Lists.

1. Cabin fever.

T: Yep it's a brand new fic with a brand new set o' warnings (sort of): Slash, Crackish, ooc, AU, series one spoilers, possible angst down the line. I own only the plot the rest comes from the Pen of Sir Arthur and from the glorious modern verse canon that Mr Moffett and Mr Gatiss have crafted!

X

It's coming up for four in the afternoon, he's sat, in his snug little practice room, staring at the message he's just composed and trying to flag just when he went completely and utterly insane.

Because there was no way that sending someone the phrase 'if you buy more rice I SHALL kill you' could be deemed normal even when said 'someone' was the utterly random, crazy and truly spectacular Sherlock Holmes.

The entire debacle had started a good two months previous with Sherlock offering to go shopping.

It'd come entirely out of the blue and been uttered with such a disinterested air that he'd felt his guard rise almost immediately. The wrong reaction, apparently, for he'd been afforded a long, lingering, look filled with part pity and part fascination before Sherlock had stated,

"I assure you that I am not conducting an experiment, John. You are of a currently limited mobility due to the cast on your leg and we begin to run low on the basic amenities. Thus it seems logical for me to offer my services."

It hadn't have seemed fair to be cynical about that statement, give the unique set of circumstances it was not entirely impossible to think that his flatmate has spontaneously discovered his more human nature.

It was also not entirely impossible to think that he might spontaneously sprout wings and begin flying about the flat.

Still an offer was an offer and the instant he'd realised that the milk supply was dwindling fast his body had begun to crave tea like never before.

"Right, fine, but you're getting a list." Because if nothing else he'd at least have something to refer back to as evidence should his flatmate return with, as was his current fear, an assortment of body parts and four pints of milk he'd bought because his subconscious had realised what would happen if he didn't.

He'd spent the next half an hour pretending to concentrate on a particularly convoluted episode of midsummer murders and attempting to convince his head that, amazing though he was, Sherlock really wasn't going to have sent him a text in the half a second since the last he checked his phone.

Indeed he makes himself so agitated that, when he hears the key in the latch, he momentarily forgets about his current condition and ends up having to hurriedly arrange himself in such a way that not even Sherlock Holmes himself would know he'd just collapsed himself over his own plaster cast.

Thankfully his flatmate had been so wrapped up in his own smug self satisfaction that he's graced with simply a curious raise of the eyebrows before he enquires,

"I know that you have an organisational system but haven't had the necessary time to study it so that I might meet it's every exacting standard. Would you care to give me some guidance, or would you rather I help you over so that you might pack it yourself?"

"No to talking you through it, nothing personal I just don't think I can give clear enough instructions to get things exactly where I want them. As to the other…thanks for the offer but I'd rather just ease my way over with my handy dandy crutches. Male pride and all that jazz."

Little more than the faintest roll of silk clad shoulders and then Sherlock's off into his room for some unknown Sherlocky reason that he'd had no want to think on too long.

He'd just gotten into a rhythm, might even have been humming some show tune to himself though it'd take torture for him to admit it, when he'd spotted it.

A bag of rice and not just any rice but the expensive stuff that he'd known couldn't be purchased from any of the stores within walking distance…a bag of rice he'd know wasn't anywhere on the list because he'd been going through a phase of hating the stuff and it was a proven fact that his flatmate existed simply on biscuits, coffee and nicotine.

He'd stared at the bag longer than was likely sane before catching himself, writing it off as a likely ingredient for some madcap experiment or another and returning to the task in hand.

Which is where, had the situation been somewhere closer to what defined normal within the walls of 221b, the whole thing should have ended. Sadly he'd basically been given what amounted to house arrest to his doctor while the cast was still in place and, inevitably, he'd begun to develop cabin fever.

Thus when, literally 24 hours later, he spots the packet out the corner of his eye, he decides to make a game of guessing if it's actually seen any form of use without actually ever touching it.

Somewhere in his draft box he still has the little list he'd started compiling after the third day of the game, the string of numbers and equations something that made little sense to him now but that'd been as the meaning of life and the universe at the time.

Of course somewhere in the back of his head he'd known how insane the whole thing was, had known that the very best course of action right now was to ring the doctor and plead for some form of compromise.

Still when, precisely a week after its appearance, the bag simply vanishes as though it'd never existed at all, he literally tares the flat apart trying to find where Sherlock's hidden it.

It'd been testament to how long he'd spent in the place of late that he'd been able to place it back together well enough that, upon his return, Sherlock had simply stated,

"I'd ask you not to extend your frustrated cleaning effort into my bedroom," before drifting into the kitchen in order to make tea.

His pride, the big, hulking, thing that it was, had stopped him just short of asking for explanation because, really, if Sherlock wasn't offering one that meant this had likely been some test or another, one that he'd apparently already failed and he seriously had no want to make things any worse.

So he'd started a conversation about his flatmates current case, aloud the sound of Sherlock's voice to wash over him and, yet again, put the entire thing behind him.

There are two bags in amongst the next lot of shopping, both of which disappear precisely a week afterwards as cleanly and precisely as the first.

By the time the cast comes off they're up in double digits yet still he has no bloody idea of just what's going on, can't ask because by that point doing as such would be admitting defeat and he knows that'd just make Sherlock even more of a handful.

He'd actually started to think that, actually, there was no real purpose…that the whole thing had just been Sherlock's way of keeping him as mentally active as possible and feeding the fire of his natural curiosity.

Had clung, desperately, to the happy thought that, if this were indeed the case, it'd all come to a close once his cast was off.

Sadly his renewed mobility had, apparently, been some form of trigger to his flatmate and suddenly he was finding bags of rice literally everywhere he went.

The breaking point had been the bag he'd found not an hour previously, balanced happily on top of his stethoscope case, which was, in turn, sat in the bottom draw of his desk.

The desk he knew he'd locked last night because one could never be too careful when it came to even the most basic of medical equipment.

He'd typed the message in a fit of rage and hesitated in sending it as such because he'd had firsthand experience of the damage talking in haste could cause, then there'd been a sudden influx of late appointment patience and he'd basically forgotten about the matter until he'd gotten his phone out with the thought of warning Sherlock he'd likely be home late.

"You can always call it a day you know." It catches him entirely off guard and Sarah gives him an apologetic little smile before stating, "I did knock."

"Sorry, guess I was a little distracted."

"Mm, what's he done now?"

"Oh you know Sh…wait, how'd you know who I was texting?"

"Your face told me everything I needed to know."

"You've lost me."

She gives him the long, lingering, look that's always been her shorthanded version of an eye roll and that insights a little bitter sweet twinge in his head, because though it means he's at last forgiven its also a clear line.

Oh he doesn't regret pushing her a little away, he'd had longer than he'd care to really dwell on under the water of the Pool to pick apart every nuance of his emotional landscape and realise that he'd never quite care for her as deeply or truly as she cared for him, still…

"You're really picking up far too many of his bad habits, you know." She smiles, wide and comfortingly true at the look he throws her at that, before responding, "It's cute…a little hard to see, truth be known, but cute none the less."

Not this again.

Seriously, why was it that half of London was convinced that he and his flatmate were having hot, steamy, sex while the other was convinced they were basically only a drunken night away from doing as such?

Ok, sure, he'd admit that Sherlock was pretty easy on the eye and that, if nothing else, having Harry as a sister had got his head to a place that he could accept that gender meant diddly squat when it came to true, lasting, love, however…

"…the rest is just transport." Of course he's not really been meeting his eye when he'd said it and yet something in the younger man's voice had made it very, very clear that he at least wanted to believe the words.

Also there was the ever reaching fact that Sherlock was a complete ass.

Oh it was certainly feasible that he couldn't help it, that it was down to his clearly stifled upbringing or something in the way the neurons in his brain were firing, however, when it came right down to it, he was still the single most infuriating person he'd ever had the misfortune to come into contact with.

He's taking the breath to tell Sarah just that, to push this whole thing back to wherever the heck it's born from and carry onto much more interesting topics, when he catches the unsent text message out of the bottom of his periphery vision.

Pride or no wouldn't a normal person have just sent that message? Or, if it comes to that, just asked about the damned rice in the first place?

Oh…

…no no no no no no no no no no no no no….

…he's bloody well fallen in love with him, hasn't he?

X

This whole thing spawned when I spotted a book about strange shopping lists and my eye caught 'if you buy more rice I shall kill you' scrawled across one of the lists featured on the cover! Next chapter likely next week, though no solid promises on that front!