Disclaimer: The characters of Sherlock are not mine, nor is the story, nor are the characters from the original stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I make no monetary profit from this. Nor do I own or profit in any way from anything to do with My Fair Lady.

Note: Written for this prompt on the Sherlock kink meme:

i want crossover Sherlock/My fair lady.
Sherlock is grumpy scientist/professor whatever of 9or just grumpy because of being Sherlock, hehe) and John is guy who somehow became his assistant or student and he has to study and once again suffer from insults of his intellect.
And Mycroft is the one who Sherlock made a bet with.

S/J, no genderswap pls.

Deducing Pygmalion

Act I: All I Want is a Flat Somewhere

John H. Watson was back in London. He was glad to back, back home he told himself, away from the bombs and the awful food and the frightful sanitation. But he was back home with nothing to his name but a small pension, a surreptitiously acquired Browning L9A1, an alcoholic sister he was avoiding like the plague, and PTSD. And a therapist for the PTSD who insisted that he blog about things to make everything better.

Oh, yes, he also had a laptop. On which to blog. About nothing.

Things were not looking very bright for him at this point in life. So he supposed he would be forgiven by any deity of his choice for being less than chipper when he met Mike Stamford in the park that afternoon. He tried his best to be friendly, though, because it was the decent thing to do, and he had been on good terms with Mike when they were at Bart's together.

"I heard you were somewhere getting shot at," Mike had said after identifying himself. "What happened to you?"

"I got shot." John's answer had been succinct and designed not to be an opening for long reminisces of the swell times they'd had together in med school.

Nevertheless, here he was, seated on a park bench, having coffee with Mike. He had to admit that he missed human company.

"Still at Bart's then?" he asked, actually genuinely curious.

"Yes - teaching now. Bright young things like we used to be." Mike grinned. "God I hate them. What about you, staying in town till you get yourself sorted?"

"Well, it seems like it. I'd like to stay in town actually, find a decent place, somewhere nice - you wouldn't believe the place I'm staying at now," said John. "Damned expensive, though, living in London. I suppose it's the price to pay for it never being dull in town. And my therapist recommends a nice, quiet summer by the sea. Still...

"All I want," he sighed, "is a flat somewhere...

...far away from the cold night air

- and he remembered the single, sad, stiff chair he had in his current rooms -

"With one enormous chair
Oh, wouldn't it be loverly?"

A positively dreamy look began to creep upon his face.

"Lots of jam there for me to eat
Indoor plumbing and regular heat"

- his current landlord couldn't be persuaded to do anything about his leaky sink or the dreadful state of the loo or even the fact that the heating was shot while it was the coldest winter in years -

"Warm face, warm hands, warm feet
Oh, wouldn't it be loverly?"

"Well, actually -" began Mike, but John cut him off.

"Oh, so loverly sitting abso-bloomin'-lutely still
I'd not budge my damn leg 'til spring
Propped up on the windowsill.

"But, John, you see -"

"Someone's head resting on my knee,
Warm and tender as she can be
- and not a nurse, I don't mean another bloody nurse -
Who takes good care of me
Oh, wouldn't...it...be...loverly...?"

With a wistful sigh, John slipped out of his visions of taking a nice girl back to a nice flat in central London, and sank back onto the bench from which he had risen in a fit of emphatic passion. Stamford handed him back his cup of coffee.

"But," he said gloomily, "I can't afford London on an army pension."

"And you couldn't bear to be anywhere else." Mike grinned at him, trying to lighten things up. "That's not the John Watson I know."

"I'm not the John Watson you knew." It came out sharper than John had intended, and he unconsciously shifted his shoulder, felt the ache and the tenseness that were souvenirs of enemy fire.

"Can't Harry help?"

"As if that was going to happen." Harry was more likely to show up asking for a drink. Or money with which to buy a drink, on account of her having lost her wallet in the last pub.

"Well, I was trying to suggest that maybe you could get a flatshare or something."

"Come on. Who'd want me for a flatmate?" John wasn't expecting a good answer to that.

Mike surprised him by laughing, as if there was a grand joke going on that only he, Mike Stamford, knew of.

"What?"

"You're the second person to say that to me today," said Stamford.

John Watson found himself keenly interested. "Who was the first?"