Work Text:
Green resin is latex based separates when mixed with isopropyl alcohol wood is oak clumsily cut against the grain makes a weak ladder bad gift someone disliked Jefferey was it mother? no wet shoes she was in Edinburgh last night was it a sister? didn’t have one was it a brother? maybe a brother maybe a sibling rivalry maybe mummy’s favorite Mycroft Mycroft Mycroft door opening-
Mike Stamford walked into the lab at Bart’s (wearing that hideous striped tie, no less) smelling of chips and coffee, and he took up all too much room in Sherlock’s work space.
Not that the case had been pressing, of course; she’d spent less than thirty minutes in Jefferey Stevens’ home, twenty minutes in the cab back to Bart’s, and all of an hour and twelve minutes in the lab running through it all before she came up with an answer. Not her most impressive work, but, to be fair, she did take a detour down to the morgue to beat a dead man with a riding crop. It was a wonder, truly, that Scotland Yard managed to function without her. And yet, somehow, they still questioned her, every damn time (they liked to pretend it was to ensure accuracy, but Sherlock knew better; the mounds of fat inconveniently placed on her chest had been garnering unsure looks her entire life. Carl Powers had only been the beginning).
“Can I borrow your phone? Mine doesn’t get a signal here.”
She looked back at the paint compounds separating in the petri dish in front of her, holding out a hand for the phone.
Weak ladder and a well-placed rock I wonder if that would work on Mycroft no Mycroft never goes outside wouldn’t work maybe a misconstructed chair where is the phone?
She glanced up at Mike from across the table, raising her eyebrows expectantly.
He shrugged. “Sorry. I’ve not got it on me. You could use the landline, though.”
She only barely tried to suppress her eye roll. “I text.”
There’s a reason your wife never picks your calls Mike she’s with your cousin can’t be bothered easier for her to text too
also the son isn’t yours
“You can use mine.”
She turned her head and there was a phone being held out to her and it was not Mike’s. She hadn’t even registered that someone else had entered the room (could Mycroft be bested by an ill-intentioned chair?). For her to miss someone so blindingly obvious as a wounded veteran with a psychosomatic limp (and a drunk, judgmental brother, she thought as she took the phone from him) was almost shocking. And now that she had noticed him he was so present and the entirety of the latest plan on how to get rid of Mycroft was entirely forgotten.
“John Watson. An old friend,” Mike said, glancing at Sherlock, who was still frowning at the man she’d failed to notice.
Takes his coffee black uses very cheap shampoo lots of silicone he needs a new shampoo Scottish last name English family chapped lips chapstick is a luxury army pension isn’t enough looking for a flatmate
She blinked and began to type out her text:
“If brother has green ladder, arrest brother.
SH”
She slid John Watson’s (expensive, unwanted, hardly used) mobile closed and handed it back to him.
Shirt is a size too big wearing thin in some places old shirt losing weight fast depressed high suicide rates among veterans high suicide rates among drug addicts I need a flatmate
“Was it Afghanistan or Iraq?”
She hadn’t entirely meant to ask the question to anyone but herself, but she’d have a hard time figuring it out on her own without smelling his clothes, and she had been sternly informed many times that that was not the sort of thing one does to people— and, she assumed that especially applied to someone you are looking to share a flat with.
John looked at her, his brow furrowed, his mouth open. He shifted his left shoulder (John Watson nervous tic rolls shoulder possible injury? check later). “Uh. It was... Afghanistan. Sorry, did Mike already-“
The door swung open and, as always accompanied Matthew Hooper, a cloud of Boots cologne wafted in.
Sherlock pulled her hair out of the bun she had pulled it into (Matthew was 7.69% more receptive to her when her hair was down, as a general statistic) and took the coffee from him.
“Thank you, Matthew.” She placed her lips on the lid. “Hope it’s right this time.”
(It wasn’t. Honestly, if he can memorize her general coming-and-goings through the hospital, he could at least listen to the way she takes her coffee when she tells him.)
She grimaced, placing the cup back into Matthew’s hands before turning back to the petri dish, which was now doing less reacting and more just sitting.
“Matthew?” she said, stirring her mixture slightly.
“Yes?” He was leaning on the door, cradling the mug in his hands like it was a child, or a six-toed foot.
“Leave the gel in your hair next time. You look rather...elderly, with it combed down like that.”
He nodded slightly, murmuring a small “okay” before scurrying back out of the lab, his too-large coat nearly getting caught in the door as he made his quick exit.
(Idiot.)
Sherlock attempted to continue to look busy so she didn’t have to commit any more memory space to Captain John Watson who had served in Afghanistan and had a sister-in-law named Clara and had been shot in the shoulder six months ago. “How do you feel about the violin?”
A beat. Probably another shoulder roll. “Sorry?”
“The violin. It helps me think. I play it, sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes for hours. I don’t like to talk when I’m thinking either. Or sometimes when I’m not thinking. Not very fond of other people talking either, actually. I don’t vacuum or wash dishes or cook, so if you’re looking for a mother-figure, this won’t be a good arrangement.”
“A good arrangement?”
Had she not made herself obvious enough? “You are looking for a flatmate, are you not?”
John (presumably; she still hadn’t looked up from her petri dish) glanced over at Mike. “Oh, you’ve been planning this then?”
“Not at all.”
John adjusted his cane. “I never said anything about a flatmate.”
She ran a hand through her hair, taking her coat off the back of the chair. “No. I did. This morning. I was telling Mike about how I’m looking to move and how difficult of a flatmate I’d be.”
It was true; her flat on Montague Street, while cheap, was rapidly becoming too small for the books and the experiments and Billy, and the landlord didn’t exactly agree with her bringing home bags of toes or jars of eyeballs, and he was most definitely not pleased when accidentally set her couch on fire, and he always looked at her for just a bit too long, especially when she had to run out of the flat in her knickers and dressing robe to escape aforementioned couch fire. (Not to mention, ever since Mycroft paid everyone in the area off on the grounds that they would not be selling drugs to her little sister anymore, the neighborhood just wasn’t as much fun.) Mrs. Margaret Hudson still owed her some favors, and the Baker Street flat had much more room. A second bedroom would be a perfect place to keep a corpse, she’d mentioned to Mike. He’d suggested a flatmate to lower rent instead, and she’d gone on to list the reasons that was a terrible, awful idea, most of them being that people are idiots and idiots are very hard to live with.
So, while she technically had mentioned a flatmate, she had not mentioned wanting one, and that was likely why Mike was looking between her and John like he suspected one of them of murder (Sherlock was very nearly upset at the fact that, for once, she was the one less likely to have dirty hands, but very quickly realized that having a flatmate that had killed people was much more interesting than sitting alone in her Montague flat thinking of ways to kill her sister, and decided right there and then that John Watson was potentially tolerable.)
“Now, four hours later,” Sherlock continued, tying her scarf around her neck. “Mike shows up after lunch with an old friend that’s just returned from service. Sounds to me like Mike knows two people that happen to need flatmates at the same time.”
She pulled her hair out from underneath the scarf, turning the collar of her coat up, and glancing back at the petri dish. Perhaps she should tell Matthew it might burn if he spilt on himself while cleaning up. If she wore the purple shirt tomorrow he might not care.
It vaguely registered with her that John said something.
“There’s a place in central London that I think would work nicely. Two bedrooms. I can get a good deal with the landlady. We can certainly afford it. I’ll see you there tomorrow, say, 7:00?”
(She could definitely afford it on her own, and there was no guarantee she’d be free at 7:00 tomorrow, but she’d work it out. A recovering drug addict would have a hard time finding a better flatmate than an injured ex-army doctor, and anyway, someone who’s seen war probably doesn’t mind corpses in their bedroom. She hoped.)
She put her hands in her pockets, savoring the bewildered look on John’s face, and walked around him. “I seem to have left my riding crop in the mortuary. I suppose I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
She was still considering ways of convincing someone to allow bits of a dead person into one’s living space, with her hand on the door handle, when-
“So that’s it then?”
She turned around, raising one of her eyebrows. “What’s it?”
(Making eye contact with him again was unavoidable. Four hours sleep this week cut himself shaving yesterday morning did not shave this morning slow to grow facial hair skipped breakfast broke his nose when he was thirteen likely a rugby accident maybe Mike knows I could ask Mike)
John laughed, running his tongue over his bottom lip. “I’ve only just met you, and you want me to look at a flat with you?”
She understood the implication one might take from the question as well as any, but something told her that that’s not what John was asking. (She hoped. After all, someone looking for sex would not make a good flatmate, even if they didn’t mind the silence and the organs.)
She let go of the door handle and took a few steps towards him, her heels clicking on the tile. “Is that a problem?”
John frowned. “We don’t know anything about each other. I’ve not got the address for this flat. Hell, I don’t even know your name.”
She smirked. The explaining was the best part; the ‘oo’s’ and ‘ah’s’ were always enough to pet her ego and make all the curses and insults that usually followed worth it. “You’re an Army doctor, you’ve been invalided home from Afghanistan, you’ve got a brother who’s very clearly worried about you and yet you choose not to go to him for help, maybe because he walked out on his wife, or maybe because you disagree with his drinking habits. Your therapist would agree with my assessment that your limp is psychosomatic. You know I play the violin, and that I don’t like to be talked to, and that I’m looking for a flatmate.”
She smirked, basking in his completely bewildered expression. “That’s enough to be going on with, don’t you think?” she leaned in and whispered to him before walking back to the door.
She paused once she had it open; he would rather need the address if he was to be meeting her tomorrow. “221 B Baker Street. The name’s Sherlock Holmes.”
She called out an “Afternoon!” behind her as she walked away from the lab and down the hall to the elevator, grinning to herself.
She joined one of the morticians in the elevator (Irish drinking problem unfaithful ex-wife overly nosy girlfriend with good reason a serial cheater still hungover from last night can’t seem to find phone girlfriend has phone will likely be catching a cold in the next few days). Captain John Watson, who had an alcoholic brother with commitment problems and a psychosomatic limp and a shoulder injury and had killed people and would likely be okay a with a human heart or two or three popping up in the fridge, did not mind his flatmate playing the violin late into the night.
He would do.