A/N - 99% of the dialogue in this ficlette is not mine. I've chopped a few bits out to fit better, and very possibly mangled most of the rest of it as I was working from memory.
"Mike, can I borrow your phone?"
John Watson turned around to look for the owner of that smoke-and-whiskey voice, and his mouth dropped open. No, he had to be mistaken. There was no way that voice had come out of a creature like that.
The young man sitting at the lab bench was the very image of a Goth. John was fairly certain that if he looked up the definition in a dictionary, this man's picture would be right there beside it. He was actually fairly surprised they'd allowed him anywhere inside the hospital that wasn't the A&E department.
Pale skin, sharp cheekbones, incredibly short obviously-dyed black hair that had been gelled up into spikes, a ring at the end of his left eyebrow, a second ring that pierced straight through the middle of his lower lip, and a thick, black, braided leather collar sat snugly around his neck. Although he was obviously wearing two different mesh shirts, they didn't provide much coverage. Or warmth.
Sharp, cool-coloured eyes gave John a quick once-over as he hesitantly offered the use of his own mobile. "Afghanistan or Iraq?"
"Sorry, what?" John blinked several times, his mind not really on the question as the fey-looking man smoothly rose from the stool he'd been sitting on and glided across the room to curl absurdly long fingers around John's lucky phone. The man was wearing shiny black leather trousers that looked as if they'd been painted on. For all John knew, they had been, because otherwise how the hell had the man got them on? Thick-soled black boots gave him at least two more inches in height, and it wasn't like he'd been short to start with.
"How'd you feel about the violin?" The man – whose name John still didn't know – handed the phone back.
"The ... the vio ... what?" John shook his head, bewildered. If he'd had to pick an instrument, the violin wouldn't have even been in his top ten. He would have said the man'd go for an electric guitar, or a good solid drum kit. But the violin? Unless it was one of those fancy electric ones, like the ones they'd had in that music video Harry had forced him to watch (although when the dark-haired woman in the short, tight red dress had appeared, John suddenly hadn't minded that much).
"I play the violin when I'm thinking, and sometimes I don't talk for days at a time. Would that bother you? Flatmates should know the worst about each other, don't you think?"
While the man was talking, John was distracted by glimpses of something that flashed in the man's mouth. When he finally realised that it was a tongue-stud, his own tongue just about stuck itself to the roof of his mouth, and he had to swallow hard to produce any sound at all, let alone a coherent one.
"Um..." Hmm, turned out he wasn't all that coherent yet after all. Hang on, did he just say...? "Flatmates?" He glanced helplessly at Mike, who looked as if he was barely managing not to laugh at them.
"Mm, got my eye on a place; together we should be able to afford it." Brushing past John to pick up a long leather coat from the hook on the back of the door, the man swirled it around himself. "I'll make an appointment for us to view it tomorrow. Six o'clock suit you? Now, must dash. I've left my riding crop in the mortuary."
"Er, hang on," John spluttered, when it appeared the man was going to disappear out of the door. "You haven't told me the address. Or even your name!"
The man paused in the doorway. "The address is 221B Baker Street," he said, "and the name is Sherlock Holmes." And with a cheeky wink, he was gone.