The faint, metallic ticking of their antique coaching clock, a trophy from a recent case, was only just audible over the street noises as the hour approached midnight. 221B Baker Street had never been a serene place, and with the lights and television off and the computers shut down for the night, the flat felt out of character.
The corners of the room were in absolute darkness, and the orange sodium glow from the streetlights outside the half-drawn curtains picked out, in dull monochrome, the bolder details of a bachelor flat in need of a tidy and considerably more shelf space. Half a glass of red wine sat untouched before the front left foot of Holmes' armchair, his violin rested face down upon its seat, and the violin bow sat at a precarious angle across the cluttered mantle, vibrating faintly with each tick of the clock. It was utterly peaceful. The room sighed, shut its eyes, and waited for dawn.
The sound of an explosion made the flat instantly familiar again. John Watson has been asleep for half an hour, and was still on the far side of consciousness when he leapt bodily to his feet, an instinctive response drilled into him during his army days, when casualties would flood the field hospital in Kandahar at every hour of the night. He dragged his bathrobe from where he'd flung it and had barely closed it around his waist when his heels hit the floorboards of the hall outside Holmes' room.
"Sherlock? What the hell was that? Sher—!"
Holmes flung his bedroom door wide, emitting himself, a healthy belch of oily smoke and assorted detritus of papers, feathers, and much else of a less identifiable nature.
"Sherlock, what are you doing?" John barked, snatching the fire alarm from the wall before it could go off and wake the whole building. "Are you alright?"
Holmes stripped the rubber gloves from his hands and shoved them into the pocket of his favourite grey dressing gown; he dragged his fingers through his matted curls.
"An experiment, John."
"An experiment?"
"An experiment on the formulation of ingestible explosives."
"Ingestible explosives? At this time of night?"
"Yes. Did I wake you?" John's only response was to give him a look of absolute incredulity. "I thought I'd work after you went to bed, rather than disturb your evening."
"I see. How thoughtful of you."
"Besides, you know my need for quiet when I'm thinking."
"That's fine, but… what for, Sherlock? I didn't know you had a case about—"
"I don't. It's nothing."
"Nothing—?"
"I was revisiting an old idea, nothing more."
John watched his friend and colleague carefully, his concern growing. At no point in the preceding conversation had Holmes stopped moving. He pulled the silk belt of his robe through his fingers, he drummed his toes against the wainscot; his eyes shifted rapidly, never resting on anything longer than a tenth of a second. John moved past his friend to look in on the heart of the explosion, drawing lightly on the air to detect any toxic fume that could have gone to Sherlock's head.
"Well, old idea or not, I'm sorry it went wrong. Are you hurt?"
"Wrong? John, it was brilliant. I'm fine. In fact, I couldn't be more pleased with myself."
"Uh huh. Mrs Hudson will wish she could say the same. Sherlock, look at the state of your ceiling."
Sherlock stopped his buzzing long enough to stare incredulously at John.
"My ceiling? What about my ceiling?" He joined John in peering back into the bedroom. He scoffed. "All the same, what're ceilings when my gift to forensic science is so great?"
"What's forensic science when we're thrown out of our flat?"
Holmes turned his eyes back to John; he studied the faint pillow creases that traced across his temple and cheekbone. "Everything, John. Everything."
"Right. Of course."
Sherlock moved past him, swept the wine glass from the foot of his chair in the sitting room without a pause and downed the dregs, dropping the empty glass onto the mantle. For the first time, John noticed a few of the fragments of handwritten paper that had come drifting through into the hallway from the bedroom. He stooped to gather them. "Wai— Sherlock. Are these… are these—?"
"Ah. An old copy of your 'Spotted Band' story."
"Speckled!"
"I suppose it is. Well, the pages which weren't incinerated entirely are a bit — a bit splattered. I used them to insulate the flask of explosive," he explained, miming the action with shaking hands. John had come to stand perfectly still in the doorway of the kitchen.
"You realise I haven't got another copy of this?"
"It was convenient."
"Oh, it was convenient. Well, in that case—"
"I knew you'd understand. And the damage isn't all that bad, surely."
"Hard to say. The smoke hasn't cleared enough yet to tell. But, I suppose the earliest we can be evicted is still a few hours away."
Holmes fidgeted still, unheeding of the warning tone that had crept into Watson's voice. The doctor had his arms crossed, his bare feet parallel with the floorboards, his back erect.
"Have you any more experiments to do tonight, or may I go back to bed?"
Holmes slowed, but wouldn't meet John's eyes. He had, however, evidently been listening.
"You're angry."
"Well, really, Sherlock, for godsake!"
"Oh, what?"
"What's wrong with you tonight? Can't you just go to bed like a normal… get eight hours every now and then? It would do us both a hell of a lot of good."
"I cannot apologise! You, you ordinary types may be content to sleep for hours on end; I have to be occupied! These past days have been too dull to live through. I need work!"
John broke his stance and, unable to look his friend in the face, retrieved the wineglass from the mantel, strode to the kitchen and briefly contemplated throwing it into the sink to make a point, but stopped himself at the last second.
"You have work. You do work," he insisted, punctuating himself with the heavy ding of glass on stainless steel. Holmes wasn't listening.
"When there is a case, I'm satisfied. I'm easy in my mind. When there's no case, I must have other channels, other outlets.
"What, your nicotine patches? Or do I have to worry about you revisiting… old habits?"
"I'm clean. And thank you for your tact, doctor."
"So you read. You play your violin…"
"Or should I say mummy?"
"…you conduct your experiments at all hours of the day and—"
"No!" he interrupted. "John, my mind is–is like an engine up on blocks, tearing itself to pieces because it has no work to absorb its terrible power."
"Terrible power-" John breathed.
"Of course! You have no idea how I suffer."
"Oh, how you suffer?" John turned from the sink, shaking his head at the irony of Sherlock's words. "If work is what you need, you've had requests, Sherlock – a list as long as my arm, only you—"
"Missing…bloody…fiancés, petty theft, extortion. Dull, John! Dull! One cannot live on such-such—"
"What about the one Lestrade was keen on, just yesterday, the one about the missing—?"
"Oh, Lestrade! He would find such rudimentary problems difficult… Am I to be a nanny? Hm? Spend my days running after the children of Scotland Yard? Off you go, boys and girls. Don't worry, Daddy's watching. Not too far, now!"
Holmes threw himself into his armchair with a sickening crack. Springing to his feet, he snatched his violin up and discovered that the bridge had snapped in two under his weight. He threw the splintered pieces at the far wall. A momentary glance convinced him that the rest of the instrument was unharmed; this, he clutched to his chest, strings sagging limply, as he folded himself up into a great sulking knot in the depths of the upholstery. John hadn't moved from the kitchen doorway.
"Sherlock?"
"What."
"Have you considered that maybe too little work isn't your problem?"
"I don't see what you mean."
"I mean that perhaps your behav—the symptoms of overwork are similar enough to boredom that you've mistaken one for the other.
"Mistaken! Mistaken! I am never mistaken—" he growled.
"Remember that, despite your mockery, I do speak as your doctor as well as your friend. I find this agitation worrisome. It's been coming on for days now."
Holmes scoffed, absorbed by the texture of his slack violin strings. The sound he was stirring from them turned John's fingernails on edge.
"I'm quite serious, Sherlock. It isn't easy for me to say but, looking at you tonight and in recent days generally, I think you might be headed for some sort of breakdown."
"Some sort of breakdown," Holmes repeated, mocking him.
"It wouldn't be the first time."
"Nor the last. You have my thanks, doctor, for your concern, but I really must insist: when it comes to the preservation of the body your knowledge has no equal. Where the functioning of the mind is concerned, well, the advantage lies closer with me."
Watson's tone became deadly. "Then what am I to do with you?"
"Leave me alone, or be a dear and find some worthy diversion until a proper problem finds its way into my hands."
It had taken Watson years of clinical practice before he was finally able to find the personal distance that other, more experienced physicians seemed able to turn on with enviable ease. In the interest of self-preservation, John flipped the mental switch, unpractised as it was, that would allow him to move past anger and frustration, to try to find a solution to his own present problem.
But what solution (other than a seven percent solution) can there be? R&R! Your feedback is always appreciated. Thank you!