Hello everybody! I'm back from the dead after...jesus, three years, and this time it's a Doctor Who/Sherlock crossover! I'm sure this has been done before, but the story has been tickling my mind for a while now, and I just had to get it down. I'm thinking of continuing, if the response is good enough, but it's been a while, so I'm sure my writing skill are probably rather rusty. This hasn't been beta'd or brit-picked, so it's likely to be riddled with errors. Wait, what am I doing? I'm putting down my own story, shame on me. Anyways, please R&R and tell me if you'd like to see the story continued or not!

Thanks for reading!

The TARDIS flew through the Time Vortex, crashing heavily into the brilliant walls as it did so, sending the small blue box spinning and twirling in a clumsy dance as it struggled on to it's destination. That destination was of course Earth, London to be precise, at 12:36 on a sunny Sunday day in July, the 25th day of the month. Or close enough to that, landing was never certain when the Doctor piloted his beloved ship.

It was, of course, quite difficult for him to do, as back on Gallifrey, a TARDIS was usually piloted by no less than 6 Time Lords at any one time, but the Doctor was alone. Sometimes he wasn't, he liked those times, when conversations about nothing and everything flowed through the infinate halls and rooms of the ship, and he laughed. If he was being perfectly honest, he liked to laugh, but when he was alone, nothing could force the wonderful sound from his lips. When he had a companion, however, he laughed every hour they were with him, a huge smile on his face no matter if they were discussing the fashions of Mars in the 78th century ('A complete laugh' in Rose's opinion) or the politics of the Santaran military ('That's just inhuman,' Martha had declared after a pause ['obviously,' the Doctor had thought, but he knew enough to keep his mouth shut]). Now, however, his face was pulled into a cold and somber position. He needed to find a new companion soon, or he was really gonna drag the whole atmosphere down with him, he decided to himself. 21st century London was certainly turning out to be a hotspot of fascinating people, hence his rough journey there.

With a final bang, the TARDIS landed. The Doctor stepped out onto the pavement, blinking in the bright sunlight of the summer day, and sighed happily to himself, letting the wave of hurried rush past him, completely ignoring the strange blue suited man and his strange blue box that quite literally appeared out of nowhere. He loved humanity. Putting on his glasses, he locked the TARDIS and strolled off, hoping that something would happen to him, because something always happens to him.

Sherlock Holmes peered at the body wrapped up in it's black bag, laying limp on the gurney. He gave a nod to Molly, a small, mousy girl with a ridiculous crush on him and a soft spot a mile long for lost causes. Which he supposed he was, again ridiculous. "Fine," he said after the mortician had stopped her little ramble about the body's previous occupant. He zipped up the bag and straightened his coat. "We'll start with the riding crop."

A short hour later, he was in the lab, examining the broken blood vessels off the dead man's wounds from his, ah, exertions with the crop. He paused for a second at the sound of approaching footsteps, two men, one fat, the other thin, but soon dismissed it as Mike Stamford and some prespective flatemate for him. Sure enough, the two men entered soon after, laughing about some old story of Mike's. "A-and then," the portly man chuckled, "We left him in the pond to sort himself out!" The two men burst into laughter, Mike pounding on the lab table with a clenched fist in merriment. Sherlock narrowed his eyes at the man Stamford had brough to him. Tall, with short brown hair and square black glasses perched on his nose. He was wearing a finely tailored blue suit with a red tie, but was most fascinating were his eyes. Even while he howled with laughter over whatever childish prank Mike had pulled in his youth, his eyes were dark, and old. Sherlock felt a drop of cold go down his spine at the sight of the strange man's disparity, and identified it as dread. Who is this man? He wondered. His own sharp eyes skimmed over him, but found nothing, no trace of what his life left on him. "Mike, may I borrow your phone, there's no signal on mine," he said in a bored tone, turning his head slightly to where Mike stood, panting and red faced. It was a demand, not a request, Sherlock never asks.

"And what's wrong with the landline? You still have those don't you?" The strange man asked, cocking his head and peering at Sherlock with an expression normally found on disappointed mothers. He then peered around the room as if it would tell him if they still had landlines.

Sherlock raised an eyebrow, "I prefer to text," he said testily.

"Aah," said the man, nodding with a thoughtful look on his face.

"Sorry, it's in my coat."

Sherlock turned his gaze to the stranger, the demand in his eyes again. The man shrugged, "Sorry, don't have one."

"You don't have a phone?" Mike sputtered at him.

Interesting, thought Sherlock. "Very well, I suppose I'll have to ask Molly. It's been a treat to meet you."

"But you haven't even met him!" asserted Mike, pressing forward. "This is a good friend of mine, John Smith."

Fake name, fascinating. Who are you? Sherlock wondered once more.

"Interesting. How do feel about the violin?" He asked as Molly came in with his coffee. Wonderful, he'd nearly forgotten, well not really, but it was so much more convenient that trying to go find her. He took her phone away while distracting her with a question about her lipstick and shot off a quick text to an aquaintance. Slipping the phone back into her pocket he sent her off, glancing at 'John Smith' and noting that he had observed the entire exchange.

"Violin?" John asked.

"I play the violin when I'm thinking and sometimes I don't talk for days on end. Would that bother you? Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other."

The blue-suited man cocked his head to the side. "Who said anything about flatmates? I didn't say anything, Mike did you? No, definitely didn't."

"I did," Sherlock swept up to gather his coat. "I told Mike this morning that I must be a difficult man to find a flatmate for. Now here he is, just after lunch with an old friend of his. Wasn't a difficult leap."

Mike laughed. "We're not old friends, I only just met him this morning!"

"What?" That stopped Sherlock flat.

"Yeah," John laughed with Mike. "Just ran into him, literally, spilled coffee all over himself, and we got to talking, I mentioned looking for a place to stay and well," he grinned widely. "Here I am."

"And why are you looking for a flat? Surely someone of your age would have some friends or relatives to live with."

The man shrugged, staring at the ceiling. "Could say the same for you." He lowered his gaze and fixed Sherlock with a searching stare. Sherlock wondered if this was how corpses felt as he examined them.

He tugged his scarf around his neck defensively and moved forward, stepping around John and Mike. "Got my eye on a nice little place in central London. Together we ought to be able to afford it. We'll meet there tomorrow evening at 7 o'clock."

The Doctor wrinkled his nose, he didn't like having somewhere to be. He much preferred his usual motus operandi of just appearing at the right time. Ah well, he supposed he could the metaphorical bullet on this one. After all, he thought bitterly, it's not like he had a choice.

He had been walking around the city for an entire hour, and nobody had jumped out at him, or bumped into him, or even really glanced his way. No young woman with a thirst for adventure came to inspire him to show her the universe, no man came forward to challenge his beliefs about the goodness of men. All in all, the trip had been a complete failure. His feet led the way back to the TARDIS with a slight lapse of the pep his walk usually carried.

Then he stopped. The TARDIS was gone. Gone, the TARDIS was gone, he thought. How could it be gone? He left it right here, he remembered locking it. "Excuse me," he called out to an old homeless man pretending to be asleep on a nearby bench. "Have you seen a box sitting around anywhere near here."

"There was," the man gasped. He was old, and the strain of living outdoors had made him ancient. Weary blue eyes peered out from the folds of wrinkles dripping off his face. A shining bald head and a ragged white beard framed his face, while two large red ears poked out from a mass of white ear hair. His clothes were ragged things, taken from dumpsters and clothes donations from the more fortunate, who really had just given what they thought none of their friends would want. A bright orange quilted vest, dimmed from years of grime covered a tattered white turtleneck covered in yellow stains which the Doctor feared (and his nose confirmed) were made by piss. Sun faded blue jeans covered his skinny legs that ended with brand new sports sneakers. The man caught the Doctor looking at them, "Didn't steal them," he snarled defensively. "I bought them, with me own money."

"I'm sure you did," murmured the Doctor. "You said there was a box here, was it blue, with a white light on top?"

"Maybe," said the homeless man, leaning back down and closing his eyes. "Maybe not."

The Doctor groaned, he hated this part, the part where people acted like the stupid apes they were, always groping for the next banana. "Listen, um, sorry, didn't catch your name."

"Didn't give it," the man grunted, his hands folded over his stomach. At the Doctor's questioning silence, he groaned and gave it, "Donald, but most people call me Mac, you know, from the nursery rhyme."

The Doctor nodded. "Hello Mac," he said brightly. "I'm the Doctor."

"Doctor?" Mac opened his eyes and glared suspiciously at the younger/older man. "They sent you, didn't they? It appeared out of nowhere, I swear it on me mother's grave, it did!"

"I believe you," the Doctor calmed, placing a reassuring hand on the older/younger man's shoulder. "Now Mac, you have to tell me, and this is very important, who's they?"

They as it turned out, were military personnel, led by "a fierce black beauty with a mouth on her like Churchill on a drinking binge." Martha Jones, his old companion. Of course she would notice the TARDIS's presence, only why would she take it?

'Something doesn't add up here.' He thought as he thanked Mac for his time, and tossed him a sandwhich which the Doctor happened to have in his pocket. He thought he had bought it a few mornings ago on the planet Touodlin, so it was probably fine. Probably.

He rushed to the nearest payphone and soniced himself an hour of phone time. "Hopefully it will be enough," he muttered, his mind on Martha's ability to rant for excrutiatingly long periods of time.

"Doctor," her voice chirped in his ear. "I'm assuming you're calling about the TARDIS?"

"Of course I'm calling about the TARDIS!" He whined. "Why'd you take it?"

He could almost hear the smirking shrug she was giving at the other end of the line. "Sorry, confidential. Don't worry, you'll get it back, probably."

"Probably?" He groaned, flopping back against the wall of the horribly small call box. Why couldn't it just be bigger on the inside? He felt like banging his head against the glass, but refrained so he could try to reason with Martha.

"Sorry Doctor, but I really got to go, talk later, yeah?"

"She hung up," he said in disbelief as he stared at the buzzing receiver in his hand.

What did the military want with the TARDIS? Yeah, okay it was extremely advanced alien technology with the power of a thousand thousand suns running it's engines, but really, was that any reason to compound it? He'd have to investigate. Unfortunately, he had no idea where they could have taken it, for all he knew it could be in Zurich by now. He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose in annoyance. 'Take one day off to enjoy London, and this is what you get,' he thought in disgust. Brilliant. Now he had to find a place to stay, perhaps for a while.

He leapt out of the box and sprinted to the nearest doorstop where the morning's paper lay. He wouldn't steal it, he was really just borrowing it to look for the roommates wanted ads. Surely Mr. and Mrs. Gatiss wouldn't mind the single page missing? He would even return it, once he was done. Or at least, that was his plan until he got coffee all over the whole paper, ruining at as he walked headlong into a rather large man with horn-rimmed glasses and a gaudy tie.

The man's name was Mike Stamford, and he apologised over and over and even bought the Doctor another newspaper, which he promptly delivered to the home of the Gatiss'. Mike had screwed up his face at that. "What'd you do that for?" He asked.

"Just was borrowing it to look at ads for something," the Doctor sighed, flopping onto a nearby park bench and tilting his head back to watch the clouds.

"And what's that?" Stamford sat next to him, leaning slightly towards the Doctor with a curious expression on his face.

"Ah, never mind, it was stupid really, I'm a very difficult person to flat with anyway." He said lightly, swinging his feet.

Mike laughed. "You know, I heard almost the exact same thing from a friend of mine."

The Doctor opened his eyes and glanced at the large man, wondering where he was going with this.

"I could introduce you. Hell, if you hit it off, you'll be doing me a favor, he's been sleeping on my couch."

"You don't even know my name," the Doctor said quietly, frowning at his new friend.

"Well, I'm Mike Stamford."

"Hello Mike Stamford, I'm the D-John Smith." He grinned toothily. 'Play it cool, play it human."

"So that's it then?" The Doctor asked. "We've only just met, and we're going to go look at a flat together?"

"Problem?" Sherlock questioned.

The Doctor, or rather, John Smith, cocked his head, looking thoughtful, then, "Nah, not really," he sniffed, dismissing all doubt from his mind about this man's intentions.

Sherlock smiled, despite himself and stode out of the lab, "Oh," he paused, slightly leaning back to give his new flatmate one last look. "The name is Sherlock Holmes, and the address is 221b Baker Street. Afternoon!"

And with that, he was gone. The Doctor was in shock, no he was beyond shocked, he was….he was….gobsmacked, yes that was it. He was gobsmacked to hear the name of the man he was considering living with was Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock bloody Holmes, the name that had rung throughout the universe for centuries as the human equivalent of the Doctor himself. Sure he had no blue box that was bigger on the inside, or a sonic screwdriver that could open any door, but he had his mind. His brilliant mind that people sung of for generations.

"Sherlock Holmes," the Doctor grinned, whirling around and grabbing the startled Mike Stamford. "Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant."

Well there it is, in all it's Doctory/Sherlocky glory. Tell me what you think? Did you like it? Hate it? Is the Doctor wrong? Is Sherlock? Am I the best writer you've ever read? Don't answer that one, I know I am. Okay, all done for now.