A/N: First Sherlock fic, exceedingly lame, please don't hurt me for writing something so high up the Universal Scale of Bleh. That said, enjoy! (:
"Died of asphyxiation, no signs of a struggle anywhere else, victim was obviously attacked from behind and –"
"Yes, thank you for your input, Anderson," Sherlock cut in, dismissing him with a casual wave of his hand, "But I think it would be prudent if you didn't contaminate the crime scene with your idiotic incompetence."
He swept past Anderson, leaving him spluttering and apoplectic with rage, and strode purposefully over to the corpse, John and Lestrade trailing a few steps behind. John did his best to stifle the smirk spreading on his face.
Donning a pair of blue nitrate gloves and crouching down, Sherlock quickly examined the body, pausing occasionally to sniff at an article of clothing, or to run his gloved hand over it to check for other signs of damage.
He then stood up and began to pace, his coat flapping dramatically about as he did so. Abruptly he halted, in the center of the room, and his eyes slipped shut in concentration, his brow furrowing as he thought.
After a mere few seconds Sherlock's eyes snapped back open, though instead of seeing the usual stoic smugness in their depths, John could clearly identify the terror in their pale blue depths.
"Get out – Get. Out!" Sherlock said through gritted teeth, hands curling into fists at his sides as he whirled around and stalked the length of the room, putting as much distance between himself and the others as possible.
Then he shocked everyone in the vicinity by crumpling to the floor and curling in on himself, holding his head between his hands, his back to everyone.
"Sherlock? What's the matter?" John asked, rather concerned at his flatmate's inappropriate crime scene behaviour.
"My head – my head –" Sherlock muttered, now rocking back on his heels, still cradling his head and staring at the ground beneath his feet. "Get out – get out – get out of my head!" he suddenly growled, twisting around to gesture one-handed in Anderson's general direction.
"Who? Me? I'm not in your head," said Anderson, bewildered enough to put aside his indignant feelings.
"Yes, you are! Your presence is interfering with my mind, so get out!" Sherlock snapped irritably, from his curled up position on the floor.
A pointed look from Lestrade had Anderson leaving the room in a huff.
"No, no, no, it's not enough, he's still inside – still inside –" Sherlock groaned in frustration, lifting his head up to glare at Anderson's retreating figure, "I can't think – I need to foucs…"
"What's he on about?" Lestrade murmured in John's ear, the two of them having unconsciously edged closer and closer to the door without Sherlock noticing. "He's not normally this wound up."
"Dunno," John shrugged, "Could just be Anderson, who knows?"
"John!" Sherlock griped, throwing his hands up in consternation and standing upright once more, "Get him out – get him out of my mind palace!"
Comprehension dawning, John hurried over to his distressed friend's side. "Where is he?" he asked patiently.
"I don't know – I think he's in – the palace courtyard!" Sherlock gasped, eyes widening, "He's pissing on the flagstones! He's pissing on my flagstones!"
"What the hell?" Lestrade exclaimed, "Are you out of your bloody mind?"
That was the wrong thing to say.
Sherlock groaned and dropped like a stone to the floor once more, cradling his head protectively between his hands. "Just tell Anderson to stop pissing in my palace courtyard!" he ground out.
"Go on, then," John told a dumbfounded Lestrade, flapping his hands ineffectually in an attempt to convey his desire for the detective inspector to leave the general area, "Do as he says, get Anderson to stop."
Lestrade, bless him, took the hint and strode smartly away, though not before shooting John a look that read We'll talk about your psycho flatmate later, Watson. John ignored it in favour of turning his attention back to Sherlock, who had yet to rise from his crouch on the floor.
"She's not scrubbing the floor!" Sherlock gasped, eyes flying open in horror at the nightmarish scene he was seeing in his mind's eye.
At John's gentle inquiry as to what exactly he meant by that enigmatic expression, the detective further elaborated, "Donovan's joined Anderson in the palace courtyard, she's on her knees, although the angle and frankly obscene noises point toward another alternative than scrubbing the floor."
John couldn't help himself; he had to quickly smother his laugh lest he offend the traumatized detective. He hurriedly cleared his throat, "So that first time, at the house of the pink lady, you actually thought she was just scrubbing his floor?"
When the only response that garnered was pursed lips and a steadfast refusal of eye contact, John came to the inevitable conclusion that Sherlock was about as sexually oblivious as a person could get. Not that that came as a surprise to him.
"Tell them to stop, John!" Sherlock ground out, pressing the heels of his hands to his forehead as if he had a migraine (which, John supposed, he did). "My mind palace is under attack! Lestrade – he's leading the forces – traitor," he spat vehemently.
"Under attack?" John parroted, feeling even more out of his depth than he usually did when dealing with any and all things Sherlock. "Couldn't you, I dunno, fight back? Your palace has an army, right?"
A single moment, suspended for eternity, as Sherlock slowly raised his head to stare at him. John braced himself for an onslaught of what was sure to be a tirade on 'ordinary' people and their pitiful mental capabilities, coupled with a rant on just exactly how screwed John's mind was to say a thing of such profound stupidity.
Then Sherlock whooped like a delighted five-year-old, "John, you're brilliant! Yes, of course, how could I have forgotten? My mind palace is hardly defenseless, not after all the training the soldiers have gone through the past year. They can fight back, I'm sure of it, keep the incompetents at bay so I can just concentrate."
And with that Sherlock settled down onto the hard wood floor cross-legged, palms pressed together as if in prayer or meditation, eyes closed, his face somehow at once a blank mask that gave nothing away, and a visage of utmost consternation. (John had many names for the different expressions Sherlock adopted when thinking. This was somewhere between Yoga 101 and Severe Constipation.)
The detective's meditative contemplating had gone on for about five minutes when John noticed Lestrade advancing towards them, Anderson and Donovan flanking him. It didn't take a genius to deduce their time allowed on the crime scene was up and they were about to be thrown out.
"Sherlock," he coaxed, hand resting on lightly on his friend's shoulder, "Our time's almost up."
"Busy, go away," was Sherlock's reply.
"But Lestrade –"
"Be quiet, John."
"He's going to –"
"Stop talking, John."
"We'll be thrown –"
"Shut up, John!"
Which was when John lost his patience. Sort of.
"Look, Lestrade's coming to throw us out, so I'd start deducing if I were you. In fact, I think I'll start without you. Victim's obviously died of strangulation, judging from the finger imprints on the neck. There was a bit of a struggle before that, if you look at the torn shirt sleeve, where the victim probably cut himself by that coffee table as he –"
John never had a chance to finish his deduction before Sherlock abruptly leapt to his feet, eyes aglow with what could only be described as joy. "You are brilliant, John!" he exclaimed at length, "The shirt sleeve – ah, yes – what I missed before – the blind spot – ha! Although your observations were sound, John, your deducing is flawed nonetheless. The torn fabric was obviously already torn before the fight here, it's what the killer used to track the victim's whereabouts – he did have quite an unhealthy fascination with bloodhounds – Lestrade, you're here, excellent! You'll find the killer waiting for you at Scotland Yard, ready with a confession. I shall be there first thing tomorrow to make the statement. Laters!"
And with a dramatic twirl of his ridiculous coat, Sherlock flapped out of the room. John followed with a put-upon sigh.
Once they were on the street, Sherlock flung an arm out, and a cab seemingly materialized out of thin air for them.
John cleared his throat after ten minutes of increasingly tense and awkward (for him) silence. "So," he began, "How goes the battle?"
Sherlock, it appeared, was lost in thought. Or rather, lost in the confines of his mind palace, trying to find his way out of the mental labyrinthine castle he called a brain, no doubt.
It took three more tries before he was acknowledged.
"Battle?" Sherlock queried, not bothering to turn away from the window, where he was watching London zip by.
"Your internal war, the one going on in your mind palace," John clarified, turning to face the window on his side.
"Oh, that," he replied, which wasn't a reply at all.
A minute of silence descended, during which John alternatively twiddled his thumbs, stared out the window, checked his phone and blew his nose.
Just when he was about to give it up as a lost cause and add this to one of the Many Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes, the detective spoke.
"We won, John," he said simply.
When John turned, he found Sherlock gazing earnestly at him, lips quirked in a delighted grin.
"How did you do it?" he asked, because he had to know, had to try understanding how that great mind of his worked, so he could at least try to keep up.
"I didn't."
The quiet admission took John by surprise, "Come again?"
"It wasn't me who defeated Lestrade and his forces," Sherlock admitted, as though John was supposed to comprehend what that meant.
"Care to elaborate?"
Sherlock gave him The Look. The we-both-know-what's-really-going-on-here look. Which John found exceedingly annoying since he did not, in fact, know what was going on.
"Come now, John, it's maddeningly obvious. Anderson's imbecilic idiocy at the crime scene was apparently infectious, and I contracted it. That naturally caused my mind palace to defend itself automatically, although Anderson and Donovan managed to infiltrate my defenses to engage in fornication in the palace courtyard. Lestrade then led his army against mine, and was defeated, leaving me able to once again concentrate on what should have been a pretty obvious case."
John put on his best I totally follow your freight train of thought face, "But how did you defeat Lestrade's 'forces'?" He had to physically restrain himself from air-quoting them, even though they were still evident from his tone of voice.
Sherlock, thankfully, was far too distracted to notice. "You should know," was his cryptic response, followed by another pointed Look. The we-both-know-what's-really-going-on-here look. The look John should find another, less bothersome name for.
"No, I don't, which is why you should explain," John said pointedly.
Another long stretch of silence, and then – "You led my army, John."
"I'm sorry, what?" He felt sure he must have misheard.
"You. Led my army. Against Lestrade's forces. And won." Sherlock said slowly, as though fearing John's diminutive brain couldn't handle complete sentences.
"I – is that a compliment?"
"Yes."
"Oh."
"Social conventions decree that it is generally expected behaviour to thank the person who directed the compliment at you."
"Oh, yeah, right… Thanks."
Sherlock hummed. They rode in comfortable silence the rest of the way.
They were almost at Baker Street when Sherlock said apropos of nothing, "I don't mind having you in my head, John."
John felt something in his chest constrict and warm at that.
And this time when Sherlock turned to give him The Look, he simply raised his eyebrows and smiled back.