The Network Experiment
Disclaimer: I don't own Sherlock, John or any names you recognise.
Authors note: Just a short one-shot that came to mind. Sherlock is a bit OOC, since I doubt the events of this fic would ever really happen. Hope you like it :D
John Watson sat in his armchair of 221b on a Saturday morning, relishing in the rare silence. The night before had found them chasing a murderer onto the London eye, and the doctor was keen to spend his weekend at home. He placed his mug of tea onto the coffee table and picked up his laptop. Ten minutes later, a tired Sherlock strode into the kitchen, his curly hair resembling a chimney brush. Yawning, he prepared a cup of tea, not bothering to offer one to his flatmate.
"Morning," John greeted as the detective collapsed into his own armchair.
"Typing up last night's case I see." He deduced.
"No, I'll do that later. I think I'll call it 'The Eye of London'. No, I'm just checking my Facebook wall."
Sherlock scoffed at his friend's choice of title.
"The Eye of London?" He mocked.
"Yes! It's appropriate; we were on that bloody wheel for an hour and a half last night!"
The detective chuckled before taking a sip of his tea. After a moment, a question popped into his head.
"John?"
"What?"
"What is a 'Facebook wall'?" He asked.
"Facebook is a social networking website, Sherlock. You wouldn't like it, too dull," John laughed.
"Well, what do you do on it?"
"You have your own 'wall'," John explained, "and you post images and videos on it. You can post statuses as well, which is just saying what you're doing or how you feel. Then you can browse through your friend's walls and chat to them."
Sherlock looked thoughtful for a moment, before he spoke again.
"Why do people do it?"
"To keep in touch with friends, meet now people, things like that," John answered.
They sat in comfortable silence for a while, before John announced he was popping to the corner shop for milk. Sherlock watched him exit the living room, and heard the door downstairs open and close, before he stood and picked up John's laptop.
That evening, John sat down to write a new blog entry. He logged into Facebook, intending to leave it on and wait for Harry to spam his inbox. Noticing a new friend request, John clicked the icon and the name 'Sherlock Holmes' jumped out at him. He confirmed, and was taken to the detective's page.
He had made five statuses in the last hour, four of which were about being bored, whilst one moaned about incompetence of London police officers. An image of a smiling Sherlock was being used as the profile picture. Glancing at the detective's three friends, John saw Lestrade, Molly and himself. The doctor stood and marched to Sherlock bedroom door, not bothering to knock as he burst in. Sherlock was lay on his bed with his own laptop.
"You got Facebook?" John demanded.
"Yes." The detective answered, turning his head.
"Why?"
Sherlock paused before answering.
"It's an experiment."
His flatmate stared back at him in disbelief. The detective went back to his laptop, which spawned another question from the doctor.
"Why are you on your own laptop? You usually use mine."
"As pointless as your blog is, you need your laptop to post it. Mine is quicker anyway."
John sighed and went to leave, but stopped when he noticed what was on the laptop screen.
"Are you playing Farmville?"
Two days later, Sherlock sauntered into the living room with purpose and closed the laptop on John's lap. The doctor protested, but shut up when Sherlock started speaking.
"Why, John? Tell me why!"
"Why what?"
"Why did you let me make an account on that ridiculous excuse of a website?!"
"Sherlock, you made an account without my knowledge. You can only blame yourself. What's happened, anyway?" John asked.
"In the past three hours, I've had four women befriend me, John. Four! They keep asking me about my choice of shirt."
"Your choice of shirt?"
"Yes, apparently the shirts I wear give me some sort of sex appeal, I'm not exactly sure. Anyway, how do I get them to stop?"
"Don't confirm them."
"They can still message me! I'm just going to delete my account; this was a foolish idea."
John nodded in agreement as Sherlock turned to leave.
"I'm guessing you're not going to try Twitter then." He called.
Sherlock's popped his head out of the kitchen with a curious expression.
"What's Twitter?"