Disclaimer: One, I don't own any of these characters. Two, this is a 21st century AU, based off the story 'The Violet Griffin' by EdieHansen.

Rated for language.

Sometimes I do wish I was Sherlock Holmes. Or that I had his damn-near-psychic powers, at least - I'm not so keen on the drugs or the crazy, but even with those, it's like he's totally aware of everything, even when he's high as fuck or sleeping. Having that power of observation would be a godsend some days.

Today was one of those days. My shift at the clinic had gone long again, so I was a fucking zombie that morning, but had I his powers it wouldn't have mattered. I'd have noticed when I shuffled past yawning that his room door was uncharacteristically open and there was no sign of him inside. I'd have noticed that there was a stack of groceries on the kitchen table, including leftovers that looked both familiar and like they were going to develop a pulse any second now. I might have even noticed that the milk I was going to put in my coffee was, in fact, on the table and not in the fridge.

Instead, the only thing I noticed was when I pulled the fridge door open, and suddenly, I didn't need the coffee anymore. That was good, because the mug hit the floor a half-second later.

"JESUS FUCKSHIT!"

The fridge had been emptied out, but it was far from empty. No, contorted and folded up inside the small compartment, with his knees up by his chin and the heel of one bare foot resting almost comically on the top shelf where the milk usually sat, was a half-dressed Holmes. His skin was pale as fucking copy paper and his closed eyes were ringed and dark, and he didn't even twitch at my outburst.

I couldn't do anything but stare for a few minutes, a dozen slasher movie scenarios running through my head, before my medical training finally kicked in and I leant forward to take his pulse. Oh, he looked like a fucking corpse, yeah, but you can't count somebody out just on looks alone.

"HOLY MOTHER OF GOD!"

My second enthusiastic blasphemy of the day was accompanied by a hurried step back, slipping in the puddle of spilled coffee, and landing hard on my arse on the kitchen floor. Holmes had stirred. Just before I'd touched him, he'd opened up those ridiculously pretty grey eyes of his and blinked up at me.

He produced his pipe from somewhere (maybe it was in his hand the entire time, I don't know) and stuck between in his lips. "Good morning," said he, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to be folded up in the fridge at seven AM.

I spent a few more minutes gaping liked a retarded fish, before finally finding where I'd mislaid my voice. "Wh... what... What in bloody hell are you doing in the fridge?"

He blinked at me again, and it occurred to me to wonder if he was high. "An experiment. On... fridge capacities. I'd say ours is a good-sized piece, right?" He reached for the opening and attempted to haul himself out, grunted, and dropped back down again. "It seems my legs have fallen asleep. Give me a hand, will you?

I had long ago learned to just not question my roommate too much on the crazy shit that he pulled - he usually had a reason for it, however insane, and would treat it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Still, scrambling to my feet, I did point out that he was lucky I was half-asleep, or he'd have suffocated. He just rolled his eyes and held his hand out insistently. With my help, we managed to lever him out of the fridge and into one of the kitchen chairs, with a hasty rescue of an egg carton just before it was sat upon. Settling back into the chair, he stretched his long legs and patted his pockets.

"How long have you been in there, anyway?"

His zippo was produced from his back pocket and used to light his pipe, and he gave it a puff before answering. "I got in around 6, I think."

"An hour? Seriously?" He blinked owlishly at me again, as if surprised it had been that long. "Shit, man, you're lucky I didn't decide to sleep in."

To my surprise, he didn't actually brush the comment off with some bit of fridge-trivia that seemed obvious to him. Instead he puffed at his pipe again, his eyes unfocusing somewhere near the floor while his long fingers started to twitch. I was familiar enough with his nervous habits to think that he'd just fallen into thought, a state which he was always pissed to be roused from until he was ready, so I just got to my feet and went to undo his work of emptying the fridge.

"Thank you."

The words were almost too quiet to hear. I turned away from the plate that I'd been scrutinizing, trying to decide if it belonged back in the fridge or in the trash, and if it would attempt to murder me in my sleep if I left it in the trash bin. "What?"

He cleared his throat, his fingertips tapping out a stilted staccato on the table, and I swear to god that Holmes looked flustered. "That is, you're right, it is... quite fortunate that you came by when you did. I hadn't counted on the... soothing effect of asphyxiation."

I could hardly believe my ears. Sherlock Holmes, genius dick of genius dicks, was not only thanking me but admitting to being wrong? Clearly I had woken up in some form of bizarro world, that or Holmes could stand to suffocate more often. I should probably have taken advantage of the situation to rib at him a little, because how often did I ever get a legitimate chance to do that, but I didn't. Truth was that when he acknowledged that I'd done something right, it just made me feel kind of warm and fuzzy inside.

"You're welcome," I said, but before he had the chance to backpedal on it (or I had a chance to consider how gay that 'warm and fuzzy' thought made me sound), I'd turned away and carelessly asked something that I'd wondered since I was a kid. "So, does the little light stay on?"

He smirked. "As a matter of-" Abruptly he stopped, his eyes widened, and he sprang out of the seat with a cry of, "That's it!"

I watched his bare white back disappear into the sitting room and heard his bedroom door slam. Deciding that I honestly did not want to know what 'that' was if it involved near-asphyxiation in a fridge, I went back to restocking the beer.

A/N: I don't know why, exactly, I imagined Holmes folded up in a fridge, but hopefully something vaguely entertaining has come out of it.

Also, I have no idea how long it would actually take to suffocate in an average-sized fridge. Don't try this at home, kiddies.