of biscuits that he couldn't eat. He'd regail her about whatever case he'd been on, and she'd listen, raptly.
Now that her husband was ensconced in an American prison, she had been able to gather up enough funds to purchase a set of flats. 221 Baker street, A, B and C. She'd taken A for herself, being that the ground floor was easier on her arthritic hip. C was too small. B, however, was perfect. He'd intended, before Mycroft had cut off his bank account, to use the second bedroom as a lab. Now he could see another use: a flatmate.
He'd considered the idea before: having a human around to do the domestic chores, cleaning, perhaps even some assisting. There were many times in his experiments when he cursed that he only had two hands. But the problem had always come back to him: Who could he stand to have around him that much?
And there was the other side of the coin as well: Who could stand him?
John was miserable. To be honest he'd been miserable for months, but in Afghanistan he'd had reason to be miserable and somehow that made it easier to bear. Now he was exactly where he wanted to be, where he'd fantasized on being with his mates while bunkered down in some mudwalled hut in the rocky, goat and poppy infested warzone. They'd imagined obsessively what they'd do when they got back to England. The foods they'd eat, the movies they'd see, the girls they'd shag. And he'd been right there with them, saying: "I want to live in London. I want to be surrounded by interesting things and people who aren't trying to kill me."
He hated London. The problem was, he was pretty sure he'd hate everywhere else, too.
There was something missing in his life that just didn't seemed to be filled by anything, and God knew he'd tried. Gambling might have fit the bill, if he actually had the funds for it, which he didn't. Alcohol held a double thrill, in part because it got him recklessly drunk, in part because he knew alcoholism ran in his family. But in the sober, and painfully hung over light of day, he knew that it was neither a solution, nor a very satisfying way to play Russian Roulette.
He hadn't quite gotten to actual Russian Roulette, but probably only because you couldn't play it with a Sig.
Re: Part II: Sherlock meets John Chapter 1c/?velvet_maceNovember 11 2010, 20:07:47 UTC
It was random chance that he'd met up with Stamford while walking wistfully down memory lane at Bart's campus. If weight gain was a sign of happiness, Stamford seemed to be a very happy man indeed.
"You shouldn't be living on your own," was the conclusion he came to after hearing John's rather pathetic account of his last months.
"Yes, yes. So says my therapist," John replied, dismissively "I can't go back to Harry, Stamford. I already tried. I lasted two days and I consider that to be a minor miracle. We are oil and water."
"Actually, I wasn't thinking of Harry." There was an odd gleam in Stamford's eye. "I was thinking more along the lines of finding a flatmate."
"Who would have me?" John asked defeated. "I … haven't been that personable lately."
Stamford smiled. "Funny, friend of mine said the exact same thing this morning."
Sherlock felt Stamford out in the hall. There was even a slight sense of his mood (happy eager). He sighed a bit impatiently. This was the problem with thralls, they were so inconveniently distracting. How Mycroft juggled with hundreds of them, all thinking and feeling and wanting and pushing, Sherlock didn't know. It was hell for one's concentration.
Stamford and Molly were a necessary evil, he reminded himself. Stamford gave him access to Bart's classrooms and labs and free reign of the equipment. Molly gave him access to corpses, all under the administrative disguise of medical research. It had all worked out fine for years, but lately, though, she'd become increasingly romantically infatuated with him. He wished he'd stopped her from reading that bloody awful Twilight novel.
The door opened up, and a smell that was deliciously and unexpectedly not Stamford, wafted in.
Sherlock looked up, suspicious. A short man, normally of stocky build but now hiding his thinness under a loose checked shirt and a heavy jacket, limped into the room. Soldier hair cut. Injured. Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome - still shedding vitality, willy-nilly like he expected his life to end any moment. Mouthwateringly eager to have some monster snatch him up and steal away his blood.
Mystery solved. Just a twitchy ex-soldier. For a second he'd been worried the man might be a mate or something.
Still, distracting. Sherlock put his pipette down, thankfully having finished the minor test before these two had interrupted.
"Bit different from my day," the soldier was murmuring to Stamford.
Re: Part II: Sherlock meets John Chapter 1d/?velvet_maceNovember 11 2010, 20:10:44 UTC
Sherlock ignored the niceties. "Mike, I need your phone," he said to his thrall. "Mine is out of battery," he said for the other's sake.
Mike winced a little at the tug. "Sorry, I left it in my jacket."
Sherlock threw out a thread of glamour at the soldier. Bring me your phone.
Instantly the man twitched, he looked down and pulled a phone from his pocket.
Come to me. The glamour was half hearted at best. A normal person could have brushed it off with a distracting thought, but Watson seemed tugged like he'd been been put in chains.
"You can use mine," he said, limping dramatically across the linoleum.
Definitely not a mate, Sherlock thought, relieved. Mates were notorious for being able to throw off glamours. Infinitely annoying at times, though he and Lestrade had long come to a mutual understanding. No, this wasn't a mate. This man seemed unusually susceptible glamours.
That made him something infinitely better. Sherlock didn't suppress the smile. A potential second pair of hands. Perhaps even an extension of himself.
Sherlock took him in some more. His availability positively reeked like some aphrodisiac perfume. The state of his phone and his apparent need of a flatmate screamed that he was unattached No pesky relatives to fend off. No close friends either to become concerned. The man begged to be a thrall. If Sherlock didn't take him, Mycroft undoubtedly would.
No, that wasn't going to happen.
Sherlock had come to that conclusion in the time it took to rattle a quick text off to Lestrade and solve a case.
"I think you'll make an excellent flatmate," said Sherlock, handing back his phone. "Yes, you'll do nicely."
"Wait," said the soldier, turning to Stamford with confusion. "Did you tell him about me?"
"Not a word," said Stamford, smug that his master had praised him. "He just knows things like that."
"Pity I can't stay with you now," said Sherlock with a smile. "But you are far too distracting and I've business that needs attending. The address is 221B Baker street, I'll meet you there at seven tomorrow and we can see about getting you moved in."
"221 B- wait now. Hold up!" said the soldier completely consternated. "Listen, we've only just met, don't you think we should get to know each other before agreeing to share a flat. You know nothing about me!"
Sherlock turned. "I know you are an army doctor, recently retired due to an injury, though interestingly enough, not to your leg. That injury is psychosomatic. You have a brother named Harry who you can't live with, possibly because he's an alcoholic, more likely because you disapprove of the way he treats his wife. You also have post traumatic stress syndrome which makes you worry that you are unbearable for anyone else to live with. You fear that you are going to kill yourself, especially since you have the means at hand and the knowledge to do it right."
"How did you -?" said the soldier stunned.
"Really, the only question is, were you posted in Afghanistan or Iraq."
The man simply stared. He looked over to Stamford. Who shrugged. "He's always like that."
"If you wish to know my methods, you'll meet me at 221 B, but I assure you there is nothing supernatural about them." Which wasn't actually a lie, even though Sherlock was supernatural. He liked the irony of that. He headed to the door feeling job very much accomplished.
"Wait, you don't even know my name," said the soldier. "Nor I yours. I don't know anything about you!"
Sherlock paused. The man was right. Part of him thought that it didn't matter, but it was important, if he weren't to keep this man under thrall all the time, to keep on his good side.
"My name is Sherlock Holmes," he said and held out his hand a bit awkwardly.
The soldier shook it. Left handed, Sherlock noted. Weak grip. "John Watson," he said.
"And as for my bad habits, I keep very random hours, I'm horribly unsocial, I like doing experiments, I play the violin-"
"Poorly or well?" John interrupted.
"Well," assured Sherlock.
"Not a problem then."
Sherlock smiled. "Surely then, we are perfectly compatible. Now I really need to go. I left my riding crop in the mortuary and I'd hate to have it stolen again."
Re: Part II: Sherlock meets John Chapter 1d/?trillsabellsDecember 5 2010, 16:16:20 UTC
I can see Sherlock being oh so certain that John isn't a mate because he doesn't throw off Sherlock's glamours - up until the point Mycroft tries to glamour him and finds John CAN throw them off VERY easily ("Have a seat, John." "I don't want to.")
The man's response was, "I suggest you start flat hunting soon."
Sherlock considered glamouring the idea out of him, but then shrugged. To make it stick he would need to turn the dolt into a largely useless thrall. It wasn't worth it. Sherlock was a vampire with standards. Instead, he began making arrangements.
That afternoon Mycroft paid a call. Sherlock reluctantly let him in. As usual his brother was dressed impeccably and showed no signs of having been anywhere near the natural world. He'd barely touched the soles of his immaculate shoes to the oil stained pavement outside. Sherlock almost missed the days when Mycroft trolled places like Bart's maternity ward for food. Domestic bliss had turned Mycroft positively dull.
No wait, cancel that: Mycroft had an air of insufferable smugness about him. Sherlock felt a prickle of suspicion.
"It's too bad," Mycroft said in his usual mild way, gazing about the breezy open loft. "This place had charm. I'll miss it."
Sherlock didn't ask how he knew about the eviction. Giving himself a mental kick for being obtuse, he revised his list of reasons for why it happened down to one. He should have smelled Mycroft's influence. So what is the game this time, brother? he thought.
Out loud he said: "Is that all? You've come to pay last respects to my flat?"
"Actually, I've come to ask you to move back in."
Sherlock did a doubletake. "Have Lestrade's daughters decided to skip their dreary prepubescent years and go straight to independent living? Or did you finally convince your stubborn mate to let you put them in a boarding school."
"Don't be ridiculous," said Mycroft. "I had a tough enough time convincing Greg to let them go to proper private schools. No, I wasn't suggesting you go back to your old rooms, my daughters still require them. What I meant is that the next flat over has become vacant. You can move in there."
"I see, close enough for after-dinner chats? Or close enough for you to meddle with my experiments."
"You can't keep on destroying flats," said Mycroft, tutting. "And the potential for self-injury is not insubstantial. Especially given your poor diet. Not to mention Lestrade feels you are getting a bit out of control with your use of cadavers. It's all become rather unsanitary and disrespectful of the dead."
"Lestrade's always had a weakness for sentiment, but he doesn't argue with the results. My experiments have caught him criminal after criminal."
Mycroft's eyes drifted downward, almost demurely, as he conceded the point. "Nonetheless you need a place to live, and I have one."
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"That was quick."
"I've had four hours - ample enough time. And you'll find that she's one of mine, so don't think you can glamour an eviction out of her."
Mycroft suddenly found his nails fascinating. "Ah, very well, you've caught me. Shall we lay our cards on the table? I want you back, Sherlock. This experiment in independent living has to end."
His eyes came up and caught Sherlock's. A moment later Sherlock could feel his brother's will latch onto his own, attempting to bully his thoughts and emotions into alignment.
Attempting to glamour me like a human, Sherlock thought, caught between shock and disgust. How trite. He wrenched away from the connection. "I'm not strung out, those methods won't work on me anymore."
Mycroft relaxed. "You can't blame me for trying."
"And why are you trying?" Sherlock asked. "Have you grown bored with Lestrade? Is his blood no longer rapturous enough to make up for his imbecilic prattle? Is that what you need me for -- to give you some mental stimulation? I should think your efforts to control international politics would keep you busy enough. Or is that getting too old, too little of a challenge for you?"
"Nothing of the sort," Mycroft leveled a flash of anger. "And I won't have you insulting my spouse, Sherlock. I do this purely out of concern for you. You are my brother, and while I appreciate you're sobriety, you are still hopelessly out of control. Someone needs to balance you, Sherlock. Since you have no mate, that has to be me."
"I'm not a child. Nor your responsibility." He sat down on his sofa. "Dear God, you'd think that three centuries would be enough time for you to accept that I've no need to be swaddled."
"I really don't want to do this to you," said Mycroft. "But you force my hand. I've put a hold on your bank accounts. You are cut off. I won't fund your spiral towards distruction anymore."
Sherlock hissed. "Don't pretend this is about my self-destructiveness, Mycroft. You were perfectly content to fund that for years while I did nothing more than flop uselessly around your apartment. This is about your possessiveness. This is about you waking up one day to realize that something you felt entitled to has escaped your grasp. Well, I will not play that game anymore. You don't own me."
"You are right, I don't own you." He smiled just a bit tightly. "Do enjoy your independence, Sherlock. Remember, my arms are always open, should you care to return to reason."
With that he left, trailing behind him an aura of confidence that made Sherlock want to kill something.
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The bulk of his thralls were various homeless people, who served as his eyes and ears on the street. The blood bond of thralldom made it easy to contact them and summon them to him, even at distances. The rest of his thralls were former clients. People who already were bound to him through a debt of gratitude. People who had goods or services he found useful.
Mrs. Hudson had been different. She'd had (at the time he'd made her) nothing really to offer. Her vitality was low, as was normal for a human nearing the end of her natural life. Sherlock fed only rarely on her, and when he did, her blood held almost no nourishment. She had neither street contacts, nor influence, nor any particular skill he could put to use on investigating.
And yet, she was the one thrall he had no compunction at all in making. He'd taken her for one reason only: He liked her.
He liked her the way he liked very few people and for reasons he'd never been able to fully put his finger on. She was simply very pleasant to have around. Sherlock found himself often after a case coming by her flat and sitting at her table while she gave him cups of tea that he didn't drink and plates of biscuits that he couldn't eat. He'd regail her about whatever case he'd been on, and she'd listen, raptly.
Now that her husband was ensconced in an American prison, she had been able to gather up enough funds to purchase a set of flats. 221 Baker street, A, B and C. She'd taken A for herself, being that the ground floor was easier on her arthritic hip. C was too small. B, however, was perfect. He'd intended, before Mycroft had cut off his bank account, to use the second bedroom as a lab. Now he could see another use: a flatmate.
He'd considered the idea before: having a human around to do the domestic chores, cleaning, perhaps even some assisting. There were many times in his experiments when he cursed that he only had two hands. But the problem had always come back to him: Who could he stand to have around him that much?
And there was the other side of the coin as well: Who could stand him?
John was miserable. To be honest he'd been miserable for months, but in Afghanistan he'd had reason to be miserable and somehow that made it easier to bear. Now he was exactly where he wanted to be, where he'd fantasized on being with his mates while bunkered down in some mudwalled hut in the rocky, goat and poppy infested warzone. They'd imagined obsessively what they'd do when they got back to England. The foods they'd eat, the movies they'd see, the girls they'd shag. And he'd been right there with them, saying: "I want to live in London. I want to be surrounded by interesting things and people who aren't trying to kill me."
He hated London. The problem was, he was pretty sure he'd hate everywhere else, too.
There was something missing in his life that just didn't seemed to be filled by anything, and God knew he'd tried. Gambling might have fit the bill, if he actually had the funds for it, which he didn't. Alcohol held a double thrill, in part because it got him recklessly drunk, in part because he knew alcoholism ran in his family. But in the sober, and painfully hung over light of day, he knew that it was neither a solution, nor a very satisfying way to play Russian Roulette.
He hadn't quite gotten to actual Russian Roulette, but probably only because you couldn't play it with a Sig.
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"You shouldn't be living on your own," was the conclusion he came to after hearing John's rather pathetic account of his last months.
"Yes, yes. So says my therapist," John replied, dismissively "I can't go back to Harry, Stamford. I already tried. I lasted two days and I consider that to be a minor miracle. We are oil and water."
"Actually, I wasn't thinking of Harry." There was an odd gleam in Stamford's eye. "I was thinking more along the lines of finding a flatmate."
"Who would have me?" John asked defeated. "I … haven't been that personable lately."
Stamford smiled. "Funny, friend of mine said the exact same thing this morning."
Sherlock felt Stamford out in the hall. There was even a slight sense of his mood (happy eager). He sighed a bit impatiently. This was the problem with thralls, they were so inconveniently distracting. How Mycroft juggled with hundreds of them, all thinking and feeling and wanting and pushing, Sherlock didn't know. It was hell for one's concentration.
Stamford and Molly were a necessary evil, he reminded himself. Stamford gave him access to Bart's classrooms and labs and free reign of the equipment. Molly gave him access to corpses, all under the administrative disguise of medical research. It had all worked out fine for years, but lately, though, she'd become increasingly romantically infatuated with him. He wished he'd stopped her from reading that bloody awful Twilight novel.
The door opened up, and a smell that was deliciously and unexpectedly not Stamford, wafted in.
Sherlock looked up, suspicious. A short man, normally of stocky build but now hiding his thinness under a loose checked shirt and a heavy jacket, limped into the room. Soldier hair cut. Injured. Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome - still shedding vitality, willy-nilly like he expected his life to end any moment. Mouthwateringly eager to have some monster snatch him up and steal away his blood.
Mystery solved. Just a twitchy ex-soldier. For a second he'd been worried the man might be a mate or something.
Still, distracting. Sherlock put his pipette down, thankfully having finished the minor test before these two had interrupted.
"Bit different from my day," the soldier was murmuring to Stamford.
"You've no idea," said Stamford.
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Mike winced a little at the tug. "Sorry, I left it in my jacket."
Sherlock threw out a thread of glamour at the soldier. Bring me your phone.
Instantly the man twitched, he looked down and pulled a phone from his pocket.
Come to me. The glamour was half hearted at best. A normal person could have brushed it off with a distracting thought, but Watson seemed tugged like he'd been been put in chains.
"You can use mine," he said, limping dramatically across the linoleum.
Definitely not a mate, Sherlock thought, relieved. Mates were notorious for being able to throw off glamours. Infinitely annoying at times, though he and Lestrade had long come to a mutual understanding. No, this wasn't a mate. This man seemed unusually susceptible glamours.
That made him something infinitely better. Sherlock didn't suppress the smile. A potential second pair of hands. Perhaps even an extension of himself.
Sherlock took him in some more. His availability positively reeked like some aphrodisiac perfume. The state of his phone and his apparent need of a flatmate screamed that he was unattached No pesky relatives to fend off. No close friends either to become concerned. The man begged to be a thrall. If Sherlock didn't take him, Mycroft undoubtedly would.
No, that wasn't going to happen.
Sherlock had come to that conclusion in the time it took to rattle a quick text off to Lestrade and solve a case.
"I think you'll make an excellent flatmate," said Sherlock, handing back his phone. "Yes, you'll do nicely."
"Wait," said the soldier, turning to Stamford with confusion. "Did you tell him about me?"
"Not a word," said Stamford, smug that his master had praised him. "He just knows things like that."
"Pity I can't stay with you now," said Sherlock with a smile. "But you are far too distracting and I've business that needs attending. The address is 221B Baker street, I'll meet you there at seven tomorrow and we can see about getting you moved in."
"221 B- wait now. Hold up!" said the soldier completely consternated. "Listen, we've only just met, don't you think we should get to know each other before agreeing to share a flat. You know nothing about me!"
Sherlock turned. "I know you are an army doctor, recently retired due to an injury, though interestingly enough, not to your leg. That injury is psychosomatic. You have a brother named Harry who you can't live with, possibly because he's an alcoholic, more likely because you disapprove of the way he treats his wife. You also have post traumatic stress syndrome which makes you worry that you are unbearable for anyone else to live with. You fear that you are going to kill yourself, especially since you have the means at hand and the knowledge to do it right."
"How did you -?" said the soldier stunned.
"Really, the only question is, were you posted in Afghanistan or Iraq."
The man simply stared. He looked over to Stamford. Who shrugged. "He's always like that."
"If you wish to know my methods, you'll meet me at 221 B, but I assure you there is nothing supernatural about them." Which wasn't actually a lie, even though Sherlock was supernatural. He liked the irony of that. He headed to the door feeling job very much accomplished.
"Wait, you don't even know my name," said the soldier. "Nor I yours. I don't know anything about you!"
Sherlock paused. The man was right. Part of him thought that it didn't matter, but it was important, if he weren't to keep this man under thrall all the time, to keep on his good side.
"My name is Sherlock Holmes," he said and held out his hand a bit awkwardly.
The soldier shook it. Left handed, Sherlock noted. Weak grip. "John Watson," he said.
"And as for my bad habits, I keep very random hours, I'm horribly unsocial, I like doing experiments, I play the violin-"
"Poorly or well?" John interrupted.
"Well," assured Sherlock.
"Not a problem then."
Sherlock smiled. "Surely then, we are perfectly compatible. Now I really need to go. I left my riding crop in the mortuary and I'd hate to have it stolen again."
With that he left.
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oh man, sherlock's reaction when John starts ignoring him!
Thank you thank you thank you for writing this!!
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There was a moment when I wasn't sure this was gonna be continued, BUT YOU DID. YOU WIN THE INTERNET <3
exesandohesxo
p.s Mycroft says: Figures whyrun
Why run indeed? When there is such good fic to read?
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We're addicted to this marvellous story!
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("Have a seat, John." "I don't want to.")
Really hope you keep going with this!
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